The “Bucket” and “Ink Bottle” tools

In “Flash”, we have some tools that help us work with colors.

The two most common tools are the “Bucket” tool and “Ink Bottle”.

What you should know and remember about these two tools is that the “Bucket” only fills to color and the “Ink Bottle” tool colors edges, or rather strokes.

Let me start by talking about the “Bucket” tool.

When we fill object colors with the “Bucket” we only have to select the fill color by clicking on this tool, choosing a color from the color menu, and clicking the object you want to color.

A second way to color is to use the “Eyedropper” tool.

Going further, when we select the “Bucket” tool, we find two options at the bottom of the tool bar.

I have zoomed in a little on my tool bar to make it clearer to show, but in the default view of the tool bar you will find two option buttons.

The second option is the “Lock Fill” (2) which I will come to later.

The first option button is “Gap Size” (1).

When we click this button, it opens a submenu with four options.All of these options relate to the coloring of the object.

When you choose the first option “Don’t close Gaps”, which incidentally is the default option in “Flash”, colors space when the object is completely closed. If there is a gap between two edges, it must be tiny, “Flash” will color the object.

With the second option “Close small gaps”, “Flash” will somehow color the object by closing the tiny gaps willingly.

The third and fourth option will always color something willingly.

Though, you should not expect too much, a gap of 2mm for “Flash” is too much for any option.

The second tool is the “Ink Bottle”. You can find this tool under subbutton as “Bucket”.

What does the “Ink Bottle” do?
It is used only in areas to where you need to add a shape with the color or change the color of the region.

How do you do this?
In the same way as a solid color, just click the “Colour Zone” button in the color set, and click the edge of the region-free form.

Or when a region needs to change color, click the region with the new color.

 

The “Color” palette

Each “Flash” file has a default color palette. In this palette, we can choose colors for the stroke color (1) and the fill (2), but above all, we can add or remove colors to this “Color” palette.
To change this palette, we will open the “Color” panel. Just click “Window” in the menu bar and select “Color” in the drop-down menu.

In the “Color” we have some controls that we can set.

The “Local Color” (1). This changes the color of the region or edge of the object.

The “Fill” (2). This changes the color of the filling of the object.

With three small buttons under the “Fill” we can
A. set the stroke color and fill color black / white.
B. no color for the fill or stroke color
C. change the region with the fill color.

Besides the element “Regional Color” we have the list box “type:” (3).
“None”: removes the fill.
“Solid”: provides a solid fill color.
“Linear”: creates a gradient that blends on a linear path.
“Radial”: creates a gradient that blends from one central point in a circular path.
“Bitmap”: – fills the selected area with a photo.

Below that we have the RGB boxes (4). These allow you to change the density of the colors red, green and blue (RGB) in a filling.

In the “Alpha” (5) we set the opacity for a solid color that is currently selected in the slider next to the “System Color Picker” (7)
An “Alpha” value of 0% creates a full transparent fill. An “Alpha” value of 100% will provide a completely opaque filling.

And finally we have the box “Hexadecimal value”(6). Hexadecimal color values are six-digit alphanumeric combinations, preceded by “#”, which represent a color.

Have you set a color that you want to keep in the color palette, click the downward pointing arrow at the right top of the dark gray bar, and select “Add Sample” in the drop-down menu.

The next time you open the color palette, you will see that this new color is added to the palette.

This I’ll have to mention for those who work with “Flash CS4. ”
When you’ve chosen the type as “Linear” or “Radial” in “Color”, then, an extra “Overflow” (8)box appears with three overflow modes.

1. “Expand” – Which is the default, adjusts the colors you specify from the beginning to the end of the gradient.
2. “Reflect” – Gives a mirror effect. The gradients that you specify are repeated in a pattern from the beginning of the course to its end. This is then repeated in reverse order.
3. “Repeat” – Repeats the process from the beginning of the gradient to the end of it, until the selected shape is filled.

Below we have a slider (9), but more in the next lesson when I talk about “gradient”.

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