Filling pen tool areas.

This is a very very basic question.I am able to colour and otherwise manipulate elementary vector objects, such as rectangles. Yes, I know how to use the colour panel and the fil land ink pot tool. However, sometimes I can colour a vector shape drawn with the pen tool and sometimes I cannot. It seems completely random.
In detail: select keyframe on an empty layer. I make a triangle with the pen tool, and a small circle shows completion. I get a triangle.This is coloured not for the stroke but for the layer. It seems to exist in two densities - a layer coloured line for drawing, a thicker, same-coloured one after selection. However, neither the ink bottle nor the fill tool do anything. I can set the colour in advance, or after the event, through the colour panel or otherwise, nothing. A gradient fill does not even show the guide lines for the fill tool.
If I draw a vector box on the same layer, everything works fine for th ebox, but not for the pen tool outline.
I am coming to this from Photoshop: do I have to convert the path to a selection, or something, before I can paint into a path?

Further to this, here is the solution.
The pen tool will, as you know, show an open circle when it has the potential to close a path. If you click, the path is supposed to close. In fact it, does not do so perfectly, and Fill will not work if the Options are set to respect small gaps. If you turn this off, it will fill.
How do you do this? If you select the paint bucket fill tool, you will see a similarly tiny icon with a circle on it appear at the foot of the tool bar. If you click on that, a series of options appear. Select "close small gaps" and now you can fill the path. This shows up on the properties window, for example, as a change in the property of the path, not the tool. The whole thing is simply stupidly thought through, or essentially not thought through.
It has taken me a day - a night - to solve this. There are no references to these ephemeral options in any help document that i have read. This is pretty typical of the Adobe approach to users. The CS4 UI is forced to be gray on gray, which may sound fine for graphics artists but makes the thing extremely hard to use for anyone else. . The icons do not resize with screen resolution, so if you want to use a 3000+ x 1500+ screen, as I do, they become invisibly small. If you go to what presumably Adobe thinks of as native resolution - 1260 x 768 - they are still unreadable to anyone over 30 at normal viewing distance. How is anyone supposed to see, easily, whether a 5 pixel circle is filled with gray or not at four feet? Why not use colour, a shape change? Just as documentation is an afterthought, so too is the UI. I imagine the company as made up of very young programmers, all with good eyesight and, in general, a subservient marketing effort.

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The lines I create with the pen tool are not showing up in After Effects.

I'm working on a project where I need straight lines. I've added the lines using the pen tool on solid layers, but they are not showing up before or after rendering. I can see where they are supposed to be when I isolate the layer they are on. I have the lines at one pixel, solid white and the layers are on top of everything else. I took a screen shot. Can anyone help me?

Well, I am still not 100% sure why the pen tool lines/masks are not showing up but I was able to work around it. I already had the stroke effect applied and set to all masks. Looking into this though, it seemed that they were only not showing up on the new solid layers I had created. I duplicated the layers the masks were working on instead and it seems to resolve the problem for now. Thanks for your help!

Why is Illustrator filling the areas between the paths created by the pen tool?

First, I am very much a beginner with Illustrator (but have used other vector drawing programs) and always try to find the answer in the 531-page manual before bothering the community. So my apologies for what is probably a beginner's mistake.
I am marking up a drawing I imported from a raster file and and have ran Image Trace. I am trying to draw 2 perpendicular lines with the pen tool. However, when I complete the second line, it immediately files the space between the two lines with a black triangle. When I draw a square, same result - instead of a square formed by 4 lines with blank space in the middle, it fills the space with black.
Why would it do this? Is there some setting that I need to turn off? In the past, a pen line just drew a path and didn't create fills.
I am using Illustrator CC on Windows 8.1 (Surface Pro 2) if that's relevant to anything.
Thanks in advance!

Hi Buzz,
If i'm understanding correctly it sounds as though you have your colour applied to the fill instead of the stroke. All you have to do whilst having your shape selected or before you draw it is hit the arrow to the top right of that panel for it to switch to the stroke. Then click the white box with the red line through it for no fill in the areas you want no colour.
I hope that helps!

Using pen tool, no fill no stroke but still colored line?

I have used the pen tool to draw shapes in Illustrator. Some shapes have normal paths and some are weird. The normal paths disappear when they aren't clicked on, the weird ones have a green stroke always. There is no fill and no stroke on so I am confused. Also when I click on the normal ones and then try to use the pen tool, it creates a normal path. When I click on the weird ones and use the pen tool, it copies it and makes a green line. If I put on a stroke, its like there's an inner stroke. Please help!!

You sure that the green ones aren't Guides. I believe the default color for Guides is green. What happens if you go to View>Guides>Clear Guides? Do the green paths disappear? Cmd(Ctrl)-5 is the KBSC for Make Guide. If you accidentally hit that with a path selected it will become a guide.

Problem with the pen tool creating a fill when I only want stroke

Hi,
I'm having an issue. I am creating a simple spider for a project. Initally I used the pen tool to make legs. It worked for a bit then all the sudden started filling in an area I didn't even draw with color. I'm not sure what I did to cause this to happen. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

That shape shows a Yellow fill, probably from the last shape you drew. If you select the shape and deselect the fill, then your drawing will go back to Black strokes only.

Pen tool Drawing & Bucket Filling Problem

Hello, i am a newbie and novoice/new learner to flash CS4
I come across a problem when i follow the book "classroom in a book series" the Flash CS4 one (Red cover book) Chapter 2
Q.1
I try to draw straight lines or curves but i found i still cannot manage how to use PEN TOOL
How can i draw straight line? Also how can i draw absolute vertical or horizontal line with some special combination key like CTRL or SHIFT
i tried guessing SHIFT or CTRL while using PEN TOOL but no help
How can i draw curve?
i know it depends somehow on whether i hold my click for a new anchor point???
Any tutorial which is clear and easy for new comer for fully understanding for PEN TOOL.(Currently i try reading pdf reference from ADOBE Web site and google search but did not make myself understand.)
Q.2
I cannot use bucket filling a shape draw by PEN TOOL(i already search google sites but cannot find one with satisfied causes for this FILLING Problems)
like the image shown below(Please click to enlarge this PRINTSCREEN)
Tools i used are PEN TOOL drawing a shape first then a BUCKET for filling color.
Many thanks to any of your help!!!!!

Reply to 2nd floor post
Thank You for your answer and your appreciation.
but.....i am so sorry to have a further question NOW!
i follow your link and learn some technique which is supposed to work well:
http://www.recipester.org/Recipe:Fill_a_flash_shape_with_gap_33956508
However,i go there and did a experiment MYSELF.
first i draw an oval with black color stroke and no color for its fill.
then i use an eraser tool to make that little gap!
Q.3 (A NEW QUESTION)
however i cannot fill the oval with even very SMALL GAP like this jpeg shown below:(PLEASE click below to ENLARGE it)
I then find i cannot use bucket fill AGAIN...
For the first question, i try to use the pen tool for 6 hours practicing....and reading the official manual i find there are multiple modes of pen tool
so COMPLEX!! which is not mentioned in my red cover book from Adobe Press.(the book i mentioned in 1st post maybe have some more explaination later?)
I generally can click or drag to make some straight or curve now like 3rd floor reply.(Subselection tool is helpful when adjusting the curve or line)
AGAIN Thank You so much!!!!!

Don't shade area when using the pen Tool?

When I use the Pen tool the whole area beneath the curve is shaded. Is it possible to only draw a curve and not shade the area?

blop,
At the bottom of the Toolbox, change Fill to None.

Fill shape drawn with pen tool

There are three posts dealing with this issue and each time the person who posted the problem said they figured it out but did not say what they did. Here is the problem:
I draw a shape with the pen tool in Flash CS4. I made sure the shape was closed. But, I cannot fill the shape no matter what. Paint bucket tool does not work. Whatever I do, I get the red diagonal line on the fill color. I can fill a shape with the rectangle or oval tools but not the pen tool.
Please help. Thanks.

Thanks for your help. I tried what you suggested but the union selection was grayed out. I was in the drawing object mode. But after fooling with it for a bit the following worked (I'm still not sure why):
I double clicked on the object with the selection tool.
I then selected a fill color in the property panel and it filled in.
However, I cannot replicate this. I tried drawing another shape with the pen tool and cannot fill it in. I tried converting it to a symbol and that did not work either. I must have done something to the original shape that allowed me to fill it in last time I fooled with it.

Drawing a curved line using the pen tool, dragging the text cursor over the line but will only give me a small area to write in, in-between a circle and a circle with a cross in?

Drawing a curved line using the pen tool, dragging the text cursor over the line but will only give me a small area to write in, in-between a circle and a circle with a cross in?

If you change your tool to the "Direct Selection Tool" (A) then you should be able to adjust the area for you to type in...

CS4: Pen tool won't fill object when closed

Now i know everyone wants to tell me to fill with the paint bucket ... or make sure i have a fill color selected. I have already tried that. Everytime i make an object, and close it off, it doesnt fill. And if i try to fill the object, it fills everything. And yes, i double check to make sure i am closing the object. After i get done drawing the shape, i can right-click with the pen tool and open the "Fill Path..." option, and tell it to fill it, and it will. But i want it to fill in when i am done drawing each shape. Is there anything that i can do to make this happen. Thanks in advance for your help.

Check the options on the pen/path tools option bar.
Here's visual aid from an older version but it hasn't changed:

Pen tool filling problems

Hello!
Who can help me out. I'm a CS2 user and want to use the pen tool to create an object. Thats a piece of cake but then I like to fill the object with lines, crosses or something like that. Only I'm not capable of finding that kind of fillings. With this link you can find a example of the filling i'm searching for: (it shows that you can select the filling separately from the object.)
http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/2377/49610002wl9.jpg
Thanks
Maarten (netherlands)

One quick way would be to make the pattern (or find one) and use a copy of your shape as a clipping mask. Or, if the pattern is vector art, you could use the Shape Modes under Pathfinder to actually cut the pattern to the size and shape of your object.

Fill drawing created with pen tool

How do you do this? I use my pen tool to draw out a shape,
and I close it's path, but I can only control the stroke. Surely
there's a way to fill that space in right? What am I missing? If
drawings made by the pen tool cannot be filled, that is definitely
something Flash developers need to look at improving in CS4.

OK nevermind. just like always, it only works until after I
post.

Fill shape with pen tool

Hi there,
this might be a very simple question, but couldn't figure it out ..
I made a Title in Premiere and I want to draw a shape with the pen tool.
However this only results into a shape with line instead of it being filled.
So my question: how to draw a filled shape in Premiere Pro with the pen tool?
Thanks in advance

Set Graphic Type to Filled Bezier, that will fill the shape.

Fill after use pen tool

it is possible after using pen tool in path mode ifill the objetc i made with color ? I need the steps/ Thanks

Use the path selection tool to select the path. Then copy it: ctrl/cmd-C. Use the pen or shape tool to create a SHAPE layer. just make a small box or something to create the layer. Then press ctrl/cmd-V to paste your path into that shape layer. Select the small shape you made to create the layer and delete. it.

How to select a shape from pen tool for paint bucket

I was under the notion that I could make a shape with the pen tool and if I closed the the shape it would then be selected in a way that would allow me to color the interior with paint bucket.
However, when I splash the paintbucket inside my shape, it paints the whole layer, not just the part inside my shape.
Obviously I don't understand how it is supposed to work.
Apparently I've gone at this the wrong way.. I want to create a freeform shape, that once created will be a selected region in the same way a rectangle or elips would.
What is the best way to do that? I'm shooting for thought bubble sort of shape, something along the line of the outline of an egg, but with a tail at one end.

Added tips from Tip Merchant ($200 consulation fee)
- on mac - command/ numeric keypad Enter turns the path into a selection. Option delete then fills.
- an action can be setup to bring up Fill Path from the Path panel menu. Just pressing enter fills with FG color
These are ways to avoid he paths panel altogether. Best way may be to use the TINY fill path icon in that panel as was pointed out by John

Filling pen tool areas.

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