The eraser is a particularly useful tool available within the Pixlr dashboard. There are multiple ways to use the eraser tool, each with a unique purpose.

There tends to be three typical needs for the eraser tool: major removal of contents, touching up, or the removal of background colour.

The eraser tool is the most effective way to remove areas of an image. The undo option can also remove recent alterations.

As with the paint tool, you can select the appropriate size and style to remove elements from the canvas. Most frequently you will probably need to use the largest brush available, which is the 200px circular rubber option. If you tend to work with much larger canvases then you may wish to create your own brush size. If you need to be more precise, simply select a smaller brush.

As you can see from the screenshot on the right, in this instance the large 200px brush will enable you to erase contents within the canvas efficiently.

To erase, simply click on the canvas and drag your mouse across the areas you want to get rid of.

You can also use the eraser tool to give an image or a logo a transparent background. If you have a .jpeg file of your logo, copy the logo into a new canvas with a transparent background. Once transferred, use the magic wand tool to select the area you wish to make transparent. Select the rubber tool and erase all of the background. Now just save the file as a .png file to maintain quality and ensure no background is included.

In case that all sounds rather complicated, here’s the process broken down into stages.

Start by opening an image in JPEG format with a background that needs to be removed.

Next we want to copy everything from the canvas into a new transparent canvas.

To do this, select the marquee tool and draw a box around everything you want to copy across. Select the copy option.

You will need to go to file, then select new image to prompt this pop up. This enables you to set the dimensions of your new canvas. You’ll want these to be the same as the existing image you’re working on. You can identify the original canvas size by looking at the bottom left corner and inserting those numbers into the width and height fields available.

At this stage, be sure to select the Transparent option. If you leave this step out you won’t be able to give your image the transparent background you are after.

Select all of the white space using the wand tool. Just hover over it with the wand tool and left click to select. A dashed border will appear around all other elements of the logo as you can see in this screenshot.

At this stage just pick the eraser tool and begin to erase all of the white space, or simply tap the delete button on your keyboard.

As you erase the white space you will begin to see the transparent layer.

Once all of the erasing is complete, you should see that your logo or image is looking perfect and a transparent background is left behind.

It is that easy. Your logo or image can be placed over any colour without an unattractive block background.

The next step is not an editing requirement, but it is an essential part of the process if you want your background to stay transparent.

Once all of the editing is complete you need to save the new image or logo in the correct file format. .PNG tends to be most suitable.

To do this select file, save as and ensure that you pick the PNG format as this will save the image or logo in full quality and retain the transparent background.

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”
– Benjamin Franklin