How to Fill in an Area in Photoshop

Posted by Arch on August 7, 2019

how to fill in an area in photoshop
Photoshop is a peerless image editing app, by far the No.1 tool among professionals
since its 1990 release.

Professional image editors know all the tricks that can help them save time and
finish certain tasks quicker. To begin with, filling large areas on an image with
solid colors. You could use the painting and drawing tools here, but it�s entirely
possible to do it much faster in Photoshop.

WHY NOT USE PAINT AND DRAWING

The devil might be in the details, but if you spend too much time dealing with
every single detail, you�ll waste valuable time and might lose patience and focus,
which can only show up in your work.

Instead of painting and drawing, there are two cool ways to fill areas of the same
color. You could use either the Paint Bucket tool or the Fill Command. Both are
equally efficient and, depending on your preference and the situation, you might
prefer one over the other.

photoshop
PAINT BUCKET
Here�s how to use the Paint Bucket tool in Photoshop:

Enable the Color Picker by navigating to the foreground color swatch in the
toolbox. Now, either find the color that you want to use and select it or select a
shade from one of the color libraries. Clicking OK will lock in the selected color.
To select the Paint Bucket tool, press the G key on your keyboard. If this doesn�t
work, you�ve probably been using a tool that is in the same toolbox as the Paint
Bucket (the Gradient tool, for instance). If this is the case, press Shift + G and
click/hold on the Gradient tool in the toolbox, which should reveal the Paint
Bucket
Now, you need to set options for the Paint Bucket tool and this is done in Options.
If you want to use a particular pattern fill rather than the foreground color, you
need to open the fill-source menu and change the setting to Pattern rather than
Foreground. Now, select the desired pattern from the pattern gallery. Open the Mode
menu, choose a blending mode, and find the right opacity for the fill. The
Tolerance field defines how closely the area that you fill should resemble the area
color. In other words, how closely the pixels should resemble the area in question.
The Contiguous, Anti-Alias, and All Layers checkboxes help you define the edges of
your fill area.
Finally, click the image with the Paint Bucket tool in the target area (the color
that you want to replace).
FILL COMMAND

Here�s how to use the Fill Command in Photoshop:

Use the Color Picker tool to select the background (foreground) color. To do this,
click on the background/foreground color swatch in the toolbox. Pick a color by
selecting one from the color libraries or by entering the corresponding formula.
Click OK to set this color.
To bring up the Fill dialog box, press Shift + Backspace on a PC, or Shift + Delete
on a Mac. Choose between Background Color or Foreground Color in the Use Should you
happen to change your mind, overriding these colors is as easy as choosing Color to
bring up the Color Picker. The Use menu can be set to History, White, Black, 50%
Gray, or Pattern. The Pattern option will open the Custom Pattern gallery for you
to select your fill. Make sure that you choose the Content-Aware option for the
selection to fill itself by drawing details from the adjacent areas of the image.
The Mode menu allows you to control the fill�s blending with existing colors in the
target area. Opacity determines how opaque your fill is going to be. The Preserve
Transparency checkbox helps you make sure that the fill doesn�t affect the
transparent areas within the image. To apply the fill after personalizing it, click
OK.
THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
Although this sounds basic enough, there are things that you need to pay attention
to. First of all, the mentioned Content-Aware fill can often have random results.
This means that you�re going to be playing with the Undo command quite a bit.

The 50% Gray setting isn�t quite like setting a CMYK color in the Color Picker. The
results tend to vary. Essentially, 50% Grey gives you a color that measures 128 in
the RGB file across all three channels, plus 50% in each channel of the CMYK file.

Things to Keep in Mind

A TRUE TIME SAVER

We can promise this much. Once you�ve learned the ropes of using the Paint Bucket
tool and the Fill Command, whatever work you do in photoshop is going to become
much more efficient.

How often do you use these two commands? Do you prefer taking the long road of
painting and drawing? Why? Why not? Discuss!