Paint Bucket Shortcut in Paint.NET

This guide explains how to quickly activate the Paint Bucket tool in Paint.NET using a single keyboard shortcut. Mastering this shortcut helps streamline your digital art and photo editing workflow by eliminating the need to manually click the tool palette.

The Shortcut Key

The keyboard shortcut to select the Paint Bucket tool in Paint.NET is F.

Pressing the F key at any time while working on a canvas instantly equips the Paint Bucket tool, allowing you to fill contiguous areas of similar color.

How to Use the Paint Bucket Tool

Once the tool is activated via the shortcut, you can apply colors using the following actions:

• Primary Color Fill: Left-click on the area you wish to fill to apply your selected primary color.
• Secondary Color Fill: Right-click on the target area to apply your selected secondary color.

Key Tool Settings

After pressing F, you can customize how the Paint Bucket operates using the toolbar at the top of the screen:

• Tolerance: Adjust the percentage slider to control how strictly the tool matches the target pixel's color. A lower value fills only very similar shades, while a higher value fills a broader range of colors.
• Fill Mode: Switch between "Contiguous" (fills only adjacent pixels connected to the click point) and "Global" (fills all matching pixels across the entire layer).
• Sampling: Choose whether the fill samples colors from the active layer only or from the entire merged image.