How to fill in lines and curves?

[frank30365423v48x]

How do you fill in the missing parts of a line drawing in photoshop? 

For example, if you have a photo of a straight line, but some parts within the line are missing, how do you automatically fill it in? 

[Bojan Živković]

Can you post screenshot with some examples?

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Please post the screenshot @Bojan Živković already requested or post the image itself. 

For lines and curves the Pen Tool and/or Paths in general seem a logical go-to but what do you mean by »automatically« exactly? 

[jane-e]

 ... how do you automatically fill it in? 

By @frank30365423v48x

If there are gaps, it won't be automatic in Photoshop. You'll have to create a selection and fill the selection.

Illustrator, which is a vector drawing application, has Live Paint with gap detection and does this quite well, but it is not a feature in Photoshop, which is a raster image editor.

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/live-paint-groups.html

Jane

[Conrad_C]

If you’re trying to colorize a line drawing or sketch, one way to use jane-e’s suggestion is something like this: Open the sketch in Illustrator, use Image Trace to convert it to paths, convert it to a Live Paint object so you can run the gap detection, use the Live Paint bucket to fill areas with the gaps closed, then layer the Illustrator version (which contains the color fills) with the original line art in Illustrator or back in Photoshop.

That more automatic Live Paint solution in Illustrator is more practical if there a large number of gaps. If there are a small number of gaps, it might be easier/faster to use one of the manual Photoshop methods suggested, such as using the Remove tool or a clone tool to close the gaps.

[Peru Bob]

I would use the clone tool.

Not automatic, but good results can be achieved.

[Brian S. Rasmussen]

I would give it a try with the new "Remove Tool" in Photoshop (version 24.5.0).
You use it simular to the Spot Healing Brush but it uses AI to make the fill in contrast to the Spot Healing that uses cloned pixels.

[Leslie Moak Murray]

For a straight line:

Select a part close to the end:

Edit>Transform>Scale:

Drag:

[Myra Ferguson]

Depending on the image, you could use an adjustment layer such as Levels or Curves to darken the lines so that they connect.

• Adjust image color and tone

[Nancy OShea]

Automagically?  Not quite. 

You'll have to zoom in and manually redraw or paint the line with brush or pencil tools.

[Trevor.Dennis]

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@frank30365423v48x wrote:

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All these answers, but we can't possibly give meaningful answer without more information, which HAS to include an example of the image in question.  The only thing we can say for sure is that there is no one click soloution, and it would have to be done manually.

All the same, my two penneth is to use stroked paths with tricky curved lines.  Expecially when those lines taper.  The example below is a case in point. The black stroke around the left eye is missing (because I removed it).  It would take a skilled and steady hand to paint that in maually while controlling pen pressure to obtain the tapered ends.

By quickly creating a workpath around the eye,

...and stroking the path with a brush set to Pressure Controls Size on a new layer of course.

We can get a perfect line around the eye.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Do you think you saw a p…y-cat? 

[Nancy OShea]

I taught I taugh Tweety Bird  👍👍👍