How do i use the eraser tool in illustrator

If you want to apply Eraser to the original file in Illustrator, you must open it and apply it. The Scissors tool can be selected by clicking and holding the Knife tool in the Tools panel. As shown, you can click in two places on the inner circle. By selecting the cut segment with the Selection tool and pressing Delete, it will be removed. You can cut and delete a small segment from the outer circle by repeating this step.

There is no way to edit live type with Adobe Illustrator Eraser. It is necessary to embed the image in Illustrator in order to use it.

You can erase the Eraser Tool by selecting it again after you have done this. You will see a small menu appear when you click on this button. You can either select Reset Tool to reset the current tool to its default setting or Reset All Tools to reset all the tools to their default settings when you click on this button.

Within those you have also options to add pressure, random etc and add variation though I must admit, it would be more useful if it was a range of randomization instead of a single value. The variation is also per stroke and not, sadly, during the stroke of the eraser tool. The size allows for small erase as well as a huge erase the whole path even. You can erase in small strokes, perhaps add cuts to the edge of a path; you can erase using a doodle or curves throughout the path; set the erase tool size large and then erase a whole chunk or part of path or perhaps straight through the center.

Once you stop, you will see through the paths to the background. Each of those paths can now be selected and moved or you can continue to apply additional curves and erase to those perhaps setting the size to a smaller size such as on the right. You can also see that the paths are now separate from the original circle and have been filled with a new color and the doodled line was applied with a much smaller size than the original erase doodle.

You can now separate all the individual parts of the paths and perhaps position them throughout the artboard and perhaps fill them with different colors etc. You can use the erase tool in Illustrator to create a very quick and more randomly split grid design by using the tool and holding down the shift key as you apply the erase. You don't need to just split paths, you can totally remove a chunk of a path. Say you have a rectangle or any path and you don't want the corners, you can remove them or perhaps if you want a path split in two with a large gap.

You may need to ungroup the type via the object menu if you wish to use the artworks as separate paths such as adding random color fills etc. The tool cannot be used with images, if you want to use them with images you will have to use the trace tool and trace the artwork and then expand that and then you can apply the tool and split paths etc.

The image on the left - the top path is the original and the split path via the eraser tool is the bottom set of paths and you can see the width profile has been added to those now. The image on the right was created using the curvature tool and then the paths were split apart by using a large sized eraser tool stroke or two to create multiple curved open paths.

It appears that the tool does not turn an open path into a closed path nor a closed path into an open path. By selecting the cut segment with the Selection tool and pressing Delete, it will be removed. You can cut and delete a small segment from the outer circle by repeating this step. The Eraser Tool can now be used to erase an object, but it must be a vector. You can still edit the anchor points of the new shapes, but you will have to remove the areas paths that separate the original shape from the new one.

If you want to apply Eraser to the original file in Illustrator, you must open it and apply it. The Shape Builder Tool is one tool that can be used to accomplish this. By holding down Alt, you can now click in the center shape.

Your shape will be reduced by this.