Thoughts about the Eraser tool and why I love it: a suggestion

[Fashmir]

I can completely understand people's frustration with the eraser tool as it currently is. I would love to 'un-ink' 'un-wash' 'un-paint' with the eraser tool directly rather than make such marks with the other tools on another layer and make a stencil to erase through.

Here's the thing that is complete genius about the current eraser tool: It accounts for the 'thickness', the amount of material on the canvas as well as the layer and canvas textures. This creates a unique tool for removal that I have not found in any other software. I use this quality of the tool in my daily work and would miss it more than I think is really very healthy of me. :-) Let me show you an example of what I am talking about.



There are many uses for which this quality of the eraser tool has evolved effective techniques for making marks that I need in my workflow.

My suggestion is that should the eraser tool get a re-tooling, to treat it with the kind of respect to the original qualities of the tool that we saw when the pallet knife tool was expanded to include more 'digital' capabilities. Make it a tab on the tool settings, rather than remove function that is so fundamentally useful to working artists. In truth my first preference would be to introduce layer masks that could be painted into with any of the tools. That would be an addition to ArtRage that changes the whole game.