why cant I apply a fill to selection (or draw on the layer)?

[Mark245245051gxu]

Hello

I can't figure out why I cant not fill  in the situation pictured.

I use quick selection inside the lens,  

I create a new layer

I  see the marching ants.   

I choose paint bucket tool with  foreground BLACK fill

But nothing happens. Well it seems like something very faint 

I try clicking outside the selction, and even on the origignal layer and the history shows paint bucket but nothing is filling in.  

The image was a smart object that I rasterized.  In the panel I have tried Essentials and Painting.

The end goal is to use that layer and  place in an image on a new layer  and apply a clipping mask to the filled selection.  

It did not work in smart object so I rasterized it.

I tried taking the paint brush and drawing and nothing shows.  

Thanks for helping me learn what I am doing wrong.

Thanks

[Michael Bullo · Accepted solution]

Your marching ants selection doesn’t appear to be a circle. It appears to be multiple selections around extremely thin arcs at the edge of a circle.

Try using the Elliptical Marquee Tool to draw a circle and repeat your process.

[Bojan Živković]

@Michael Bullo  has a good point. You may need to use a different selection tool to select the lens area. Photoshop has many selection tools for different purposes.

Everything works fine on my end. Take a look at the images below: on the left, you can see what you need; on the right, you can see what you have.

[Mark245245051gxu]

Thanks for your input. I have a power outage right now so haven't been able to go back to see that. The quick selection tool did that which is weird. To me it looks like marching ants not multiple selects and I don't know how because this is a file that has had everything removed through object aware and I simplified it because I was having trouble. When using the quick selection tool it just looks like a circle to me even with just the layer one  visible.

But even if I don't have it selection and just use the fill tool I cannot work on that file. I

I know you say it works fine for you but you're working off of a PNG file screenshot not the actual PSD file. Isn't that a little misleading if it works or not? I will definitely report back once I get power back and I say don't have much laptop life left and writing this on my phone.

[Bojan Živković · Accepted solution]

"I know you say it works fine for you but you're working off of a PNG file screenshot not the actual PSD file. Isn't that a little misleading if it works or not? "

Not, I created selection using Elliptical Marguee Tool, thats recommended way in this case. Even if you decide to use other selection methods, select layer with explorer and everything will work fine to select transparent areas with Contigious checked in the Options bar when available. 

"But even if I don't have it selection and just use the fill tool I cannot work on that file."

Can you describe steps involved and post screenshot of entire window with Layers panel expanded and visible?

[Mark245245051gxu]

I'm confused. Didn't I already post my steps and the screenshot? What else would you like to see?

[Bojan Živković]

Yes, you did. Have you tried to reset tool at least if Paint Bucket does not work without any selection on blank new layer as shown on uploaded screenshot.

[Mark245245051gxu]

OK

I think I figured it out.

First was sample all layers was not selected. This why the magic wand tool , and I assume the quick selection tool was only selecting parts

Second , it appears the reason the  tools were finding only spots was the mask was not  fully black. When i tried the fill tool on the mask I could see a change like it was filling in parts I did not see was not black. It does appear  there was a transparency slider , I forget where I saw it that was on 20% that should not have been.  I did not see any change  when moving it.  

Also when zoomng in I noticed I needed to refine the mask more  as when I put a black bacground behind the smart object , I saw all these flaws.  

Thanks for the help,