Adobe Photoshop CS2 On Demand [Electronic resources]

Using the Paint Bucket Tool

The Paint Bucket tool is not new, in fact it's been around almost as long as Photoshop. The paint bucket's primary function is to fill an area with the active foreground color, but that's not all it's capable of doing. The Paint Bucket tool can fill areas with a selected pattern and, much in the same way that the Magic Wand tool selects image information, the fill area can be controlled by the shift in brightness of image pixels. Combine those features with the ability to change the paint bucket's blending mode, opacity, and you have a tool with a lot of horsepower.

Use the Paint Bucket Tool

Select the

Paint Bucket tool on the toolbox.

Click the

Fill list arrow, and then select an option:

• Foreground. Fills a selected area with the current foreground color.

• Pattern. Fills a selected area with a pattern.

Click the

Pattern list arrow, and then select a pre-defined fill pattern. This option is available if you select Pattern as a fill option.

Click the

Mode list arrow, and then select a blending mode.

Enter an Opacity percentage value (1 to 100).

Select a Tolerance value (0 to 255). The Tolerance value influences the range of the Paint Bucket uses to fill a given area.

Select the

Anti-alias check box to create a visually smoother line.

Select the

Contiguous check box to restrict the fill to the selected area.

Select the

All Layers check box to fill all the color range information from the image's layers.

Click the

Paint Bucket tool cursor on the area to be changed.

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