How to Erase in a Straight Line in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to erase in a straight line in Photoshop. I’ll show you a quick and easy shortcut to help you erase a straight line in Photoshop using the Eraser Tool.

If you’re a fan of video tutorials, then you can’t miss this new video by Jonathan Lam from the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel. Learn how to erase in Photoshop, the eraser shortcut in Photoshop, and more in this quick video:

What You’ll Learn in This Photoshop Eraser Tutorial

• How to select the Eraser Tool in Photoshop
• How to erase a straight line in Photoshop using a shortcut

How to Erase a Straight Line in Photoshop

Step 1

For demonstration purposes, in this quick-tip Photoshop eraser tutorial, I’ll be using the small white kitten on orange background from Envato Elements.

Photoshop has many tools you can use as an erase function, and the most common is the Eraser Tool (E). The tool is basically a brush that erases pixels as you drag across an image. It either changes the pixels to the background color or makes them transparent.

Step 2

Then, head to the tool options bar to customize the Eraser brush tool settings, like the size and hardness. For this quick tutorial, we will select a Hard Round brush, setting the brush Size to 35 px and brush Hardness to 100%, so we can have a straight, clean finish.

Step 3

Now let’s erase a straight line using the Eraser Tool in Photoshop. So place your brush over one end of the image, click and hold down the Shift key, and then drag the cursor to the end, and release!

You Did It! You Know How to Erase in Photoshop

Congratulations, you erased in a straight line! And the cool trick is that you can use the same tip of holding down the Shift key and dragging to move in straight lines with most of the other brush tools in Photoshop. Check out the final result.

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