Eraser

Remove points freely, or clean a curve while holding its shape.

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Choose Eraser from the Vextra panel or the Illustrator toolbar. The round tip shows which points it will touch.

Normal Eraser

Drag across the path. The Eraser removes covered nodes and handles as the tip passes over them.

Normal Eraser mode shows every handle, even with Show All Handles off, so you can see what the tip is about to reach.

Change the Tip Size

Shift-drag to make the tip larger or smaller. This resizes the tip only and leaves the path alone.

Use a small tip for a single point and a larger tip for a wider area.

Soft Eraser

Option-drag / Alt-drag switches to the green Soft Eraser, which cleans the curve conservatively:

• It considers nodes only, not handles.
• It hides handles while you work.
• It removes a node only when one new curve can replace the two old curves closely enough.
• It keeps any node whose removal would change the shape too much.

This is the mode to use after Autotrace or Pencil, where a smooth curve often carries more points than it needs.

Finish or Cancel

Mouse-up ends the stroke and records the whole gesture as one undo step.

Press Escape during the stroke to restore the path.

Eraser or Optimizer?

Use the normal Eraser to paint away specific points, Soft Eraser for conservative cleanup, and Optimizer to simplify a full span between two chosen places.

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For larger cleanup jobs, see Contour Commands.