Ben's Extra-Strength Photoshop Tips (09/02/03)

The Extra-Strength Tips for the Clients and Friends of Ben Willmore (www.digitalmastery.com):

It's Labor Day weekend and all I can think about is work (well, not really, but I was thinking of you tipsters, which prompted me to get just a smidge of work done). I just returned from San Diego where I sat at the back of the room at a Photoshop event. As I was watching people teach, I thought of the problems that people often encounter when attempting to reproduce effects. You know those times when you try to choose a menu item and it's grayed out, or you attempt to use a tool and it simply doesn't work as expected? When I see someone who's in trouble with Photoshop, I go through a checklist to see why they might be having trouble.

The first thing I do is glance at the menu bar to see if the majority of the menus are dimmed out. When that's the case, it's usually an indication that the user is in the middle of doing something (transforming, filtering, adjusting, etc.) and needs to complete the task before Photoshop will allow them to use other features in Photoshop. I'll either press Return or Enter to apply the change, or I'll press the Esc key to abort the operation.

If that doesn't fix it, then I'll take a look at the Layers palette and make sure they have the correct layer active. There are many things that simply don't work when you're working on the Background layer, a Type layer, an Adjustment Layer, an empty layer or a layer that is active but not visible.

After I make sure the proper layer is active, then I'll check for a hidden selection. It's very common to have someone type Command-H (Mac), or Ctrl-H (Win) to hide a selection and then a few steps later forget that they have an active selection which is limiting which areas they can change. I like to click on the Select menu to see if the Deselect option is available, which will indicate that a selection is active.

If things still aren't quite working as planned, then I'll start to look at the tool that the person is attempting to use. It's not unusual to find the blending mode in the options bar to be set to something other than Normal, or to have the Opacity setting at a very low setting. If I don't notice anything right away, then I'll Control-click (Mac) or Right-click (Win) on the tool icon on the far left of the Options bar and choose Reset Tool to make sure I've cleared out any weird settings.

If they're attempting to adjust an image, then I'll also glance at the Preview checkbox in the adjustment dialog box they are using. If it's off, then you won't see the effect of the adjustment until they click the OK button.

If I haven't solved the problem by this time, I'll end up getting frustrated like everyone else, but then my appetite for a challenge has kicked in and I'll get into serious sniffing-out mode. This is when I start looking for unusual things. I'll choose Image>Mode to make sure they are in a common mode (like RGB or Grayscale). If I find that they are in bitmap, indexed color, duotone, or multi-channel mode, then I'll try converting the image to RGB. I'll also check the Image>Mode menu and choose 8 bits/pixel if its available because many of Photoshop's features don't work in 16-bit mode. If that doesn't do it, then I'll look at their mouse hand to see if they are using a graphics tablet. That's when I'll usually discover that they have their stylus turned upside down, which causes them to switch to the Eraser tool.

If all else fails, I'll try to reproduce the problem on another file and if I'm still having the problem, then I'll restart Photoshop while holding the Shift-Option-Command keys (Mac), or Shift-Alt-Ctrl keys (Win) to trash the preferences and if that doesn't work, then I just might re-install Photoshop.

I haven't had to resort to re-installing Photoshop in over two years, which means that this list should serve you well in diagnosing problems in Photoshop.

-Ben Willmore