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.'


My War With Culture
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.'


My War With Culture
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.'


My War With Culture
Political incorrectness reinvented.

[D-Frag]

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



digitalcamwhore

[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.'


My War With Culture
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.