Bucket Tool: Flooding areas of a document

Great for creating mask layers


Designed to act like a bucket of paint, which can be used to fill a particular area. It can also be used to replace an area of colour with a new colour or pattern. It is useful for creating and filling masks on 1 bit layers.


  1. Select the Bucket Tool from the Tools Palette or press K on the keyboard to automatically select this tool. Its settings window will open.
  2. Adjust the settings in the window to change the effect of the tool.
    • Tolerance - adjusts the area that is filled by the Bucket Tool, known as the flood area. The flood area is calculated by the tone levels selected by the bucket in the design. The higher the percentage, the larger the flood area.
    • Visible layers - fills what you can see on screen, regardless of which layers you have selected.
    • Visible spot layers - does the same as the visible layers setting but ignores any images in the file, therefore removing the need to make images invisible. This makes it easier to allocate the right colour to different areas, in particular when separating a design.
    • Selected layers - fills information on the selected layers only.
  3. Position the bucket over the required area and click once. The chosen area will be flooded with the new colour or selected pattern.
Delete

Note: When using the Bucket Tool to fill small areas, it is important to position your cursor correctly. You need to get the bottom tip of the black part of the cursor (which represents the paint spilling out of the bucket) in the space to be filled, otherwise the paint colour may fill the wrong area. It is also important to note that if you are filling outlines, these outlines must be completely closed, otherwise the paint will spill out into other areas of you design.


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