The Bucket Tool

[GandWatch]

Greetings everyone, I'm GandWatch and i've been a long time user of Paint.net for a very long time now, i think about 3 years now?

 

Anyway, that's not what this is about, i've been meaning to ask, if i may, about the bucket tool's update.

 

Now, i just recieved the v4.0 update of the programm and i'm trying to get used to the many new features it presents, of which i'm glad about some, the bucket tool however is distressing to me. See, the way i draw is basically a combination of the Bucket, the Magic Wand and the Line tools, given i have no tablet and must do everything through a mouse, it's comfortable to have control over what i do.

 

It went like this (and i apologize for the picture spam, but i need it to explain my issue): i made the outline on the topmost layer with the line tool, completely closed, so that with a tolerance of 68% i could select the section i wanted to work on in the outline.

 

I layed down the basic solid color in the lowest layer.

 

 

And then in a new layer between them, using the line tool, i made the outline of the shading.

 

 

Which i then proceeded to fill in with the bucket tool (this example was filled in manually), the combination of the magic wand being able to select and hold down the area i wanted to work on and the line tool basically acting as another outline made it easy for it to fill ONLY the area i needed to fill.

 

 

so i could then control it with the opacity of the layer to see what shade fit best for the drawing

 

 

This method has given me satisfactory results in my long artistic travel. Here's a sample of a recent drawing:

 

Also, yes, i'm a fan-artist, let's not get sidetracked here.

 

Now, the problem i have with the bucket tool is that it no longer works the way i was used to it working, what i mean by this is that when doing the same process after the update, the bucket tool now fills in the entire layer's selection, instead of what i need to fill in and it gets annoying to use, as if the outline for the shading was not even there to begin with.

 

Now, i've been experimenting with the bucket tool a fair bit, and i've realized that it works this way when doing everything on a single layer, but then i lose the transparency trick (i know how to pick colors, if you're wondering, but the trick i've been using helps a lot to see what works and what doesn't, it also allows me to change the hue, brightness or even switch it out for something else entirely), and given it checks for the colors around it...the bucket can get confused, if it's on blue on red, sure it works, but if it's sort of like a transition of red TO purple (like the finished picture i posted there, think of it as sort of like a gradient), it would fill in the entire thing again.

 

Is there any way to put the settings so that it acts like it used to? Or can please there be an option to make it work only on the transparent layer without it filling up everything? I know of the global and layer settings options for the source selection, but then THAT gets affected by the same issue of "from red to pruple" (gradient effect? maybe?) as well, as if the thing was on a single layer too...not to mention the setting also affects the magic wand, i wish it wasn't the case, that the settings for the tools were separate from eachother.

 

I would appreciate to see if anybody has any idea of how to get the bucket to work the way it used to, again, i have no tablet, it's all done on mouse, the great focus on control is what i like on this program since both sai and photoshop are more friendly to tablet users than mouse users. Hopefully this explanation wasn't that confusing....

 

Thanks for your attention.

[Rick Brewster]

Sounds like you're describing a bug that I identified late in 4.0's development, which is that the paint bucket isn't using the selection as an avoidance contour, only as a clipping mask. I've reactivated the bug for this and should be able to fix it soon.

[GandWatch]

Thank you for looking into it, i'm a fan of this program and i wish the best for it.

 

I have personally downgraded to 3.5.11 for the time being, mostly because the way things shifted around made it very difficult for me to draw stuff in it, so I'm gonna stick with the version i am most familiar with (also, because, to get a bit of smoothness on the shading, i used the unfocus at 1 point of radius over and over again [as in, i duplicate the layer with the color and the shading and apply the unfocus on the one copy above it, then fuse the two], that smooths out the lines a bit so it doesn't look as solid as it originally does, but keeps the quality of the colors inside the line, on v4.0 it adds the horrible white outline dots which i try so hard to avoid...for quality sake), should these two things get adressed, i'll try to go back to the latest version.

 

A shame, there are a lot of things i love about the new version (being able to control how smooth the brush is, spinning and moving the lines of the line tool around [though a bit of muscle memory messes me up there], the new gradient patterns, the new shapes tool, etc.), but the way it is right now i can't really work comfortably on it, hopefully it is understandable.

 

...Also, if it's not too much to ask, can the download section of the main page have something avaliable to pick an older version of the software? It was kind of hilarious to try to find the 3.5.11 installer on the net, since a lot of pages were refering to the 4.0 version. Thanks and sorry for the troubles.

[Rick Brewster]

This is fixed for 4.0.1. Please try it when it comes out.

 

If you're having trouble figuring some new stuff out in 4.0 (e.g., I have no idea what you're referring to when you say "horrible white outline dots"), then please ask on the forum and we'll try to either 1) figure out how you can do what you need to do, or 2) determine that it's a bug and then get it fixed (hopefully). Or something else of course.

[Humility]

I know what he is talking about.  You should be able to fix it by messing with the selector's anti-aliasing settings. Failing that experiments with the oil painting effect might auto remove those white dots for you.