Vector Flood Fill Tool (Affinity Designer iPad) (2023)

Introduction

Learn how to use the Vector Flood Fill Tool and understand its various settings on the iPad version of Affinity Designer.

Content

The vector foot fill tool enables you to fill areas of your design by creating new shapes with solid gradient or bitmap fills.

You can also use it to quickly override fill settings in your pre-existing Vector shapes.

If we look on the layers panel, we can see that this design is made up of three curves and a base fill layer to use the vector flood fill tool.

First, I need to select the curves with the move tool and then select the vector flood fill tool.

The context toolbar has been populated with settings that will affect how the vector flood fill tool works.

The first two settings on the context toolbar determine where the new fill layer will be placed on the layer stack inside we'll clip the new object inside the base layer and in between we'll place it between the curve layers and the base layer.

I'm going to use fill inside first I'll choose a color for the flood fill by opening the color panel and tapping across to view the color swatches I'll just tap the pin icon to keep the panel visible while I work, then I'll choose a color and tap in the areas that I want to fill.

Now.

If we look back on the layers panel, you'll notice that the fill objects that we've just created have been clipped inside the base layer, if two fill sections join at the same curve, they'll automatically add together to create one object.

If you don't want your new fill objects to be clipped inside your base, layer then use the in-between mode.

The fills will be created in between the curves and the base layer, as we can see here on the layers panel, if there is no base layer, for example, if the design was purely Line work, then the insert mode would default to the in-between setting Behavior.

So new fill layers will just be placed beneath the curve layers.

Also, tapping adjacent sections will create separate, fill objects when there's no base layer in this case for Speed, you can tap, drag to fill and combine areas in one motion, although it is worth noting that moving through areas that are already filled, will create separate layers to the empty sections that were filled and merged.

I'll show you with a different color, because we moved over the purple ring.

It has separated those sections from the rest of the orange ring to avoid this, make sure that you deselect any existing, fills that intersect your path or have a base layer selected and visible for now, I'm just going to hide the curves above and delete the base layer.

I'll just work with the new rings that we've created to show you the filter, visible boundaries feature when enabled it will filter the outline of the shape.

As far as the shape can be seen.

I'll choose a new color to demonstrate this.

If I fill the top curve, the whole area will be filled because it's all visible, but if I fill the lower curve, it will stop where the ring is no longer visible.

When this feature is disabled, The Fill will always stop where intersected by other curves.

This is a great feature to be aware of it's disabled by default, but it can save a lot of time in certain scenarios for now, I'll just delete this lower ring and bring back the curves so that I can finish the design.

I'll fill the lower section with the purple and the inside with a turquoise to form a cylinder shape.

Now I can delete any unwanted curves and select the fill objects and also add a small stroke on the stroke panel.

I could even finish this off with the fill tool by selecting them on the layers panel and dragging a gradient across to give them a more Dynamic look.

Now, let's move to a practical example of how you might use this tool here.

I have an album cover and the rose is made of individual Vector curves with the vector flood fill tool.

I can quickly and easily create a base.

Fill layer I just need to select the rows, outlines group and then select the vector flood fill tool, I'll open the color panel and use this gradient in my recent swatches, then I can use the tap drag motion to create a base fill layer.

This is a great way to achieve this result, as the design is made up of lots of open curves.

So it would be quite tricky to achieve this using a different method.

However, I'll just delete this and show you another method for filling the rows.

With this version, the petals were tapped separately to create individual fills for each petal.

This is particularly effective when using gradient fills as I can use the fill tool to select the fill object and then drag to change the direction of the nodes for each individual petal.

It's so useful to be able to fill open or closed curves very easily.

If I move this line out, we can see that it's actually an open curve created by the pen or pencil tool, because there are no gaps between this curve and the others I'm able to create a fill object of each petal shape, which is created on its own independent layer and stays separate to the line work.

This offers a lot of flexibility.

For example, I could choose to change the line, work to an erased blend mode and the petals will remain unaffected.

You can also use the vector flood fill tool with bitmap fills too, but before I do I'll just show you a little technicality to be aware of here we have a flag with a thick black stroke and it appears to be connected to the flagpole.

However, if we open the Navigator panel and toggle the main View mode across to x-ray mode you'll notice that the curves do not actually meet or intersect.

This means that if we were to select these curves and try to fill the space with the vector flood fill tool, we would not be able to fill the center area to fix.

This.

I can simply select the node tool and drag the node to close the gap.

If snapping is enabled, the other Curve will highlight to indicate that the node has snapped to it and now, if I select the curves again, I can successfully fill the area with the vector flood fill tool.

Now, let's get back to this bitmap fill example.

I'll just fill in some more areas of this design, I'll use orange for the body and blue for the legs and the flag for these newly colored areas.

I'd also like to apply a simple bitmap fill to them too.

So I'll tap on this picture, icon to set a bitmap, fill and choose place from files to access the file.

Browser I'll choose one of these halftone patterns.

This is a good time to try out some of the fill settings on the context toolbar if I choose add.

On top, this will place any new fills on top of the current fills if I change this to knockout, this will replace any fills that were there.

Originally.

A third option is to use Smart refill.

This is usually enabled by default and it works in a similar way to the add-on top option, but this time it helps us to avoid flooding our design with the same bitmap fill twice.

So it's a great option to use in most scenarios.

I'll leave this one selected for this design.

We could also adjust the fit modes if we try Max fit instead of none which we were using before the halftones have been scaled to fit the entire area.

However, some of its contents may be cropped.

Alternatively, you could try Min fit.

This will ensure that all of your bitmap fill is scaled to be completely visible inside the area instead.

Finally, we have the stretch option.

This will often give you distorted results if the proportions of the area that you're filling is different to your bitmap fill.

If you don't want your pattern to be automatically scaled, then keep this setting to none now I'll apply the bitmap fill to the blue and orange areas as with many features in the Affinity apps.

This is non-destructive, so we can open the appearance panel and toggle the new bitmap fill or color fills on or off and I can also go back and select it and edit it with the fill tool at any time, I'm just going to make one final change to make the design look more vintage, I'll, open the layers panel and select the new fill objects by tapping the first object and using a two finger tap to select everything in between now I'll, just slightly offset it with the move tool to give it a misprinted look.

This is one of the benefits of having this tool create separate, fills to the line, work, giving us more control and flexibility with our designs.

So that was a look at the vector flood fill tool in Affinity designer for iPad and some of the creative ways that you might choose to use it thanks for watching.