7 Paint Bucket
Used for adding
or changing fill color
Found at #22 in the Toolbar diagram at left
The paint bucket is now grouped with the gradient tool in the toolbar
(it used to be by itself). To find it, if it’s hidden, click on the
gradient tool icon and choose the paint bucket from the pop-up menu.
The paint bucket will recolor pixels that are the same color as the one that you click on according to the Tolerance and Contiguous settings on its options bar. It’s a lot like a combination of the magic wand and the Edit > Fill command.
If you want to recolor pixels in a limited area, make a selection before using the paint bucket tool. That way, only pixels within that selection can be recolored.
If you want to completely fill a selection or layer you may prefer using the Edit > Fill dialog. You can also use shortcuts of Alt-Backspace to fill a selection with the foreground color, Alt-Shift-Backspace to fill only areas containing pixels (leaving transparent areas untouched), Ctrl-Backspace to fill with the background color, and Ctrl-Shift-Backspace to fill only areas containing pixels with the background color.
If you choose Edit > Fade immediately after using this tool, you can change the opacity and blend mode of the color you have just applied.
Please note that the paint bucket tool cannot be used with images in 1 bit Bitmap mode color mode.
The keyboard shortcut for this tool is the letter G.
The illustration below is the paint bucket’s options bar. To find any tool presets that have been made for this tool, click on the tool’s thumbnail at the left end of the options bar. To reset the tool to its default settings, right-click on the tool’s thumbnail and choose Reset Tool from the menu that appears.
From the Fill menu you can choose either Foreground (the current foreground color) or Pattern. If you choose Foreground, click the foreground color square in the toolbox to set get the color picker or click on the desired color in the image with the eyedropper tool, or use the Color palette, or Swatches palette. If you choose Pattern, you’ll then be able to open and choose a pattern from the pop-up palette by clicking the pattern thumbnail on the options bar.
The box titled Mode, and showing Normal contains a drop down menu of all the blend modes available for how the applied colors will interact with the current colors. In the box titled Tolerance, the number entered will determine if a color is close enough to the selected one to be recolored. You can enter value from 0 to 255 with higher numbers causing a broader range of shades to be included, and recolored. Choose Anti-aliased for smoother edges on the newly colored areas.
Use the Opacity slider to make the fill color partially transparent. Check the All Layers box to evaluate colors from all layers when looking for which pixels to recolor. When unchecked, only colors on the active layer which are the same color as the one clicked with the paint bucket, will be filled with the new color.
If Contiguous is not checked, any pixels of the clicked-on color will be recolored. If it is checked, only pixels adjacent to the one clicked will be recolored..
If you have doodled with a tool’s options and want to get back to the default settings, right-click that tool’s icon at the far left end of its options bar (in Photoshop 6, left-click). Choose either Reset Tool to reset only the current tool, or Reset All Tools to restore default settings to every tool.
Please note that all descriptions, and illustrations featured refer to files which are in Photoshop’s .psd format, and which are in RGB color mode. Other file formats, and color modes may generate different options. Some Photoshop features are not available for images not in .psd format, or RGB color mode. To find what color mode your image is in, choose Image > Mode.
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