The Tools
Let's turn back to the Tools palette now. Between the palette controls at the top and the Color Swatch area at the bottom, we see about 22 icons that represent the crux of the "tools". You can probably guess at the function of some tools just by looking at the icons. One thing we'll want to notice is that some icons have a small black arrow in their bottom right hand corners. This indicates a Flyout menu. To reveal this menuu, click and hold on a top-level button. When the menu appears, release the mouse. Let's do this with the Paint Bucket and/or Gradient Tools that we see in Figure 6. Toggle between these two tools and while you do observe the context-menu or Options menu. The options change to reflect the tool that is currently selected (Figure 7). This is an important notion as we move forward.
Let's select the Paint Bucket tool. The paint bucket is a "fill tool". It fills large solid areas at once. Let's see it in action.
First, make sure that the background color in your document (it should be white) and the color selected in your Foreground swatch are different. Next, select the Paint Bucket Tool and click anywhere in document. The result is that the document is filled with the color from the Foreground swatch. |