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Richard1967L
Richard1967L
Known Participant
March 31, 2020
Answered

Why is the paint bucket tool so inept?

  • March 31, 2020
  • 5 replies
  • 15937 views

Hello,

 

Surely the paint bucket tool is inept. Why are you not given a choice, in the option pane, of how the bucket fill operates? As you are aware a lot of the time it doesn't fill completely, hitting another colour and then not operating properly as anti-aliasing stops the bucket from filling. This is not always wanted and surely you could be given a choice over whether the antialiasing is merged with the new fill colour or not.

 

Adobe could change and make this tool work differently for a lot of its use.

 

Do you agree?

Richard

    Correct answer barbara_a7746676

    This is what's happening. In the Options bar, the Paint Bucket tool has a Tolerance setting from zero to 255. If you set it to 255 it will fill the whole image with the Foreground color. If you set it to zero, it won't fill at all. The default is 32 which is probably what you're using and it partically fills, depending on how similar the pixels are in the area that you click.

    I hope this helps to understand how the tool works.

    When I want to fill an area, I select it first with one of the selection tool, then use the keyboard short cut Ctrl-Backspace to fill with the background color or Shift-Backspace to fill with the foreground color.

    5 replies

    C
    Charlie Mars
    Participant
    November 4, 2025

    Hello,
    I’ve had the exact same issue with Photoshop’s Paint Bucket tool: trying to fill inner areas, like letters or precise circles, always left white edges or incomplete fills. Really frustrating when you have dozens of areas to fill.

    To solve this, I developed a small Photoshop script that automatically:

    -Expands the selection to avoid white borders

    -Creates a new layer under the line art

    -Fills cleanly

    -Merges and keeping layer names intact

    I use it a lot for coloring comic pages or preparing characters for 2D animation.

    It’s open-source and free: https://github.com/charlimars/coloriage

    If anyone wants to try it, I’d love feedback or suggestions for improvements!

    D
    Daoyi5FE2
    Participant
    October 13, 2020

    In any case, while it doesn't excuse the fact that paint bucket is inept, the best workaround I could find is to select the area you want filled with magic wand, record an action of expanding selection by 2 pixels, and hooking that to a hotkey which basically becomes your replacement for paint bucket. Still means 2 steps instead of 1, which means this is a WORKAROUND, not some "professional, better method" or whatever nonsense.

    davescm
    Community Expert
    davescmCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 13, 2020

    If you know what you want from a change in the tool, then raise a feature request where Adobe developers will see it:

    https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family

     

     

    Dave

    D
    Daoyi5FE2
    Participant
    October 13, 2020

    Thanks, have done so

    D
    Daoyi5FE2
    Participant
    October 13, 2020

    Completely agreed. What bugs me about at lot of the "professionals" attitude is that their recommended solutions are often just extra steps for doing something that should be incredibly simple. Even MS Paint's paint bucket is better than photoshops. I use photoshop to animate in 2D, and I really don't have time to be fiddling with multiple layers and selection expanding.

    Even if there are more refined ways to do something, that doesn't excuse a fundamentally broken tool. Adobe needs to either update the tool to actually just work the way any typical user expects it to work, or remove it entirely. The tolerance doesn't work either in most cases, and clicking twice for some reason then OVER draws.

    At the very least why is there no "expand by n pixels" option, since that's how "more refined" users basically do it?

      barbara_a7746676
      Community Expert
      barbara_a7746676Community ExpertCorrect answer
      Community Expert
      March 31, 2020

      This is what's happening. In the Options bar, the Paint Bucket tool has a Tolerance setting from zero to 255. If you set it to 255 it will fill the whole image with the Foreground color. If you set it to zero, it won't fill at all. The default is 32 which is probably what you're using and it partically fills, depending on how similar the pixels are in the area that you click.

      I hope this helps to understand how the tool works.

      When I want to fill an area, I select it first with one of the selection tool, then use the keyboard short cut Ctrl-Backspace to fill with the background color or Shift-Backspace to fill with the foreground color.

        Chuck Uebele
        Community Expert
        Chuck UebeleCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        March 31, 2020

        The paint bucket tool is a very old tool and hasn't been updated. I doubt that it ever will be. There are more refined ways to make a selection and fill it than the paint bucket.

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