Using the Paint Bucket Tool to Fill a Selection

Earlier, I mentioned that you could fill a selection with the Paint Bucket tool. Using the tool is fairly simple: First select the tool; then from the Fill list on the Options bar, choose either Foreground or Pattern. If you select Foreground, the current foreground color will be used. If you don't like the current foreground color , you can change it. If you choose Pattern, you can select the pattern you want from the pattern list. As before, you can display additional patterns by clicking the right arrow and selecting the set of patterns you want to view. Select the blending option from the Mode menu (to learn about blending, see Chapter 26), and set the opacity level you want.

The rest of the options are the same as those described earlier for the Magic Wand tool. The Tolerance option defines the type of pixel to be filled ”a low tolerance tells Elements to fill only pixels within the selection that are very close in color to the one you click with the tool. A high tolerance is not as picky. The Antialiased option softens the edge between the filled selection and its background. The Contiguous option has no effect unless you have made at least two non-contiguous selections. Then, if you choose Contiguous, only the applicable pixels within the selection you click will be changed. Turn this option off to fill pixels in all selections. The All Layers option allows you to fill the selection within all layers ; we'll get to layering in the next section.

After setting options for the Paint Bucket tool, click on a pixel within the selection. The pixel you click may or may not affect the outcome, depending on the selections you've made.