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Fill is available either as an Edit Menu choice or
as a Toolbox selection as seen in this sample.
Some Tools have keyboard shortcuts and some of them
even have Shift-key modifiers.
The use of keyboard shortcuts are highly productive.
Choose a few often used commands and learn their shortcuts. Add a few
shortcuts each week.
Before long, shortcuts will become second nature.
Some of the basic ones are universal to Windows, such as the
Ctrl + S
Ctrl + X
Ctrl + V
Fill can be applied to a selection, layer, or to
a layer element(s). The default settings are Normal Mode, Opacity
100%, Fill with the Foreground color, as in the sample below.
Check select it to avoid the jaggies. Jaggies
are the pixel stair-stepping which can be seen in any lines or
edges which is off the true vertical or horizontal axes.
Tolerance setting ranges from 0 to 255. The 0
setting works fine with a smooth single color background. Enter a
higher tolerance to select a broader range of colors.
Getting the proper Tolerance setting is like
focusing a camera lens. Get close by over-setting and under-setting.
Using intervals of 25 to 50. Then bracket by smaller intervals to
zero-in on the target range.
Cursor placement can be critical when doing a
broad range Fill. The actual Fill-range is determined by the exact
cursor placement but it is difficult to click on the same spot each
time when testing the Fill Tolerance setting.
It would be helpful if Photoshop provided a
Repeat-Fill command. This would allow for a single-click-position to
be used for multiple Tolerance range tests.
Until then, I offer two work-arounds. One is to
use the magnified mode. The other is to create a new layer above the
target layer. Place a cross hair marker on the new layer. Activate
the target layer and fill using the cross hair as a guide.
Pattern Fill Option
Pattern option is ghosted until a pattern
is defined. This can be seen in the previous sample.
Pattern Fill is a powerful tool allowing you to
fill with any image element. The image can come from a clip-art or
be custom-made. Even transparent areas can be part of the
- Define a pattern image area using the
rectangular marque (m key) tool.
- Set Define Pattern mode (Edit > Define
Pattern is now available as an option under
Paint Bucket Contents list as shown to the right.
Fill Menu Dialog Box
Choosing Edit > Fill from the menu selections
opens a dialog box with different options than the Paint Bucket
Palette. The drop down list offers more choices.
I use the Paint Bucket Palette most of the time
because it is convenient and fast.
It also has the tolerance option not available
in the Fill dialog box.
There will be some in-use Fill command examples
in the Real World Examples Section. The next TOPic is Cloning/Rubber
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