Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 11/4/2008

Question
I'm not exactly a new guy at Photoshop, but this is starting to make me mad. I will note now I have not touched a single preference, and I have already tried reinstalling CS3.

For some reason, in Photoshop, I will use certain tools (Basically anything in the middle section of the base set up for the tool bar), and they will show up as used in the history, but nothing will happen on picture. Sometimes they will work, but most the time they won't.

Answer
Hi Greg,

There are several reasons why your image editing tools (the tools in the middle, brush, eraser, healing tools, etc.) wont work on an image.

Here are a few examples, and they may or may not be the reason, but won't hurt to check.

1. You are in quick mask mode (typing Q will swap you in and out)

2. You have a very small selection made - go to select>deselect.

3. You are on a specific channel, double check to make sure you are on the composite channel (RGB, CMYK, etc.) in the channels palette, again this is an easy one to jump to accidentally.

Unfortunately, the only other suggestion is to reset your preferences. Reinstalling does not override your prefs, just reinstalls the app around them. Hold shift+alt/opt+cmd/ctrl when opening the application and it will ask to reset the prefs.

Thanks

Kevin