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Old August 23rd, 2013, 01:19 PM   #11
VintageKell
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Default Flood Fills

Flood Fill (or sometimes Auto-Fill), is a feature on photo editing tools that allows the user to block fill a segment of the picture being repaired with one selected colour. It can be used in picture repairs, to fix faded areas, or give an even tone to an area where its blotchy. It does however have some major limitations (see pitfalls section), and should always be used only when appropriate, and always in conjunction with the other methods described in the thread.

Sadly the 10 minute film links on methods died according to a mod edit, so you need to search for movies on how to clone, flood-fill and paint etc.

Method:

Tips
  • Always use a copy picture to make changes on and paste 2 or 3 copies into image area of editing application as back ups before commencing changes.
  • Undo the fills immediately if unhappy with results, as clicking again only allows last change to be undone.
  1. Select the dropper icon on the tool and use this to pick the colour to fill the selected area with. usually its a non faded part of the same area but it can be any colour from the palette.
  2. With colour selected change the icon to Flood Fill.
  3. Hover over selected area of picture and left click - the selected area is one colour.
  4. Click more times to deepen the fill or ctrl-z (edit undo) to undo the change.


In this example from earlier in the thread



The black background is discoloured / faded but after using Auto-fill its even across the page.



Pitfalls:
  • The method only flood fills the area that meets your tolerance settings, and to the opacity level you have set up in options (see tool image above), so this can result in all the page turning black, or only part of area hoped for changing - experiment with tolerance settings.
  • Some images will not accept this method i.e the whole image is affected - this seems to be a colour depth issue, which is not always resolvable by me increasing depth - I just use clone method instead.
  • If the results are uneven just click over unchanged areas (or see tolerances).
  • If the results impact main image (shadow or hair areas) in a minimal manner, then you can use another copy of image (see tips above) to clone back the affected parts to original state (use small size option on tool to ensure clean correction).

Last edited by VintageKell; August 31st, 2013 at 12:35 PM..
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