Photoshop – Filling and stroking a Selection
| Filling a selection | Fill with a pattern | Stroking |
Photoshop provides a variety of ways to fill a selection or a layer with colors, images, or patterns. You can also paint a border around a selection or a layer using the Stroke command.
To fill a selection or a layer:
 Select the area |
 Fill the area |
1 Specify a foreground or background color.
2 Select the area you want to fill. To fill an entire layer, select the layer in the Layers palette.
3 Choose Edit > Fill to fill the selection or layer.
4 Choose an option:
• Foreground Color, Background Color, Black, 50% Gray, or White to fill the selection with the specified color.
• Pattern to fill the selection with a pattern.
• History to restore the selected area to a state or snapshot of the image.
5 Specify an opacity and blending mode.
6 If you’re working in a layer and want to fill only areas containing pixels, select Preserve Transparency.(See fig 3)
7 Click OK to fill the selection.
To fill a selection with pattern:
You can define a pattern to fill the selection. The pattern you defined is repeated as tiles within the selection. If you want to reuse patterns, save a file of swatches for defining patterns. You can also use the pattern stamp tool to paint with a pattern.
 fig1:Select a pattern |
 fig2:Fill with the pattern |
 fig3:Fill with the pattern when Preserve Transparency is selected |
1 Make a rectangular selection around the part of the image you want to use as the pattern.
2 Choose Edit > Define Pattern.
3 Select the part of the image you want to fill.
4 Choose Edit > Fill.
5 Choose Pattern and click OK.
(1) Specify a foreground color.
(2) Select the area or layer you want to stroke.
(3) Choose Edit > Stroke.
(4) Specify the width of the hard-edged border. Values can range from 1 to 16 pixels.
(5) For Location, specify whether to place the border inside, outside, or directly over the selection or layer boundaries.
(6) Specify an opacity and a blending mode .
(7) If you’re working in a layer and want to stroke only areas containing pixels, select the Preserve Transparency option.
(8) Click OK to stroke the selection or layer.
Select the area |
 apply stroke |
 When Preserve Transparency selected stroke applied to only areas containing pixels |