Freehand: Using Fills
Taking an outline of an object and making it into an exciting
graphic can often be done with judicious use of fills. This
page will show you some of the fills available in Freehand and how you
might choose to use them.
For our example, we'll use this kitty cat. The cat's face is a
single path, and its facial features are additional paths in separate
layers.
NOTE: There are
three fill options that do not display on screen (they're only for
printing). We have excluded those options from this documentation.
- Basic
- A basic fill is a solid color added to the area enclosed
by a path. Here, the kitty head is filled biege.
- Gradient
- A gradient fill uses a slowly changing set of colors
within a fill. The gradient-filled kitty head to uses a gradient of yellow
to red.
- Lens
- The lens fill works as though you are making the
object into a lens to magnify, see transparently, invert colors, or
otherwise see through your object. In our example, we've magnified
the objects below the kitty head.
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| Basic Fill | Gradient Fill | Lens Fill | Pattern Fill | Tiled Fill |
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- Pattern
- The pattern fill option allows you to choose a pre-made pattern to
insert into your object. We chose a purple weave pattern.
- Tiled
- The tiled fill works very much like the pattern fill except that
you need to cut-and-paste the pattern that will fill the object. This
can be another object, if you like. Our example uses a blue polygon
with an orange border.
To apply one of the fills above to your path object, click on the
path and then select the "Fill" tab of the inspection panel. You can
use the drop-down menu to change between fill types and alter the
settings as you see fit.
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