Adobe PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 2 - Erasing

CHAPTER 8
142
Painting
Managing brush libraries
The brush sizes and shapes available for painting
and editing appear in the pop-up palette in the
options bar for the painting and editing tools. You
can customize the brushes and settings for each of
the painting tools (airbrush, brush, eraser, and
pencil) and editing tools (clone stamp, smudge,
focus, toning, and red eye brush).
In Photoshop Elements, you can save libraries,
load, replace, save, rename brushes in libraries,
reset, or delete new brushes or libraries of brushes
using the Preset Manager. (See “Working with
preset options” on page 27.)
Erasing
The eraser, background eraser, and magic eraser
tools let you erase areas of an image to trans-
parency. The eraser tool also lets you erase to the
background color in a Background layer or a layer
with locked transparency. You can use the
background eraser and magic eraser tools to erase
a Background layer to transparency and convert it
to a regular layer.
You can also use the Auto Erase option with the
pencil tool to erase the foreground color to the
background color as you paint, unless the area
does not contain the foreground color. In that case
the area is painted with the foreground color.
Using the eraser tool
The eraser tool changes pixels in the image as
you drag through them. If you’re working on
the Background layer or on a layer with locked
transparency, erased pixels change to the
background color; otherwise, erased pixels
become transparent.
To use the eraser tool:
1 Select the eraser tool .
2 Click the inverted arrow next to the brush
sample, choose a brush category from the Brushes
pop-up menu, and then select a brush thumbnail.
To learn more about using the brush presets, see
“Using pop-up palettes” on page 28.
3 To set the brush size in the options bar, drag the
Size pop-up slider or enter a size in the text box.
4 Choose the mode you want the eraser to use:
brush, pencil, or block.
5 Specify an opacity to define the strength of the
erasure. An opacity of 100% erases pixels to
complete transparency on a layer and to the
background color on the Background layer. A
lower opacity erases pixels to partial transparency
on a layer and paints partially with the background
color on the Background layer. (This option isn’t
available for block mode.)
6 Drag through the area you want to erase.
Using the magic eraser tool
When you click in a layer with the magic eraser
tool, the tool automatically changes all similar
adjacent pixels. If you’re working in a layer with
locked transparency, the pixels change to the
background color; otherwise, the pixels are erased
to transparency. You can choose to erase
contiguous pixels only or all similar pixels on the
current layer.