Re: [Gimp-user] bucket fill

[<jfrazierjr nc rr com>]

---- Madeleine Fisher <animatrix1490 gmail com> wrote: 
> You could make your path a selection and then fill that selection.
>
> There's a button at the bottom of the Paths tab that looks like a
> dotted-line square--that's Path to Selection. Click that, then fill. Should
> be fine.

IMHO, this is a partial solution. It works, but is sub optimal if the is ANY chance that you might want to 
edit this in the future. 

The full correct solution would be to make a selection and save to a channel.  Cancel the selection(this part 
is important!!)  Create a new layer ABOVE the one with the path.  Right click on the new layer and add a 
layer mask, with your channel as the "source".  Ensure you have the layer(and not the mask!) selected in the 
layers window and just drag your color of course to the top layer.  The new color will be constrained to the 
the layer mask created.

The benefit to this approach is that you don't destroy the original layer in any way since you did not modify 
it!!!  Just make sure to Save the result xcf file so that if you need to change the color or whatever at a 
later time, you can easily open the xcf and just drag a new color to that top layer.  

If you want to add an effect such as having the "filled" section have a slight blur to it for a gradual fade 
out, click on the layer mask for the top layer, and apply your blur.

Since I almost always use layer masks in my compositions, I can't honestly remember the last time I used the 
bucket fill tool(though I'm sure it has some uses).