Photoshop Weirdness

Zeviet · Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 11:37 am Post subject: Photoshop Weirdness

Hi,

I'm fairly familiar with PS, but suddenly when I apply an adjustment effect such as Hue/Saturation on one layer, it effects all the layers below it. I'v relaunched PS and restarted my mac.

Another weird thing, when I select a color to paint, such as red, it always switches to gray, no matter what color I select.

The last thing, which probably is just a setting I accidentally toggled, I have the background black, when I view the file in 'Standard Screen Mode'. How do I change it back?

Any ideas
Zevie Confused

artd · Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 4:44 pm Post subject:

Hi Zevie and welcome to PF :-)

Question 1) If you're using an Adjustment 'Layer' that's normal. If you want the adjustment layer to effect only the layer directly below it, click on the line between them while holding the alt/opt key down (the pointer will change to two overlapping circles). That will create a clipping mask that will restrict the adjustment to just that one layer.

Question 2) If you're sure you're in RGB Color mode and not Grayscale (Image > Mode) then you've probably accidentally activated the Quick Mask mode. Tap your Q key to get back to normal.

Question 3) Go to Edit > Preferences > Interface (Photoshop > Preferences > Interface for Mac). There you'll see how to change your background colors for the various screen modes.

Hope this is helpful,

Art

Zeviet · Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 4:56 pm Post subject:

Thanks, you answered 2/3 of my questions. I don't think I was clear enough on the first question. I always used to color correct photos by selecting the photo in the layers menu and hitting an adjustment such as curves. When
I do that, all the layers below it get effected.

Do I not understand your instructions?

artd · Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 6:34 pm Post subject:

Hi Zevie,

I'm not sure but I guess you're going to the Image menu and choosing 'Adjustments' > Curves (or whatever) instead of using Adjustment Layers. If so, and that adjustment is effecting all the layers, I'm not sure what the problem is. I'd suggest just re-creating Photoshop's preferences file, that should fix what ever is causing the problem.

To re-create Photoshop's preferences, start the application while holding down Command+Option+Shift. Then, click Yes to the message, "Delete the Adobe Photoshop Settings file?" After re-creating the preferences, the only preferences you may need to reset are those found under Photoshop>Preferences. You won't lose your color settings or custom work space.

Art

Zeviet · Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 2:12 am Post subject:

Thanks artd, I'v tried that before, I'v even reinstalled PS, but nothing seems to work. I uninstalled PS using Adobe's uninstaller, but maybe if I remove the whole CS4 Suite and reinstall, it would work. When I try uninstalling the whole suite, it says couldn't uninstall.... For nearly every application...

artd · Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 5:16 pm Post subject:

Zevie, try this...

Without starting your Photoshop application, go to User > Library > Preferences > and locate the "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Settings" folder. Change the name of that folder to "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Settings_Old". Now, fire up Photoshop and it will replace that folder with a new one. See if your problem is solved. If not, just delete the new folder and go back to using the original by removing that "_Old" from it's name. If it does solve your problem, something in that original folder is bad, you could try putting stuff back, one thing at a time until you locate the culprit.

Another way of troubleshooting the problem would be to create a new User Account (System Prefs > Accounts) and test for the problem using that account. If the problem disappears while using the new account, you'll know your problem is caused by something in your user account and not in the Photoshop application itself. You can easily delete the fake user account later.

One thing to keep in mind is that reinstalling Photoshop does not delete or recreate your user side preferences. That would not be nice if you had several user accounts and they all lost all of their preferences :-)

Hope something here is helpful and that you get your problem fixed soon!

Art

Zeviet · Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 5:52 pm Post subject:

Thanks, I'v done most of the things you've listed. The problem now is I uninstalled the whole suite using App Zapper and it seems to have removed everything (because Adobe's Uninstaller wasn't working properly), but when I try reinstalling the Suite, it gets stuck at the installation stage, I'v even tried installing one program at a time.

Any ideas how to get the installation to work?

Thanks for all the time,
Zevie

artd · Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 8:41 pm Post subject:

Zevie,

I don't know; there are just so many possibilities! I'm beginning to wonder if it might be a hardware problem of some kind. At this point I'd probably be thinking about reformatting the hard drive and starting fresh :-)

Adobe has a pretty good troubleshoot page (link below) that you might want to check out. Hopefully, you'll be able to find something there that will be helpful. Their page is divided into Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced troubleshooting. Good luck and here's the link:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404895.html

Art

Zeviet · Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 3:10 am Post subject:

Thanks artd for all the help!

I'v figured it out, after using App Zapper, I used Adobe's Cleanup Utility and it removed everything I wasn't able to and then I was able to reinstall LOL

artd · Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 12:06 pm Post subject:

Glad you got it fixed Zevie, I love success stories!

Art

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