The Mystical, Magical Eraser Tool

So, you’ve FINALLY found that perfect puppy image that is going to launch your button from blah to AMAZING!  The only problem?  There’s a roll of toilet paper soiling the whole vibe.

Fear not!  Our Build-A-Button design software has a feature called “Eraser” that can extract any portion of an image from the whole.  In this case, I would like to extract the puppy from the image leaving the toilet paper roll and the background behind.

Let’s take a look and see how this is done.

Load ‘er up!

First, I’m going to upload the image into Build-A-Button by clicking on the “Upload Photo” button located on the left-hand side of my screen under “Photos” in the menu.  Once the image has loaded into the template, I’m going to click on the “Eraser” button in the top right hand corner of the Build-A-Button program.  This transports my image into the Eraser Tool Environment displayed below:

On the left is the original image and on the right is where my extracted image will be presented once I’m finished cutting it out.  Now, let’s take a look at how to pull the puppy away from that nasty roll of TP…

The Yellow Aura

Now we’re ready to get started on extracting our puppy.  You’ll notice a button in the top menu with a yellow circle inside.  Click your mouse on that button to select the tool.  Your mouse icon should now be a yellow circle.  We’re going to use this circle to outline our puppy.

If the yellow circle is too large then you’re going to have a difficult time outlining the details of your image – it will be like trying to sign a credit card slip with a painter’s brush.  In other words, it might work but it’s going to be sloppy.  If this is the case, you have two options:

• Make the circle smaller - Click on the black arrow to the right of the “Yellow Circle” button in the menu to select a smaller size.
• Make the image larger - Click on the “Zoom” button (magnifying glass with a ‘+’ sign inside the lens) to enlarge the image. You can then select the “Hand” button which allows you to move unseen portions of the image into view.

Start outlining your image (our puppy in this case) ensuring to connect the start point of the outline with the end point.  Once complete, the image you’re trying to extract should look as though it’s been sitting in a radioactive chamber for an afternoon.  See below:

Keep and Toss

Next, we’re going to tell Build-a-Button which part of the image we want to keep and which part of the image we want to throw away.  We do this by using the “Green Dot” button (keep) and the “Red Dot” button (throw away).

Let’s start by telling Build-a-Button what we would like to keep.  We want the puppy.  So, we’re going to click on the “Green Dot” button to select the tool and then left click-drag a green stripe inside the yellow outline marking our puppy.  Next, we’re going to tell Build-a-Button what we want to throw away.  So, we’re going to select the “Red Dot” button to select the tool and then left click-drag outside of the yellow outline across our background (bye-bye toilet paper!).  Once done, your image should look something like this:

 Keep in mind that you can mark your image any way you would like – the important thing is to put green on the part of the image you want to keep and red on the part of the image you want to throw away.  

Watch the magic!

Finally, it’s time to pull out our puppy.  Click the “Convert” button in your top menu and watch the magic happen!  Drum roll please……..

Voila!  We now have a TP free puppy!

One.  More.  Step.

The last step is to move our liberated puppy from the Eraser Tool Environment back to our button design template.  Simply click the “Add to Canvas” button and you’re all set!  We now have our PERFECT BUTTON!

Now that you are the master of the eraser design tool, you can move forward making even more amazing buttons!  Until next time, happy button making!

 By Brighid Brown, Director of Blogging and All Things Cool at ABM