Hi again Rambler,
I just answered your other question about text on a .jpg, without
knowing you had posted this question first!
If you tried playing around with Paint, you will be ready to color
in your floor plans.
With Paint, you can color in the rooms, AND add text, all in one fell swoop!
Open your floor plan within Paint.
Select the color you want to use, from the paint box at the bottom
left of the window.
Once your color is selected, select the icon that resembles a bucket
that is pouring paint. This is called the ?Flood Fill? tool. (Hovering
your mouse cursor over the tool icons will display a pop up with the
name of the tool)
Take your cursor to the area you would like to fill with color, and click.
Caveat* The flood fill looks for borders. Occasionally the borders on
your graphic will LOOK like a solid area, but it has a tiny opening in
the lines. In this case, the flood fill will fill the whole graphic.
Think about filling a child?s wading pool. The rim of the pool is the
border. The water will fill all areas within the pool. If someone were
to step on a side, the water would flow out of the pool, onto the
ground. This is how the Flood Fill tool works. The work-around to this
problem:
Click on ?View?, ?Zoom? and ?Large?. This will magnify the graphic on
your screen, making it easy to find ?leaks? in your graphic.
Using the pencil tool, draw a line to close any gaps that allows the
paint to flow out of the borders. Once the borders are sealed, you can
successfully fill in the area with no leaks.
Due to the way some graphics (.jpg, .gif, .bmp) are made, the flood
fill may not fill in an area completely. To resolve this problem,
select the paintbrush tool. Once this tool is selected, you?ll notice
additional tool icons appear in the tool box. Here you can select the
shape of your brush? making it round, square, slanted, etc. You can
fill in gaps with the paint brush that the flood fill tool may have
left.
You can also use the shapes tools to draw an area to fill. You could
do it the way you described in your question. Select the square or
rectangular shape tool and draw a square into the desired area, use
the flood fill tool to color it in. Another example; you may want to
arrange your furniture in the floor plan graphic. Select a rectangular
shape and draw a bed into the master bedroom. You can select a color,
then select the flood fill tool to color the bed. Notice that when you
select a shapes tool, you get additional selections in the tool bar,
for thickness of the shape border!
Once you have finished customizing your floor plan graphic, save your
work. I?d use a different name, so your original plan is preserved.
For example, if the original .jpg is called Floorplan1.jpg, save your
colorized version as Floorplan1_colored.jpg. Of course how you name
them is up to you, but you need to select a different name than the
original when saving the colored version, to preserve the original ?
you may want to go back and use the original again!
The colored floor plan is now ready to insert into Word!
Other software that will do the job, and a whole lot more:
NeoPaint
========
For something more sophisticated, you can download a free trial
version of Neopaint.
?NeoPaint is $59.95 + shipping for the full version on CD, or $49.95
if you just want to unlock the download version. Registered users of
the DOS version can upgrade to the Windows version for $34.95.?
http://www.neosoftware.com/npw.html
Neopaint has more features and tools than MS Paint, and supports a
wider variety of formats. Neopaint also includes animation tools.
Paint Shop Pro
===============
This semi-professional paint program is favored by many graphics and
web designers, and was made by Jasc, now made by Corel. I use this
program myself, as do several other researchers.
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel3/Products/Display&pfid=1047024307383&pid=1047023911984
You can download a free trial version here:
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel3/Trials/Login&pid=1047023911984&cid=1047024437292
Features of Paint Shop Pro, Version 9, including a virtual tour
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel3/Products/Display&pid=1047023911984&cid=1047023964327
To purchase the program online:
http://store.corel.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001¤cy=USD&jspStoreDir=CorelUS&partNumber=OL_PSP9&catalogId=10103&ddkey=SetCurrencyPreference
Finally, the Gold Standard of graphicsprograms, Adobe Photoshop. This
program is truly professional, has a huge learning curve, and costs
$649. I place it last because it is far from simple, but you may be
interested in seeing what you can do!
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html
If you?re like most people, you may get addicted to Paint, and become
quite artistic!
If any part of my answer is unclear, please request an Answer
Clarification, before you rate. This will allow me to assist you
further.
Regards, Crabcakes |
