Why can't I fill a selection?

[terrypin]

I made a careful selection and am trying in vain to fill it with a single colour, but PSP 8 (not X8) remains unresponsive when I click with the Fill tool. Tried various 'modes'.

The setttings seem OK to me.



I was able to do it with the Brush, but why not the Fill Tool?

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[flagpole]

So the fill tool doesn't work like that. It's designed to fill all the areas of one specific colour and change them to another.

Think if you were to just click in an image you would expect this behaviour. You would expect it pick out and select all the areas of one colour.

The way to do it is to add a new layer and fill that.
(or possibly to increase your tolerance to 255 but it's certainly not the best way.)

Selections limit the area in which a tool can act, but it is not required that they act in that area.

[hartpaul]

Or change the match mode to All Opaque and it will fill with that color. If you change the Blend mode before filling it will fill with the blended effect of that color and depending on what blend mode was selected.

[LindaSue]

Even if you set the Match mode to None or All Opaque, you've got the opacity set to "1" so you would only fill the selection with a very faint or nearly invisible color. Is that your intention?

[hartpaul]

Good catch LindaSue, missed that.

[flagpole]

Yeah good spot.

[hartpaul]

Another good reason to reset your tool to default - presets down arrow and Reset to Default button on right. If something nort working properly - reset to default.

[flagpole]

Opacity is of course often given as a decimal fraction. Just not in this case where it's converted to a percentage.

[terrypin]

Thanks all, much appreciate that helpful feedback.

I'd clearly misunderstood the function of 'Fill', which I now gather seems much more like a 'Replace colour' feature.

And I'd completely missed that Opacity setting, so in future I'll reset to defaults more carefully.

Presumably the consensus on how to accomplish my aim (fill that selection with a solid colour) is, as I found, to use the Brush, set to a large size?

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Forriner]

Flood fill, tolerance 200 (maximum in X7), opacity 100 should do the job.
Tolerance 200 takes care of every pixel, opacity 100 makes it opaque, not (semi)transparent.

[terrypin]

Thanks, that works fine here in PSP 8.

[LeviFiction]

Match mode of "None" just fills without caring about the color of the pixels. Tolerance won't figure into it at all. As LindaSue mentioned earlier.

[terrypin]

Thanks, that's even easier and what I must have been doing in the past - though presumably with opacity at its correct default of 100.