I've been using the clone tool to fix up seams from photogrammetry for some time. It appears that on projects that require a lot of clone brush strokes, the normals get altered. Maybe clamped, maybe compressed, maybe just altered, I haven't figured it out. When it does happen though, it happens to the entire layer; not just the brush strokes. Which also seems weird. Disabling the clone layer reveals that the normals are not what they originally were, and the viewport pictured shows that this is just the normals; not normals + hieght.
I'm hoping somebody can identify what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it. Right now, Painter is my primary source for photogrammetry cleanup as I can clone all maps consecutively. But if there is another software that can do this and preserves my normals, I'd be happy to hear suggestions.