Eraser tool and Wacom Graphire pen tablet

JW
Posted By
Jan_Wilson
Aug 13, 2004
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221
Replies
1
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Closed
I’m new to Photoshop Elements so may be misunderstanding the eraser tool, but with or without the Graphire pen tablet plugged in it appears to only paint on the selected background colour, rather than erase anything. Is this normal? At present the only advantage is that my Graphire pen can paint in two colours!

Please help!

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CW
Colin_Woodbridge
Aug 13, 2004
Jan….

I think this is what may be happening.

Elements works with an image in Layers. You can have many Layers…these are like transparent overlays which you can then paint on or paste other images to or make corrections.

The basic Layer that you get is the Background Layer. If you’ve just opened a new image it will be on the Background Layer. Press F11 and the Layer Pallette will open and you’ll see a small version of your image and the word Background against it.

When you erase part of the image on the Background Layer it does paint over it with the background colour you have selected.

To erase part of the image you need to convert the Background Layer (which is special) to a normal layer. To do this goto Layer > New > Layer from Background. A pop up window will appear asking you for a name for it. You can leave it as Layer 0 if you wish. Click Ok and now you should be able to erase to a transparant background (checkboard pattern). If you have the Layer Pallette open you’ll see the name change to Layer O.

Hope this helps.

Colin

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