Canvas - Altering Shapes - removing holes in shapes with Path Tool.

This has come out of a question the group was asked on Margret Teta Singleton's awesome Facebook Group called Brother Scan'n'Cut Users - find it here https://www.facebook.com/groups/scanncutusers/

So the person in question had this image:

I have no idea if this has copyright etc. I'm using it solely to show you an example of what I'm talking about. If anyone knows who owns the copyright, tell me and I'll credit them here.

So. the question was, what if you have holes in an image, and you want to keep some of them, say the eyes, but not others (apparently this is the islands of Hawaii across the abdomen).

I had a think. And a play in Canvas. And finally worked out why it was such a simple answer...


Remember back in this post HERE, about Manipulating Basic Shapes and how the Process Functions - weld, divide, remove overlap and subtract- work, I was talking about how process functions behave? That once you have applied one process function, you can apply another because the output of the first one is a single layer? And how if you weld two shapes together they normally merge into a single shape, but if you did a process function to make holes first, and weld with another shape, those holes stay there and don't disappear?

Well, what that means is that if I took a shape with the same characteristics as that image above, like this:

What do you mean it's nothing like the thing above? lol

 then it's a single pink layer with holes in. And those holes don't disappear say if you welded a new shape to this holey one. Which is why the answer is so simple.

Before I come to the answer, yes this pink star with half moon eyes and teardrop abdomen is EXACTLY like the Monster the person was working with - in practical terms it is an irregular shape with holes very close to each other and multiple elements, some we want to keep and some we want to lose.

And also, how I made it was I dragged basic shape of a star, a half moon and a teardrop from the Basic Shapes menu on the left, resized them and put them in approximately the right place, then Edit Tab, Process Function, Subtract, and coloured it pink. So it's now a single shape with holes in it, as a single layer. And it was making the shape to practise with, that made me realise how simple the answer is!

So. I've got my shape to practise with. How best to get rid of the 3 teardrops, but not the halfmoons? Well, the teardrops are HOLES and I want to fill the holes, so there's no point in using Process Functions that TAKE AWAY elements - Divide, Remove or Subtract (which was my first idea when asked in FB, was to use divide, take the eyes out then weld then put the eyes back. But it would be hard to get them in the right place, so you'd have to do a duplicate as a template and oof the faff!).

So the Process Function that adds - that's WELD.

Ok. So. Weld. How do I weld one bit of shape to another so that it fills the holes?

1. Try using a resized/rotated basic shape: I could get a basic shape that is a similar sort of coverage and rotate and resize til I think it's covered the holes. So I tried that:

I got an elipse shape, resized and rotated (and coloured it orange and sent it to the back so I could see how it worked more easily) - but it didn't work terribly well and would be really hard to do in a shape with not much wriggleroom. Nah. This is not the way to go!

Step 1 - basic elipse

Step 2 - rotate to the right angle using the little green point handle at the top of the blue box.

Step 3 - Make it big enough to cover all the teardrops without messing up the star outline. Tricky! very tricky!

Step 4 - turn it orange and yeah it's not messing with the outline.

Step 5 - send the orange layer to the back by Edit Tab Order, just to see what it looks like.

Step 6 - dammit! there's a little bit of the left teardrop left. Easy enough to just weld again to get rid of, with another basic shape if necessary but I wanted a clean, one set of actions does the job.

2. Use the FreeHand Tool - I briefly considered this, then realised I don't know enough about it, so I'll try the Path Tool and if that doesn't work, then I'll go back to the Freehand Tool.

3. Try the Path ToolI just blogged about the Path Tool to make straight lines HERE.

So. I thought, let's try that, I can do a series of Nodes with a single click every time I need to change direction to 'lasso' these teardrop shapes, and I will be able to go beween the teardrops and the outside line of the star without risking missing a bit as with the basic shape. And then I can CLOSE the shape with a double click at the end on the first node, and then it will Weld.

One thing to note is cos I coloured my star pink, this is Path Tool with Colours, which I've NOT blogged about yet, which can behave differently, but thankfully not so differently that I had to blog about it before doing this - it behaved as I expected with the single and double clicks of the straight lines Path Tool blog linkie above. phew!!!

Ok. So.
Step 1 - Get the image you want to close holes in

Single layer shape with holes you don't want (teardrop)

Step 2. Choose the Path Tool from the tool bar and with SINGLE CLICK (and don't hold down your mouse button) create nodes to 'lasso' the unwanted holes, with a node every time the line needs to change direction. You need to be putting nodes in the pink area so that neither the outlines of the teardrops nor the outline of the star are being crossed by the Path you are creating. Like this.
...

Halfway around...

One thing to note here, is that you can see the teardrop holes being filled up with pale pink. This is what happens if you use the Path Tool with colours. Basically the screen shows you where it thinks the line is likely to go next (so if you double instead of single clicked on the node down at the bottom right, Canvas would create a final straight line along the axis of the pale pink. but we don't want that! so, single clicks all the way around guys!)

Step 3 - Keep doing single click to create nodes until you get to the final node to create before you reach the beginning again - you are making a CLOSED shape, so your final action is a double click onto the the very first node you created (yes you can do it differently with colours, but let's not right now! let's do it the long way, it gives you more control of the outcome).

Don't forget you have an undo button if you get the nodes in the wrong place (or you can edit them but as I've not blogged about that yet, let's stick with what we know, the single or double click and the undo button).

Step 4 - After you double clicked it looks like this - a 'lasso' line around the teardrops that's a closed shape. I don't know if you've done any welding, but the Weld Function needs to weld CLOSED SHAPES. So make sure you do the double click on the original node you created first to close the shape.

After you have no more new nodes to make, you double click on the  first node you made to close the shape. It looks like this.

Step 5 - Colour the weird shape you made with your Path Tool into green (right click, Properties and fill green colour. So it's like this:

Coloured Green

You now have TWO shapes a pink one and a green one.

Step 6 - Go to the Edit Tab and Edit Section, Select All, then down to the Process Function and Weld.
It will look like this:

Final single layer shape. Unwanted holes removed. Success!!!!

Hoorah! success, and not only that, controllable and replicable success!!!

So there we go. Another thing the Path Tool is useful for, in conjuction with Weld, it fills in unwanted holes.

4. I didn't bother going back to try the Freehand Tool as the Path Tool was easy to control with some accuracy and worked just fine....