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I am Photoshop enthusiast, I can't find how to change eraser shape like in Photoshop (eraser "brush" mode).

In Illustrator eraser is always circle or ellipse (when you change width in eraser parameters). In Photoshop if you want to delete part of the image you just change the brush for your eraser tool and with one click all the area exactly like the brush will be removed from the layer.

I need to tweak-erase a lot of object edges, borders to make grunge effect. My shapes are not a rectangle shapes, each object has complicated structure, so with subtraction between two shapes it will be nightmare and a lot of work to do this task.

So, how to act in Illustrator, like I do in Photoshop - select eraser->change brush->delete something with brush shaped eraser? Thanks in advance for answers.

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  • As you can see people have a hard time saying a definitive "No" bit that pales in comparasion to how many askers will react to "No". But yes you got your workaround.
    – joojaa
    Jul 24, 2014 at 22:07

3 Answers 3

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I use the pencil eraser in brush mode.

Under the brush panel make sure the only boxes checked are Smoothing and Dual Brush, and it should show a mostly solid white brush preview.

The brush with these settings should act just like "block mode" and erase everything under it. You probably already figured something out by now but oh well.

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I want you to know about some trick which probably will help you subtract the brush equal shapes from other shapes.

Let's say you have a circle and some brush:

enter image description here

You want to subtract from the circle the shape equal to this triangular brush.

For that, you Click-and-Drug this brush to any free-of-objects area on your artboard or outside it - you will get this shape exactly -

enter image description here

Now, you Expand this shape - it always will result in the rectangle and a shape itself, you select the shape and resize it with shift key and after that you can use Pathfinder to cut this shape as usual -

enter image description here

I moved the shape aside -

enter image description here

Probably in some situation you can use this trick for fast cutting.

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  • Thank you for quick answer. I will mark this question as answered question. This solution is really good. If some one has other solutions, please don't hesitate to show how you do this. Thanks again ;)
    – edukulele
    Jul 24, 2014 at 19:09
  • Sorry, I can't check the answer as useful and vote up, just because I have not enough points :) Maybe later ;)
    – edukulele
    Jul 24, 2014 at 19:23
  • @edukulele I hope the answer helped you in some way :)
    – Ilan
    Jul 24, 2014 at 19:32
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Double click on eraser icon gives you this menu -

enter image description here

where you can change some parameters of the cursor -

enter image description here

If you want to work precisely and very fast I suggest you spent some time learning Pathfinder tool.

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  • Thanks for answer, but you showed me pictures about what I called ellipse eraser. I use Pathfinder too (i called it subtraction between two layers) is the 2nd button in shapes mode of pathfinder. But I feel this is not a solution for me. That's why I asked is there any simpler ways to make my tasks - I mean with one press delete the same area like selected brush shape. Just like with brush but instead of adding shape it would remove. With pathfinder you need to create shape, then select with other shape to merge or subtract and only then you will get the effect. Sorry for misleading question.
    – edukulele
    Jul 24, 2014 at 18:31
  • @I've added some trick to cut brush-equal shapes from other shapes
    – Ilan
    Jul 24, 2014 at 19:03

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