Paintbucket in Illustrator

[Patrick Shannon]

I like using Illustrator to color vector drawings, it looks so sharp and crisp. Currently the way I do it is to put the outlines on one locked layer, then use my Wacom on a lower layer to hand color the areas (sort of like if you were coloring a physical drawing with markers). This isn't too efficient, not to mention makes a bunch of extra points and lines, not to mention work.

I know Illustrator has a paint bucket, but it serves a different purpose. What I would like is a 'paintbucket' tool that can automatically paint in closed areas just like the Paint bucket in Photoshop can. Like in my crude example below, I would like to paint that circle area where the lines are completely closed. I know vector is a beast of a different nature and that everything needs to be a line or shape, but is there some sort of tool (or third-party plugin) that can generate a perfect paint (or 'shape') to fill in areas quickly? (And no, the auto trace isn't good enough)

Normally because of the nature of vector, I would dismiss this as impossible, but Flash seems to do the paintbucket option admirably. I'd rather work in Illustrator for my vector needs, though.

Patrick Shannon

'Dear valued customer, go home and die. Signed, your friendly graphic artist.'

http://www.patrickshannon.com/mwwc_sm.gif
My War With Culture (http://www.mywarwithculture.com)
Political incorrectness reinvented.

[Broacher]

Patrick: do you have Flash? Any version should work.

Export your AI as a SWF file and import that into a blank Flash file.

Select all, and 'Break Apart' until you can't break apart no mo.

Then, Export image as AI (the latest is v. 6, I think). NOW, when you go back into AI and reopen this file all the 'holes' will be separate, fillable objects, easily colourable by the eyedropper or just plain old selection.

The Flash 'flattener' is an amazing feature -- one I wish was built into AI or Corel. And in work like this, it's also a tremendous timesaver--otherwise you get into tons of path to shape and other path transforms. Ugh!

Mind you, this is strictly for colouring. You can't re-edit those lines easily once they've been transformed into shapes-- but it's a small price to pay for the time saving it brings.

[Patrick Shannon]

Broacher:

That is an idea, and I know I can bounce back and forth (not to mention it would be better than nothing), but I'm just curious if there is a way to keep everything in Illustrator.

I'm really surprised Adobe hasn't implemented something like this yet, if Flash proves it can be done. Even some sort of tool that would PERFECTLY create shapes out of spaces would be helpful, then you could just use the swatches to change the fill color.

Patrick Shannon

'Dear valued customer, go home and die. Signed, your friendly graphic artist.'

http://www.patrickshannon.com/mwwc_sm.gif
My War With Culture (http://www.mywarwithculture.com)
Political incorrectness reinvented.

[Broacher]

I've shared this trick with so many frustrated AI users that I decided to post it as a future feature request on the Adobe forums today.

[Patrick Shannon]

Ah, so I'm not the only one complaining of this, eh? That's good, hopefully Adobe will oblige. While it's easily my favorite Adobe app, I really won't take Illustrator 'completely' seriously as a drawing program until they add this in.

Patrick Shannon

'Dear valued customer, go home and die. Signed, your friendly graphic artist.'

http://www.patrickshannon.com/mwwc_sm.gif
My War With Culture (http://www.mywarwithculture.com)
Political incorrectness reinvented.

[D-Frag]

dont worry, the way they come out with updates you will have your fix very soon /emoticons/tongue.gif

http://www.pillargraphicdesign.com/dfrag/DFRAGSIG_flat.jpg

digitalcamwhore (http://digitalcamwhore.deviantart.com/gallery/)

[woodwardo]

why don't you just expand stroke and hit the little outline icon in the pathfinder box. then select the middle circle you want to fill and choose the color? Seems easy enough to me, but I might be missing something...

-- eff.

[Patrick Shannon]

woodwardo:

Actually there is something else to it that I failed to mention earlier. The lines I'm doing are with a Wacom drawing tablet, therefore I'm using the Paintbrush tool to create pressure sensitive lines. Although I can't remember for sure, I don't think that suggestion worked out for some reason, either the brush lines would default back to regular lines, or the empty area to be filled didn't work out right. I've played with the path options, but to no avail.

Patrick Shannon

'Dear valued customer, go home and die. Signed, your friendly graphic artist.'

http://www.patrickshannon.com/mwwc_sm.gif
My War With Culture (http://www.mywarwithculture.com)
Political incorrectness reinvented.

[Craig B]

Okay, this might not work either, but you could create a duplicated new layer below your wacom pressure sensitive art layer, then selct that duplicated line, expand the stroke (as woodwardo suggests) and fill with your color.

Maybe I'm still missing something.

[Craig B]

I should also mention I don't have a wacom tablet, so I'm not sure if the pressure sensitve lines (on the duplicated layer) would cause a problem.

[Broacher]

The problem is that when you expand a brush stroke that was drawn to loop over itself--the 'hole' that is created is not really a shape. And that crossover creates a shape that intersects itself when expanded from a brush stroke. Flash is by far, much, much faster at taking care of getting EVERYTHING to a basic shape.

[Akewz]

Broacher said...
Patrick: do you have Flash? Any version should work.

Export your AI as a SWF file and import that into a blank Flash file.

Select all, and 'Break Apart' until you can't break apart no mo.

Then, Export image as AI (the latest is v. 6, I think). NOW, when you go back into AI and reopen this file all the 'holes' will be separate, fillable objects, easily colourable by the eyedropper or just plain old selection.

The Flash 'flattener' is an amazing feature -- one I wish was built into AI or Corel. And in work like this, it's also a tremendous timesaver--otherwise you get into tons of path to shape and other path transforms. Ugh!

Mind you, this is strictly for colouring. You can't re-edit those lines easily once they've been transformed into shapes-- but it's a small price to pay for the time saving it brings.

I couldn't agree with you more. I seriously use flash for most of my vector drawing.
To me it seems so much easier to manipulate everything, of course I still end up importing .ai files to illustrator to finish things up there, but using Flash speeds everything up.

I knew I wasn't the only person who used this technique, but I honestly haven't heard anyone say it before.

http://www.denness.net/scrobblersig.php?username=Akewz

[Broacher]

Maybe MM should package their 'Break Apart' code as an AI plugin! Strategic market smirking... I like the sound of it already.

Any Freehand users out there (I've lost touch since the buggy v. 10)? Does FH have this capability built into it?

BTW, CorelDraw can get you there a lot easier too-- though I know that's not too realistic a Mac solution. When you draw with the Corel calligraphic brushes (which, btw, have been vastly improved over the last two versions) and create 'overlaps', like we were talking about, then the next move is to break the brush strokes apart, combine their paths (same as AI's composite) and then Weld the shapes together. THEN, you can break the resulting curve apart (like releasing composite) and select the 'insides' for colouring. Because you can do each step with kb shortcuts, it's not so bad as it sounds. In fact, you could easily record a script for it, I'm sure.

[Broacher]

Update: after posting this one in the Adobe U2U forum I got some very useful responses. It turns out that Woodwardo was the closet to the best method. Even with pressue sensitive strokes, all you have to do is select your linework, hit the Expand Appearance which removes the original spine lines, and then use Pathfinder's Merge (sometimes twice) and then Release Compound path to get at the 'holes'. It actually is quite easy to make into an action and then simply assign it to a kb shortcut. The other thing was a point to an already constructed action available at Adobe Studio:

http://share.studio.adobe.com/axAssetDetailSubmit.asp?aID=9948&back=http/share.studio.adobe.com%2FaxBrowseSubmit.asp%3Fc%3D 105

The other suggestion was to always work on a copy of the linework in a new doc or layer. Always good advice.

Anyhow, mch appreciated tips, and thanks to you Patrick for getting me going on this! Always love a new trick.

[woodwardo]

I still think I'm right too. Maybe you're not using the white arrow to select just the path you want to fill?

-- eff.

[Patrick Shannon]

I tried out Broacher's solution from the Adobe forums and it is an acceptable one. I don't like how everything turns into the same color at the conclusion making it hard to pick out things, but one could get around this by using duplicated layers cleverly. I probably don't want to mass produce artwork this way, but for the odd specialized piece, it's fine. Here's hoping though that Adobe does modify the Paintbucket in Illustrator in a future revision, though.

Patrick Shannon

'Dear valued customer, go home and die. Signed, your friendly graphic artist.'

http://www.patrickshannon.com/mwwc_sm.gif
My War With Culture (http://www.mywarwithculture.com)
Political incorrectness reinvented.

[JaCkinbOx]

I'm having a similar problem which requires a different solution, so I'll post it here anyway.

I'm working with Illustrator 9 and my project is to color in individuals states (red and blue) in Illustrator, but I'm having trouble doing that. If I take a red shape and lay it over the states, it covers up the state lines. I can lower the opacity, but that still covers up the state lines a bit. Assuming the states are hollow, I tried sending the red shape 'to back'. Instead, the red shape disappears and is covered completely by the states.

I can probably make do without a straightforward solution (I can sculpt the colors in the states individually inside the lines), but if anyone has a faster solution for me, it'll save me a helluva lot of time.

HELP! o_O

[Craig B]

Jack, if I understand you correctly, all you have to do is duplicate your state lines to a new layer and set them to a fill of none. Then you can color the original layer and your state lines will be fine.

[JaCkinbOx]

Craig, thanks for the help. I feel stupid, but I just found the simple solution. In this case, I apparently have the option of selecting the individual states and setting them to fill.

How embarrassing. XD