Expert: LizaL - 1/4/2007

Question
Thank you for the in depth response.  Unfortunately, none of the suggestions worked.  I am using Photoshop Elements version 4.0 on a PC (Dell XPS with Windows XP).  I tried everything I can think of: resetting the text tool, changing the font, changing the sizes and making sure I was in the horizontal text type.  Essentially, I went straight down your list and tried everything and then more.  But the problem remains that the text itself is the normal size, but the actual blinking cursor is extremely big.  I can type, but I have to zoom way out, find the bottom of the cursor, drag it so that its top goes to the place on the picture I want it to be, and then zoom in and type, while repositioning it if I need to start a new line.  Perhaps trashing the preferences will work, but how does one do that?  This is the only program on my computer that is experiencing text problems, and I have no idea why it suddenly started being and issue.  It's extremely unusual.

 
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The text above is a follow-up to ...

-----Question-----
Photoshop Elements has worked flawlessly for me until today.  When trying to insert text into my graphic (by selecting the text tool and clicking inside the picture), I found the cursor to be about 4x as big as the picture itself.  When I typed letters, they were displayed at the very top of the cursor, which wasn't on the graphic itself.  I tried resetting the tool and changing the text size, but nothing worked.  The text itself isn't too big or too small; it's the cursor itself which has inexplicably gained mammoth proportions.  How can I correct this?
-----Answer-----
Whoa! I have to admit, Chris, I've never seen this before. So I'll try and offer some things for you to check. If they don't work, I would trash my preferences for Photoshop. More on that later.

1. You said you changed the text size (which is the first thing I would have tried), but did you by chance change the leading? Even if you have only one line of type and don't need any spacing adjustment between lines, try changing this.

I have some large, swashy fonts that will cause the cursor to become huge, and this is the only situation I can think of that I've had that's like yours. But in my case, when I changed fonts, the cursor went back to normal.

At any rate, try changing the leading value -- make it smaller than your type, even, and see if that has any impact.

2. Change the font. As I mentioned, the only thing that comes to mind for personal experience is when I've used fonts like Zapfino or similar typefaces that have a lot of variance between ascender and descender size. So try changing to something simple like Arial and see if that helps.

3. I don't use Elements, but I'm wondering, does it have the same options for type as Photoshop such as horizontal and vertical type tools? If so, check to make sure you've not accidentally selected one of those other optional text tools.

4. Have you tried quitting the application, and restarting your machine?

5. Does this happen in any other program than Elements?


Well, those are a few things to try and to check. If those don't give you any insight or fix the problem, I'd trash my preferences for Elements. You didn't mention if you're working on a PC or a Mac, and the steps for that are different between platforms, so if you have any questions on how to do that, please post back.

Two last questions... what version Elements do you have? This could be a version bug. And -- have you accidentally turned on any sort of Universal Access, or vision-disabled preference?

On a Mac, there's a global preferences setting for people who might have vision impairments -- the mouse settings pane looks like this:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/u_access.jpg

Of course, if you've done this, then your cursor would be large in all programs, not just Elements.

Personally, I'm leaning towards this problem being isolated to Elements, and feel like trashing your prefs will fix it, but it doesn't hurt to check all the possibilities!

Let me know what happens --

Lisa

Answer
Hi again Chris,

To trash your preferences on a PC, start Elements and then hold down Control + Alt + Shift. You should get a dialog box asking if you want to delete Settings, and say Yes. That should trash the old prefs, and as you open and work in Elements, you'll generate new ones.

Try this and let me know if it helps. I'd say the last ditch effort would be to uninstall and reinstall the program, but hopefully trashing the prefs will work.

Lisa


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P.S.  After I'd posted my response to you, I found this Elements forum online that I thought you  might check out -- maybe someone else has run into this issue. It looks to be a pretty resourceful forum:
http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/index.php