Trying to fill a shape using paint bucket

[beginner_83]

Hi

I'm new to photoshop and can't seem to figure out how to fill a shape using the paint bucket. I'm using an outline of a country and I want to fill it black but when I try to do this the whole page is filled black. What am I doing wrong?

Thank you.

[jerryb]

hi,
alot of different ways to do this... don't know which is the best for your image.... that why a lot of epliers like to see the image that way they can look at what you really meant come up a best meathod...

however, this is just one meathod....

1. use one of your selct tools, for example either the polgonal tool, or the magnetic lasso ... outline the country in question... and then choose your paintbucket and set tolorance to high and then pour.. now in some cases you may see a couple of spots that didn't change and if so well you could use your brush....
note: would suggest after outlining put the outline on a seperate layer that will give you additional flexabilty especially if you want to change something..

2. now that was just one meathod.... there many others... more than one way to mask off a area to restrict changes to that area and also there many way to fill in with black.....

Hi

I'm new to photoshop and can't seem to figure out how to fill a shape using the paint bucket. I'm using an outline of a country and I want to fill it black but when I try to do this the whole page is filled black. What am I doing wrong?

Thank you.

[artd]

How did you create your shape? If you used the Pen tool you'll need to load the path as a selection before you can fill it.

[jerryb]

hi artd,
that true if you use the pen tool you can create a path.... or you can make a selection out of the path..... after using the pen tool do right click and click make selection and in this case probably then do a inverseselection and then paintbucket routine or just use the brush tool..

but there more than one way to make a selection and it depends on the image which is best....

you can use pologonal selection tool,,,, or magnetic lasso.. or depending on the colors , use one of the masking techniques like channel masking to make your selection... color replacement techniuqes, etc... !!

that why i would have like to seen the image itself... there so many ways to do selections/masking...

How did you create your shape? If you used the Pen tool you'll need to load the path as a selection before you can fill it.

[beginner_83]

Hi All

thanks for the replys. The image I'm using is the outline of a country I got from Google. I delete out the writing and am trying to fill the country just plain black.

thanks

[artd]

Hi 83,

Okay, I think jerryb understood your problem better than I did When you mentioned having a "shape" I thought you meant you had created a Photoshop shape (like with the Custom Shape tool or Pen tool). So jerry was right, it was necessary to see your image!

Now for the solution to your problem: The first thing you'll need to do is repair four breaks in your outline, otherwise your black fill will not stay within your outline but will spill out and cover the entire document. The four breaks are circled in red on the attached image.

Next, you need to select the area you want to fill by clicking in it with the Magic Wand. When you use the Magic Wand, make sure that "Contiguous" is selected in the options bar. Also, since there is some gray spotty areas around the main outline, it will be necessary to use a higher tolerance than zero (try something like 100).

Once you have a good selection, you will be able to fill the selection with black. If you want to remove those gray spots around the outline, just click on a few of them using the white eyedropper in Levels or Curves.

Hope this is helpful.

[jerryb]

hi,
I see artd beat me to it on finding the breaks..... smiling.. that why i say may time it important to show the image.... it easier to understand the issue and come up with a solution....

this is just added info......

1. when you save a image especially if your scanning where there fine lines... it best not to use jpg format... because of the type of compression you can easily get missing data which ends up a fine line being dotted or broken. so generally you want to save in png or tiff or even bmp.. to avoid losing data.....

2. now just aheads up on acouple of meathod i was thinking about if it turned out there was too many breaks in yur image.....

a. i tried the photocopy effect .... this wasn't too bad but did lose some outline detail....
b. another meathod using was select the line and then do select>modified expand.... that gave me a wider line and it closed those gaps in the line but had issues with filling .....ended up with a little outlining the country , not sure why but for my own info i am to work on that...

but any way thought i let you know

hi artd,
that true if you use the pen tool you can create a path.... or you can make a selection out of the path..... after using the pen tool do right click and click make selection and in this case probably then do a inverseselection and then paintbucket routine or just use the brush tool..

but there more than one way to make a selection and it depends on the image which is best....

you can use pologonal selection tool,,,, or magnetic lasso.. or depending on the colors , use one of the masking techniques like channel masking to make your selection... color replacement techniuqes, etc... !!

that why i would have like to seen the image itself... there so many ways to do selections/masking...

How did you create your shape? If you used the Pen tool you'll need to load the path as a selection before you can fill it.

[beginner_83]

Thanks everyone for your help...much appreciated