

It is represented by a little paintbrush icon. In the layers menu, just above the layers’ names, check to make sure you don’t have the Lock Pixels icon enabled. If it is, that’s probably why your eraser isn’t working the way you expect. At the very bottom of the list you should see Anti erase (Alt). With the eraser tool selected, navigate to the bottom left-hand side of your screen to the tool settings. This will prevent the eraser from doing its job.

Having it set at anything less than 100 will reduce the size of the space your eraser erases, so make sure you have it set to 100.Īnother reason why your eraser may not be erasing to transparency is because you have anti erase enabled in the tool settings. In GIMP version 2.10 and later, there’s now a Hardness option in the Eraser tool menu. This is unlikely to be a problem, but it’s possible if you’ve selected a corrupted brush.

While you’re at it, go ahead and check which brush head you’re using with the eraser as well. Check the Tool Options panel and make sure the Opacity slider is all the way up at 100%. Eraser OpacityĪ less common reason why you may be having trouble erasing your image could be because the eraser opacity is set to 0. To rectify this, go to Select -> None and see if that does the trick. If you have an active selection within GIMP at the moment, the eraser is only going to erase whatever is inside of that selection. Double check to make sure you’ve activated the correct later. The eraser will only work on the layer you have selected, so if you’re furiously trying to erase an image and nothing is happening on your canvas, it’s probably because you have a different layer selected. This may seem like common knowledge, but it’s a mistake that even I foolishly make once in a while. However, if the selection is grayed out (meaning there’s already an alpha channel added,) then something else has gone wrong. If the selection isn’t grayed out and you can actually click on it, there’s your problem.
