How to change an objects colour while retaining its soft edges?

[DaynjaDog]

Hi, I was wondering how I go about changing an object's (rasterised vector) colour (currently attempting to use the paint bucket tool) while retaining the objects soft edges. Here are some images describing the problem I have.

As you can see, the object has nice, smooth edges that are faded out and look great once you zoom out.

Now when I fill it with green, the slightly transparent pixels are filled with a hard green and it looks terrible.

How can I make the green bit have nice smooth edges like the other black parts?

Thanks.

[Trevor.Dennis]

You should be able to lock the layer opacity

and fill with the foreground using Alt backspace.  It looks like you used the paint bucket tool without anti aliasing, or an inappropriate Tolerance setting in the options bar.  The paint bucket tends to be of limited use once you get fully into Photoshop.

[DaynjaDog · Accepted solution]

I didn't use Alt Backspace, but I found once I locked the transparent pixels and THEN used the paint bucket tool, that seemed to work. Thanks.

[D Fosse]

The paintbucket tool is one of those tools that were originally conceived just to fill out the toolbar. It's just a magic wand followed by an automatic fill with foreground color. You don't need a dedicated tool for that.

But like everything in Photoshop - once there, it never goes away.

You need to think in more flexible terms. Select then fill is what you need here. For the first part there are zillions of options available that are much better than the magic wand.