7 Eraser
Used for removing
portions of images
Found at #6 in the Toolbar diagram at left
Choose the eraser you want to use by clicking on the eraser in the toolbar
and holding the mouse button down. Pick the one you want from the pop-up
menu.
The erasers act like paintbrushes in reverse. Instead of laying down color, they pick it up. It’s like watching a movie in reverse.
To use the eraser tool, select it in the toolbox, set your options and choose a brush from the pop-up palette in the options bar, and drag in the image to remove pixels wherever you paint.
If you are applying the eraser to the background layer, or to any layer with Preserve Transparency selected, the erased area will go to the background color. Otherwise it will erase to transparency with the exception of when you are erasing to a history state. [See below]
If you choose Edit > Fade immediately after using this tool, you can change the opacity of the strokes you have just applied.
A shortcut for changing brush sizes while using any of the painting tools is to press the left bracket [ to decrease brush size, and the right bracket ] to move to the next larger brush.
Shift-right-click on your document while using the eraser to get its Mode menu next to your cursor (brush, pencil, block).
The keyboard shortcut for the eraser is the letter E. To cycle through all three eraser tools, hold down the Shift key while repeatedly pressing the shortcut key.
The illustration below, is the eraser tool’s options bar.
To choose a brush size and type, click on the brush thumbnail. A pop-up
palette of available brushes will appear. Press Enter or click on your
document’s blue title bar to close the palette after you’ve
chosen a new brush. If you want to access the full brushes palette with
its many options, click the brushes palette button at the far right end
of the options bar.
You can also right-click on your document to open the brushes pop-up palette next to the cursor. For more information on brushes, please see the Brushes in 7 tutorial. If you are still using Photoshop 6, find information on the your brushes palette on the old brushes page.
To find any tool presets that have been made for this tool, click on the tool’s thumbnail at the left end of the options bar. To reset the tool to its default settings, right-click on the tool’s thumbnail and choose Reset Tool from the menu that appears.
The tool that the eraser will simulate in reverse is chosen from the
Mode menu. When pencil is chosen, the Flow setting is
not available. When block is selected, both Opacity and Flow are grayed
out.
Click the airbrush button to allow the tool to continue to act for as
long as the left mouse button is pressed, even when the cursor is not
moving.
The Opacity setting, with slider shown activated, determines how much erasing occurs at each stroke. Access the slider by clicking on the small arrow to the right of its value box.
If you select the Erase to History check box, click next to the desired state in the History palette, and drag in the image. This works the same as using the History brush.
If you have doodled with a tool’s options and want to get back to the default settings, right-click that tool’s icon at the far left end of its options bar (in Photoshop 6, left-click). Choose either Reset Tool to reset only the current tool, or Reset All Tools to restore default settings to every tool.
Please note that all descriptions, and illustrations featured refer to files which are in Photoshop’s .psd format, and which are in RGB color mode. Other file formats, and color modes may generate different options. Some Photoshop features are not available for images not in .psd format, or RGB color mode. To find what color mode your image is in, choose Image > Mode.
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