Shape Eraser tool

[jon404]

Bingo! Thanks, Frances. It's not hard to do at all.
Below, I made the magenta rectangle, then Ctrl G grouped it. Made my erase on it, then went to the Page/layer gallery and selected the erase area (Opacity mask group > Opacity mask), and changed its color to a gray, like you said. Put a yellow rectangle behind the magenta one, and, it works!

[angelize]

you are welcome Jon, I'm always glad to be able to help.

[minstrel]

Real nice tip/solution, Angelize - thanks!

In addition, you can re-work the Opacity mask as desired with either the 'Shape' or 'Erase Tool' and it retains the transparency.

Just select the shape (Opacity mask group > Opacity mask > shape) and edit as needed.

minstrel

[tonylondon]

It seems to be around 3% softness when the eraser mode changes from hard to soft. Once a soft erase has been applied, it seems all subsequent erases will be soft........

[MarcT]

I find I'm using the eraser and shape tool often.

It's a very handy set of tools, often quicker than boole-ing.




Marc

[handrawn]

this is, in a way, the opposite of the example I gave in shape builder thread

attachment is a trace of a line drawing where some not very well cleaned pencil is showing and needs to be removed from between the lines - a straight forward job for the eraser tool, nodes would take some messing about even with alt-select first