How to Use Photoshop Eraser Tool

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Gary for Expert Village. As we mentioned before, when applying effects to images, we don't want to apply it to the original image or the single layer that is, that exists in the image. We want to go ahead and create new layers. And we apply our effects to those layers. So that's what I'm going to do. There's many ways of creating the new layer. We have the icon down here on the bottom, which looks like the page with the corner we saw earlier. I'm going to show you a different way, which is just taking the layer that exists and clicking on it and just dragging it into that new layer icon, which is that piece of paper with the corner torn up on the side. And there we see that automatically a new layer is created. And it's the exact copy of the original layer. So now we have our two layers. And the layer that's on top is the copy, and that's the one we're going to be applying the changes to. So, the first thing we want to do is, we want to select our eraser tool from our tool box. And now, we're going to go ahead and look at the image, take the image, and erase all areas that we don't want to apply this blurred effect. Now, it's important to make sure that we are looking at the entire image. So that's why I make sure that I kind of go to the corner of the file, where the file name is. And I kind of just open it up a little bit, drag it out, just to make sure that my image is in full view. And I know that because I have this gray background around it. So I know that I'm looking at the entire image. Even though that it says twenty-five percent, that just means that the image is smaller than its original, from its original size. But still, the entire image is in front of us right now, because of that gray border. So now that I have my eraser tool selected, I want to go ahead and start erasing areas of the image. Now, we see that if we just start erasing - the way we erase is, I'm going to click, I'm going to hold down the left button on the mouse, and I'm going to just drag around - and we see that nothing is being erased. Now, the reason for that is, is because we have two layers over here. So anything that we erase on the top layer, which is a exact copy of the bottom layer - which is called background - anything that we erase, the background layer is just going to show up. So, it doesn't look like we're erasing anything. We're taking off the top layer, but immediately, the bottom layer is going to show through. So it doesn't look like we're doing anything. In order to see what we're doing and in order to see what we're actually erasing, I'm going to shut off the bottom layer. And I do that by clicking on the eye. And once I click on the eye, we'll see that there are certain strokes over here. And those are the strokes that I made with my eraser. And we see that I actually did erase part of the image."