Adobe Photoshop CS3 Tutorials
Painting / The Eraser Tools
Visitors to VTC.com will be able to view all introductory videos for each training course.
Free Trial Members will gain access to first three chapters for each training course.
Full Access Members have full access to VTC.com�s entire library of video tutorials.
Learn More
Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS3 / Painting / The Eraser Tools)
There are quite a few options when it comes to something as simple as erasing things in Photoshop and the eraser tool is located right here. As you see, when I have the eraser tool selected and I hold the mouse down, I have two other erasers in here. The eraser tool, the background eraser tool and the magic eraser tool. And some of these tools work in similar fashions to the other tools in Photoshop, such as the magic wand. Let's go ahead and start with the eraser tool. When I have the eraser tool selected, I can choose a brush. I can use either a hard brush or a soft brush. I can also change the mode, so I can paint with a brush, a pencil, which will give me all hard brushes as you see here, and I can also use a block, which give me no brush options at all. Normally, when you paint with the eraser, you're going to paint, and you go to the right layer, you paint with the background color, which you see right here. If I hit D on the keyboard, which is the default colors, I paint with white. You'll also notice here that since this background layer is locked, I'm painting to the background color. However, if I unlock by double clicking on it, I'm painting to transparency, so I'm actually painting behind this layer, even though there's nothing there because there's nothing here at all, I'm painting to transparency. So let me go ahead and revert back to my original. Another option I have when I go back to a brush is I can change the opacity. I can change the flow. And I can also enable airbrush mode to paint with a brush. So let me once again go back to the correct layer and as you see here, I'm getting a nice, soft stroke with the brush. I can also erase the history and I cover how to use history with the history brushes and so on in other lessons. Definitely check that out. It works the same way. Now, let's talk about the background eraser tool. The background eraser tool will erase to the background. And you notice here, I don't have to double click to unlock this layer when I choose this mode here because it's going to go to the background anyway. So if I'm on this layer here and I paint, I can paint to the background, which is this blue color. So let me hide this layer and show you. This blue color is behind this seashell, or rather this starfish layer here. So I'm painting right back behind it and if I grab my move tool and I move this over a little bit, you can see right through it. So you can get some very interesting artwork by doing that using the background eraser tool. And I have other options as well, so I have limits that I can set, such as discontigious, contiguous and fine edges, as well as tolerance. This other option here is very interesting as well. Let me go back to this layer here and show you. This is protect foreground color. If I choose, with my eyedropper tool, this tan color and I go back to the, uh, eraser here and I choose protect foreground color, watch what happens. It's going to very carefully try to protect that color from being erased. So I'm, I'm literally scrubbing my eraser right on top of this, but it's going to the color behind it because protect foreground color is on. So once again, that's a very cool option as well. Let me revert once again and I'm going to show you something else. So I'm going to go ahead and move this over. I'm going to choose the last eraser, which is the magic eraser. And this eraser works in the similar fashion as the magic wand tool. I can set a tolerance, which tells the eraser how many pixels that have to be similar in color to erase. I can anti alias my selection. I can choose contiguous. I can sample all layers, as well as reduce the opacity if I so desire. So watch this. On this layer I'll click one time and bam, there is the sand, gone. So you don't have to do a lot of erasing. You click on a color, it goes away. Magic. So once again, the eraser tools are very handy and they're very powerful and what you can do with your artwork, you can use some, uh, background erasers to create some very interesting shapes when you have more than one layer. You can use the regular, old eraser tool to use the eraser to erase a transparent color, the background color or to white, and you can use the magic eraser tool to make erasing happen in one fell swoop. So I can go to this layer here, click and there it goes.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop CS3 |
| Author: | Dwayne Ferguson |
| SKU: | 33782 |
| ISBN: | 1-933736-98-4 |
| Release Date: | 2007-08-02 |
| Duration: | 9 hrs / 161 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
VTC Sign up & Benefits
- Unlimited Access
- 81,350 Video Tutorials (14,200 free)
- Video Available as Flash or QuickTime
- Over 715 Courses
- $30 for One Month Access
- Multi-User Discounts Available
