Coloring within a Boundary

[wiz555]

Good morning,

 

I have searched around in hopes of finding an answer to my question, however, I did not come across anything so I apologize if this has been mentioned. Back around 2010-2012 someone had referred me to paint.net and I quickly fell in love with it as it's a great tool for drawing weather maps. The person had shown me a way where you can import a map (for example a map of the United States) and there was something you could do where you would only color within the outline of the United States. For the life of me I can't figure this out. It is very time consuming (and I feel like a 5-year old again trying to color in the lines) closely trying to stay within the border so the final product looks as professional as possible. 

[HyReZ]

Greetings,

 

You don't mention if the map you are trying to color is just a contour map of the USA or not. If it is a simple line art map in black and white; you can select a color from the palette and use the Bucket Tool to spill that color into the contour.

Edited January 11, 2019 by HyReZ

[wiz555]

4 minutes ago, HyReZ said:

Greetings,

 

You don't mention if the map you are trying to color is just a contour map of the USA or not. If it is a simple line art map in black and white, you can select a color from the palette and use the Bucket Tool to spill the color into the contour.

 

Hello,

 

I don't believe this is a contour map. I say this as when I click the color bucket and select the color and paint, the entire image is painted that color. So what I've just been doing is circling an area I want for a specific color and then use the bucket tool to fill it in. Basically, in order to just fill within the United States I need to use a color and outline the entire border which takes a lot of time. 

 

If there are any other details I need to provide please let me know. I thought there was a way you could just outline a border and you would only color within it

[HyReZ]

If your map is a colored contour map as the one above; you can set the Tolerance to ~38 as welshbue indicated and use the Bucket Tool and spill the color within the contour of each state without the need of using the Wand. The Tolerance will adjust the level of sensitivity to surrounding colors due to anti-aliasing near the boundaries of two colors ( in this case the beige contour line and the custard color fill in of each state )

Edited January 11, 2019 by HyReZ

[wiz555]

Thank you both so much for the assistance! I will play around with these ideas. 

[wiz555]

Still having some issues so I wanted to provide a bit more in the way of detailed information as to what I'm looking to do.

 

What I did was take the base map and saved it as a paint document then I opened the map as the "background" layer in Paint.net. I saved it in a paint document as if I just open the map itself in Paint.net I get a checkered background. 

 

I then opened the next layer which is state boundaries, then I opened the counties as another layer, and finally cities as the final layer. 

 

What I'm looking to be able to do is when I add another layer (which would be placed below the cities layer so the paint is behind the city labels) and start coloring the map I want to just color within the United States...so for example, I could put the painbrush over Canada and no color would result...same thing with the Great Lakes. 

 

I would do the same process as described above, but with a United States map and I want to be able to color only the United States...so if I put the brush over the Pacific or Atlantic or anything that wasn't within the US no color would show. 

 

Doing this would make creating colored maps super easy b/c I would have to waste time going carefully around the edge.

 

I've tried the magic wand tool, but for some reason it doesn't seem to work clearly. I'm pretty sure there is a different way to do what I'm looking for. When someone directed me to the program years ago they sent me a base map. They mentioned something about by opening it in a certain format or way that if I colored it, it would only color within a specific boundary (it was a map of the Northeast so it would only color the Northeast and not over the Atlantic). 

 

 

 

[wiz555]

23 minutes ago, welshblue said:

The checkered background is just denoting transparency around your original image ... and if it's  just the outline of the US use it

 

If not, It sounds like you need to find an image just of the US (preferably with a transparent background) and stretch/shrink it to cover your map,

Once happy with it's orientation select outside it with the magic wand, Ctrl + I to invert the selection, Add a new layer and use the colour of your choice with the paintbucket

 

... but I could be reading it all wrong

 

 

Noted about what the checkered background indicates...thank you.

 

I played around with the magic wand more and I am getting closer. I was able to get it to now draw outside of the US, however, (I'm assuming this is just b/c of the topographic features) not all areas shade in.

 

 

[HyReZ]

Here is a search link for you:

Contour maps of North America

 

If you find a black and white line art map that you like; install this plugin and apply with its default settings to get a transparent background and black outlines:
https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/13837-black-and-alpha/

 

Edited January 16, 2019 by HyReZ

[wiz555]

Thank you for the assistance with finding some maps. I just recently purchased a subscription for maps and a whole bunch of templates which are sweet because I can start with a base map and then within paint.net I can use the layering to add on the state outlines, county outlines, cities, and ocean. Anyways I think I am getting to what I am looking for. I'll attach a few examples of one of my templates. I understand you can use the magic wand to sort of highlight areas you want to color. Is there a way, however, where I could like highlight over the ocean and Canada so when I color around that border ink will only show within the Continental US?

 

Here I used the magic wand and highlighted the ocean...I was hoping that this would indicate that no color would appear here and only over the land...but it's opposite

 

 

In this example I use the magic wand over land but it only highlights a certain aspect of the map 

 

 

It is very well possible too that what I'm asking I just won't be able to do with the maps I have. But I wish you could just like click over the ocean and it would recognize not to color over it lol.

 

I really appreciate the assistance I have received thus far. 

[AndrewDavid]

Hi @wiz555

My turn to chime in on your appealing project.

First question I have is what size are your map templates?  The bigger the better

Are you scaling them down to post to the forum?

3 hours ago, wiz555 said:

Is there a way, however, where I could like highlight over the ocean and Canada so when I color around that border ink will only show within the Continental US?

After making the selection press CTRL-I to invert selection.

 

2 hours ago, wiz555 said:

I can use the layering to add on the state outlines, county outlines, cities, and ocean

That's the answer to all your questions.

Spend enough time on each layer to outline the different regions allows you to be selective when adding color.

Each layer defines the outline of unique areas and allows you to easily select different regions.

 

Here is an example of what 1 layer would like like (Downsized for posting purposes)

 

USStates by Andrew Donaldson, on Flickr

 

Hope this helps your project maps.

[wiz555]

14 hours ago, AndrewDavid said:

Hi @wiz555

My turn to chime in on your appealing project.

First question I have is what size are your map templates?  The bigger the better

Are you scaling them down to post to the forum?

After making the selection press CTRL-I to invert selection.

 

That's the answer to all your questions.

Spend enough time on each layer to outline the different regions allows you to be selective when adding color.

Each layer defines the outline of unique areas and allows you to easily select different regions.

 

Here is an example of what 1 layer would like like (Downsized for posting purposes)

 

USStates by Andrew Donaldson, on Flickr

 

Hope this helps your project maps.

 

The original size of the image is about 2400 x 1400 and yes, I did scale down for posting purposes.

 

And the CTRL-I worked!!! That is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much for your help and thank you to everyone here for the help. This had been driving me nuts. I will save so much time now.