Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

The Eraser Tool

Everyone makes mistakes. Adobe has thoughtfully included three different mistake-fixers. If you click and hold the Eraser icon in the Tools panel, you'll see the Eraser, the Magic Eraser, and the Background Eraser. (You can also activate the Eraser by pressing E.) You'll probably use all three at one time or another. This section covers all your options.

Using the Eraser

The Eraser is basically just another kind of brush tool, only instead of adding color to your image, it removes color from the pixels. How it works varies a little depending on where you use it.

If you use the Eraser on a regular layer, it replaces the color with transparency. On a Background layer, or one in which transparency is locked, it replaces whatever color is there with the Background color (see Chapter 6 for more about how layers work).

The Eraser's settings are pretty much the same as for any other brush—including brush style, size, and opacity—but with the Eraser a couple of them work differently:

• Mode. For this tool, Mode doesn't have anything to do with blend modes (Blending and Smudging), but rather tells Elements the shape of the eraser you want to work with. Your choices are Brush, Pencil, and Block.

  You can see the difference in how the Eraser is going to work by watching the brush style preview in the Options bar as you change modes. Picking Brush or Pencil mode lets you use the Eraser as you would those tools—in other words, you can choose any brush you like. The Brush option lets you ...