Gotcha

There are a lot of little things in Elements and Photoshop that can really ruin your day. Here’s a list of the most common ones. Click on the topic to go to the solution.

• Cursor shows crosshairs when it used to show brush size.
• Most of the filters are grayed out.
• When you use the type tool, everything turns pink.
• The clone stamp won’t sample when you Alt-click.
• The main toolbar is minimized into only the Adobe icon and a blue bar.
• The crop tool doesn’t show any handles and only makes boxes of fixed proportions.
• Every time you make a new document it wants to be a funny size or color mode.
• There is a lock on your background layer.
• White areas of your image look pink or yellow or purple; not white.
• You click on a layer in the Layers palette, then click on your document with the move tool to move it, and it jumps to, and moves a different layer.
• The area in a document window that is outside your image has changed from the usual gray to another color.
• You can’t add a new picture layer to the one that is already open; new images open with their own layer.
• Users of Windows XP can’t get Help to open within Elements or Photoshop.
• You got a warning about where your scratch disk is located when you first open Photoshop or Elements.
• You made a bunch of new brushes, gradients, or patterns and now they are nowhere to be found.
• Your crop tool, and marquee tool jumps to edges making it hard to make precise crops or selections.
• When you make a new line with the type tool, the spacing is wrong—the next line is on top of the first, or it’s way too wide.
• Photoshop or Elements keeps trying to access the Internet even when I set Online Prefs to Never (double-click the icon at the top of the toolbar to get the Online dialog).
• Your colors look different in Photoshop or Elements from how they display in any other application.
• You copied files from a CD to your computer and Elements says they are locked and won’t let you save your edits.
• While editing, either your picture, or the Elements interface is breaking up, or showing weird blocks of wrong colors, or otherwise not displaying properly.
• On starting Photoshop, you get an alert that the Abobe UI font could not be loaded.
• Your computer locks up, shuts down, or reboots while running Elements or Photoshop.
• You get a “Scratch disk full” or “Memory full” error message.
• Fonts don’t appear in the font menu.

If your question or problem is not on this list, try searching the Adobe Knowledgebase for Elements.

For Photoshop, only:

• Where is the paintbucket?
• You get an error message about faux bold when you try to warp text.
• You can’t find New View in PS 7.
• There is a funny icon in the upper left corner of all of your images.
• When you click with the eyedropper, it changes the background color instead of the foreground color.
• Save For Web is grayed out as are most of the filters.
• Can you legally upgrade and use the Educational version of Photoshop with the full commercial version upgrade?
• Photoshop freezes when trying to load.
• When using the type tool, Photoshop runs very slow.
• Your A drive (floppy drive) keeps running when you are using Photoshop.
• Performance is very slow when using Photoshop.
• You can’t Paste as Paths from Illustrator.
• You get an error message “PHOTOSHP caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL at 017f:bff7b9f5.”
• Text is cut off or does not appear on type layers in very large images (400 MB or larger).

If your question or problem is not on this list, try using the Adobe Knowledgebase for Photoshop.

Older Tutorials
Quick Mask
Adjusting Contrast
Using Curves
Scanning Negatives
Rubberstamping
More Adjustments
Sharpening
Filters
Color

Cursor shows crosshairs when it used to show brush size.
Check your Caps Lock key. It toggles cursor display from brush size to precise.

Most of the filters and/or Save For Web are grayed out.
In Elements and Photoshop, check to see if you are in Bitmap or Index color mode. In Photoshop, if you are in CMYK or if your image is 16 bit, most filters will be grayed out, as will Save For Web. Look under Image > Mode.

When you use the type tool, everything turns pink.
You are either in Index color mode, or you have selected the type mask tool by mistake. To find color mode, see Image > Mode. To select the proper type tool, see the type tool’s options bar. The type mask tool is the dotted line icon. You want the solid like icon.

The clone stamp won’t sample when you Alt-click.
You have installed a program that is hijacking your Alt key. Fly Swat and Guru-net are common culprits. Either uninstall or change the hot-key assignments within those apps.

The main toolbar is minimized into only the Adobe icon and a blue bar.
Try double-clicking on the blue bar.

The crop tool doesn’t show any handles and only makes boxes of fixed proportions.
You may have entered something in the Width or Height boxes. Click the Clear button on the tool’s options bar, or delete the Width or Height entries, or click the tool icon at the far left end of the options bar and choose Reset Tool.

Every time you make a new document it wants to be a funny size or color mode.
If you have anything on the clipboard (have used Edit > Copy), Photoshop and Elements will automatically fill in the File> New document size and color mode with those of the clipboard contents. To get rid of this, choose Edit > Purge > Clipboard.

There is a lock on your background layer.
This is normal. All new documents have a background that is partially locked (you can’t move the background). To turn it into a regular layer and remove the lock, double-click the background and click OK in the New Layer dialog (or choose a new name, if you like).

White areas of your image look pink or yellow or purple; not white.
You have a bad monitor profile. Run Adobe Gamma to create a new profile. It should be in your Start > Settings > Control Panel. Use the sRGB profile as a starting point and be sure and fill in a new description and name.

You click on a layer in the Layers palette, then click on your document with the move tool to move it, and it jumps to, and moves a different layer.
On the move tool’s options bar, uncheck (deselect) the Auto Select Layer checkbox. Or, make sure you click on a spot that has content (is not transparent) in the layer you want to move.

The area in a document window that is outside your image has changed from the usual gray to another color.
Set your foreground color to be the color that you want for the area outside your image, then choose the paintbucket tool and Shift-click on that area (outside of your image, but within the document window).

You can’t add a new picture layer to the one that is already open; new images open with their own layer.
To make a second picture be on a layer above the layer of the first picture, you need to drag from one document onto the other using the move tool, or drag with any tool from the source layer in the Layers palette onto the target document. Press the Shift key when you drop to center the image on the target document.

Users of Windows XP can’t get Help to open within Elements or Photoshop.
This had been a big headache for Adobe. Believe me, they are as upset as you are. Go here for information on a workaround.

You got a warning about where your scratch disk is located when you first open Photoshop or Elements.
This is a performance advisory. Elements and Photoshop will probably run just fine if you ignore the warning. However, if you are working on very large images, you should set your scratch disk to a drive other than the one where your OS and Windows swap file are. To set the scratch location, go to Edit > Preferences > Plug-ins and Scratch Disks... Find more information on scratch disks here.

You made a bunch of new brushes, gradients, or patterns and now they are nowhere to be found.
If you have not saved them in a set using the Preset Manager, and you have either deleted your preferences file or reset the palette that you added them to, they are gone for good. Always save your custom brushes, gradients, patterns or styles to their own set using the Preset Manager or the Save Brushes command from the brushes palette pop-up palette.

Your crop tool, and marquee tool jumps to edges making it hard to make precise crops or selections.
You have Snap turned on. To make it stop, choose View > Snap to toggle it off. It likes to turn itself back on, so be prepared to do it again.

When you make a new line with the type tool, the spacing is wrong—the next line is on top of the first, or it’s way too wide.
There is a bug in Elements that causes leading (the space betwen typed lines) to get stuck if you use the label feature in Contact Sheet or Picture Package. Leading will be stuck at whatever size was used for the label. To fix it, click the ‘T’ icon at the left end of the type tool’s options bar and choose Reset Tool from the menu. In Photoshop, if your leading is wrong, check the Character palette.

Photoshop or Elements keeps trying to access the Internet even when I set Online Prefs to Never.
If you don’t want any of the automatic update/download features (I don’t), search your system for aom.exe and rename it to aom.old. However, if you use LiveMotion, you can’t do that (it requires aom.exe or at least LiveMotion 1 did).

Your colors look different in Photoshop or Elements from how they display in any other application.
Photoshop and (to a lesser degree), Elements are color managed applications. You need to check your color settings at Edit > Color Settings. And read up on color management to understand what is going on. See my page on the subject, here.

You copied files from a CD to your computer and Elements says they are locked and won’t let you save your edits.
Files copied from any CD are always locked. Use Windows Explorer to navigate to where the files are on your computer. Click and Shift-click to or use Edit > Select All to select the files. Right-click on the selection block. Choose Properties from the menu. Uncheck the Read Only checkbox. Click the Apply button. Then click OK to close the Properties dialog.

While editing, either your picture, or the Elements interface is breaking up, or showing weird blocks of wrong colors, or otherwise not displaying properly.
Nine times out of ten, display problems are due to video card driver problems. Go to the Web site of your card manufacturer and check for updated drivers.

On starting Elements or Photoshop, you get an alert that the Abobe UI font could not be loaded.
See the Adobe tech doc on how to fix this.

Your computer locks up, shuts down, or reboots while running Elements or Photoshop.
The most common causes are defective motherboards, defective RAM, and defective CPUs. On Windows 95/98/ME, this can also be caused by buggy drivers. This behavior cannot be caused by application software. Please see the Adobe Techdoc on this topic.

You get a “Scratch disk full” or “Memory full” error message.
See the Adobe Techdoc on this subject.

Fonts don’t appear in the font menu.
Fist, make sure the fonts are installed. Fonts are installed via your operating system, not by Photoshop. To install fonts, choose Start > Settings > Control Panel and double-click on the Fonts folder. Then choose File > Install New Font. If you still don't see your fonts in the Photoshop font menu, then try the next step. Many TrueType fonts are incorrectly country-coded due to a bug in a font creation application that is used by quite a few type foundries. See the Adobe Techdoc for explanation and possible workarounds.

Where is the paintbucket?
Under the gradient tool in the toolbox.

You get an error message about faux bold when you try to warp text.
Click on the Palettes button on the type tool’s options bar to open the Character palette. Click on the little arrow in the upper right corner and select Faux Bold to toggle it off. In Photoshop 7, faux bold can be turned off via a button at the bottom of the palette.

You can’t find New View in PS 7.
It’s under Window > Documents > New Window.

There is a funny icon in the upper left corner of all of your images.
That’s the slice icon. All images start with one slice. Turn it off by choosing View > Show > Slices.

When you click with the eyedropper, it changes the background color instead of the foreground color.
You have selected the background color square in the Color palette (it will show with a double outline when it’s selected). Go to the Color palette and click on the foreground square to correct the problem.

Can you legally upgrade and use the Educational version of Photoshop with the full commercial version upgrade?
Yes. And you can use it for commercial purposes. See the Adobe site for more details if you are still nervous.

Photoshop freezes when trying to load.
The most common culprits aside from hardware problems are corrupt ICC profiles or corrupt fonts. Go here to find more details on things you can do.

When using the type tool, Photoshop runs very slow.
The most common cause is Norton System Works, in particular, the Recycle Bin Protection (I hope I’m getting those names right). If you don’t have those installed, try the link in the previous answer.

Your A drive (floppy drive) keeps running when you are using Photoshop.
This is a bug in Photoshop 6. The 6.01 patch will fix it. Go to Adobe and download the patch.

Performance is very slow when using Photoshop.
Adobe has a long document on how to optimize your system for Photoshop. Windows users, go here. Macintosh users, go here.

You can’t Paste as Paths from Illustrator.
In Illustrator, change your preferences (Files & Clipboard) to the AICB format. Illustrator is set to PDF by default.

You get an error message “PHOTOSHP caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL at 017f:bff7b9f5.”
You have an incompatible or corrupt ICC profile in your Windows/System/Color folder (win 98/98SE/Me) or ./system32/spool/drivers/color (win2k). Make a temporary folder somewhere else on your harddrive and move all the ICM and ICC files to that folder. Start Photoshop to make sure the error message is gone. Now move back the profiles that you know you need to Windows\System\Color (win 98/98SE/Me) or ./system32/spool/drivers/color (win2k). If the error message returns, you will need to move the profiles out and return them one by one until you find the one that is causing the problem. Also see the Adobe Techdoc on this subject.

Text is cut off or does not appear on type layers in very large images (400 MB or larger).
There are a number of solutions to this problem; see the type tool’s page for ways to deal with the problem. The type tool cannot create anti-aliased text larger than 8192 pixels on the image canvas in Photoshop 5.x or later, although it can in earlier versions. The type mask tool, however, can create selections that exceed this limit.

Copyright © 2002 by Jay Arraich.
All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright ©2002 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com