P.S. I really would like to know how to do this, especially since I have a couple of manips made from black and white waiting in the wings, where it still is quite apparent to me that Frodo's face has a different resolution from the body in the source picture. I have tried making the clone brush very wide and very translucent and then "blotting" over his face, but it just seems to make it look darker and sort of smudgy.

It may be that I can't do what you can do because of a difference in programs. To make my manips, I jockey the image back and forth between 'Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 Editor' and 'ACD Photo Editor 3.1'. We don't own Photoshop, which a lot of "pros" use.