You’re welcome 
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Maybe it’s a problem with my workflow, but my single most used shortcut is “Switch to previous preset”. I use it to switch between two main brushes, very often it’s a pencil and an eraser.
Not sure if this is a bug, but unfortunately this switch is somehow mixed with “Toggle Eraser Preset”. I can first use my two “normal brushes”, then switch to eraser preset and pick two eraser brushes. However, when I turn off the eraser preset, my second normal brush is overwritten and will look exactly like the eraser preset brush. This makes this feature completely unusable for me.
I know this is convoluted… 
Maybe I could make a video to demonstrate what I mean exactly.
“Eraser presets” are not treated differently than any other preset with regard to the Brush Preset History list that “Previous Preset” uses. “Toggle Eraser Preset” uses something unrelated to remember the last “eraser end” and “brush end” preset.
For what you’re trying to do, the Brush History would need to keep two lists.
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Yes, exactly! I think there should be two history lists, and toggling the “eraser preset” would switch between them. However, at this point, probably such a change could break someone else’s workflow, so… 
I think there should be two options: a ‘Krita switch to previous preset’, a ‘Krita toggle eraser preset’ new ones to satisfy a split between drawing brushes and erasers. Long term users shouldn’t be affected and those who prefer the split require new functionality.
After trying out Shortcut-Composer I’m completely sold. I don’t know whether Krita should make it an official feature, but at this point I believe it’s the best paradiam.
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I personally always felt that the eraser tool is just the reverse function of the brush tool, meaning substracting color instead of adding it. Therefore for me it is intuitively more logical how the eraser function is integrated in Krita, being the reverse brush function, compared to being a seperate tool as in PS or CSP.
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I just use the eraser of the stylus to do that with my eraser preset.
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CSP has both. The eraser as a separate tool (actually a whole system of tools each having its own shortcut, the eraser is just one of them), and you can “draw” with transparency (basically eraser mode in Krita).
So what Krita does have CSP has it too, and more. And the question is why can’t Krita have more?
When looking at it that way I personally feel that the “it’s the Krita way” argument feels weak.
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Look/hear me out… it is fairly simple. When the development of krita started, it was implemented that way because of its effectiveness. Why would you need a dedicated tool if you can just toogle between adding pixels and removing them? In my opinion, it was an extremely intelligent choice to make the best of the limited resources they had/have. That is to say, if some other software would have done the same, would we have this discussion?
I don’t think so. But now that we do, let us refrain from comparing krita with other software as that would derail the conversation.
What are the benefits of having a dedicated eraser tool?
- “Complete” control over the current tools as there is no guessing what preset you are currently on, which is nice for beginners and artists coming from other software
- More structure, I guess
If I am missing more benefits, please feel free to add more.
And now let us look at the numbers here.
There are 48 participants of this discussion, and 29 of them voted for this feature request. That is more than half, but there were 13k+ views on this topic, and if you compare that number to 29… well, you get what I mean…
So please, dear reader of this post. If you are here, because you also want that feature, please scroll back to the top and press “vote.” As a registered Krita-artists.org user, you have 20 votes you can spend, and you get them back if the feature request was merged.
And feel free to donate a small amount to the krita foundation to support the development of the software. If each of those 13k viewers would spend a small amount each month, this tool would already exist. Here is the link.
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The arguments in support of a dedicated eraser tool have been clearly laid out over and over. The counter argument mostly follows the line that some would not use it, so the request cannot be of use to others (or they should just adapt), which is a moot point, a deflection at best.
The amount of views simply states there’s interest in the feature (the title is self explanatory), but seeing this discussion run for a couple of years with no conclusion isn’t really inviting visitors to make an account and cast a vote.
I think that if the community could put up a bounty for this, it would be one of the first feature requests to be tackled.
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Eraser tool is the best and simplest way. Everything else is a workaround that falls short of its simplicity.
Check this scenario. I was painting, then I switched to erase mode, erased some bits, I switched to some selection tool, selected, transformed, switched layers. Now I want to paint again now I hit “B” and try to paint but the stroke does not appear. In other apps there are mainly two possiblilites why. There is either a selection somewhere or the layer is not paintable. But in Krita there is a third possibility that you have to check on, it’s that the brush could be in erase mode. And for me this feature is the biggest contributor to the number of times the brush refuses to paint.
But…
Krita being Krita should keep the eraser mode. But add an eraser tool also for those of us who need to use different painting apps. One feature existing does not need hurt the other. We could bind the eraser tool to “E” and just forget that erase mode even exists.
Please don’t say ten brushes. That is not it. How about, I hit “B” and I return to painting with the last brush I used. See how simple that is? I don’t want to remember shortcuts for each brush preset I use. It is just not quick.
Thank you.
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Yep, Ten Brushes doesn’t cut it. What we need is a preset history separation, so that the already existing eraser preset is not conflated with regular brush presets. I don’t know how much work it is, but someone just needs to step up and do it, as simple as that. The core team won’t do it, they just don’t have the time.
I may consider working on it, but I need to first finish another feature I signed up for (I’m slacking a bit…).
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Hi, could you or someone else put together a hack/script/plugin that can make a key (“b” default) switch to the brush tool and set erase mode to off at the same time? And likewise for a key (“e” default) to switch to brush tool and set erase mode on. That would essentially replicate photoshop like behaviour.
You can try my plugin: Feature request for dedicated Eraser Tool - #163 by Daishishi
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Works perfectly! Lol!
This is better than my suggestion. I get to have different eraser tip as well.
Thank you so much for this. This should’nt be a plugin, this should be in Krita proper.
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You do not need a plugin for the behavior you want. A while ago I implemented (EDIT: For 5.3/Nightly) separate keyboard shortcuts for the stylus’s brush mode and eraser mode that automatically select the freehand brush tool when used. They’re called “Select brush preset” and “Select eraser preset” respectively. I implemented these two shortcuts because “Toggle eraser preset” can be too unwieldy and also doesn’t automatically select the freehand brush tool.
Obviously this feature is not very discoverable. The only way to fix the discoverability of such a feature, I would think, is a dedicated eraser “tool”, even if the tool would just be a separation of regular brush presets and eraser presets.
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It’s so undiscoverable that someone made a plugin that replicated it? In Krita 5.2.0 I searched for these shorcuts that you mentioned and I could not find them. There is only Toggle eraser preset.
Oops, my mistake. I implemented those shortcuts over a year ago for 5.3 but it apparently seems like there hasn’t been another feature release since then. I’ve been using nightly builds the whole time.
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This sounds great! The eraser mode is great when just drawing and not switching tools, but when I do need to switch tools (for selections, measuring, etc) it’s been distracting to check whether eraser mode is on every time I switch back. Having different shortcuts for “brush, in eraser mode” and “brush, not in eraser mode” should solve that tidily.
Thanks for that PR, looking forward to 5.3 :D!
However, I think there’s still value in a dedicated eraser tool, or perhaps a second brush tool with its own pair of erase/paint shortcuts, which independently remembers the last used brush settings. I frequently want to use a different brush (most often just a different size, but sometimes an entirely different brush) to paint and erase, and currently that requires constant tweaking of the brush settings, instead of just hitting a hotkey. The Ten Brushes plugin isn’t a good solution for this scenario because it requires predetermining which presets you’ll need, rather than giving you whatever you used last, which may differ substantially from any preset.
Having two distinct but identical brush tools sounds a little silly though, perhaps a cleaner and more flexible solution is to implement a system that works like a digital version of nib holders: An artist may have many different pen nibs (analogous to brush states - not just presets), but will typically have just 1-3 nib holders (the handles that the nibs slot into). As they work, they’ll often put down one holder and pick up another, quickly getting access to whatever nib is in it. Less frequently, they might swap out a nib for another, so when that pick up that holder again, it will contain the most recently used nib.
So I guess basically what I’m proposing is something like the Ten Brushes plugin, except while a given “holder” is selected, it saves any changes to its state (selecting a different preset, changing the size, toggling eraser mode, etc). Perhaps pressing B with the brush tool already selected can cycle between “holders”, and users could optionally assign shortcuts for specific “holders”.