User Guide

CHAPTER 8
144
Painting
• Contiguous to erase areas that contain the
sampled color and are connected to one
another.
5 For Tolerance, enter a value or drag the slider.
A low tolerance limits erasure to areas that are very
similar to the sampled color. A high tolerance
erases a broader range of colors.
6 Drag through the area you want to erase.
The tool pointer for the background eraser is a
brush shape with a cross hair indicating the tool’s
hotspot .
Using the Auto Erase option
The Auto Erase option for the pencil tool lets you
paint with the background color if your stroke
begins in an area that contains the foreground
color.
To use the Auto Erase option:
1 Specify foreground and background colors.
(See “Selecting foreground and background
colors” on page 127.)
2 Select the pencil tool .
3 Select Auto Erase in the options bar.
4 Drag over the image.
If you begin dragging over areas in your image that
contain the foreground color, the pencil tool
paints with the background color. If you begin
dragging from an area that doesn’t contain the
foreground color, the tool paints with the
foreground color.
Filling and tracing selections and
layers
Photoshop Elements provides a variety of ways to
fill and trace selections and layers. You can fill
them with colors and patterns, or you can paint a
border around them.
Filling a selection or layer with colors or
patterns
You can fill a selection or layer with the foreground
color, the background color, or a pattern. In
Photoshop Elements, you can use patterns from
the provided pattern libraries or create your own
patterns. When you use fill layers to fill a selection,
you can easily change the type of layer being used.
(See “About the Layers palette” on page 92 and
“Creating fill layers” on page 103.) To increase the
contrast between your image and the surrounding
area in the image window, you can fill the area with
a color.
To fill opaque pixels with the foreground color,
press Alt+Shift+Backspace (Windows) or
Option+Shift+Delete (Mac OS). To fill opaque
pixels with the background color, press
Ctrl+Shift+Backspace (Windows) or
Command+Shift+Delete (Mac OS).
To fill a selection or a layer with a pattern, foreground
color, or background color:
1 Specify a foreground or background color.
(See “Selecting foreground and background
colors” on page 127.)
2 Select the area you want to fill. To fill an entire
layer, select the layer in the Layers palette.