The cursor in Photoshop - help needed

[Analog6]

How do you make the bl00dy cursor stray as a circle for things like the eraser, paintbrush, the spot healer etc? Mine will start off nicely as a circle and and then (it seems to be after I use the clone tool) suddenly tun into a darned cross! When I am trying to do a bit of masking on a layer and I cannot see the size of what I am working with it makes things very hard.

Any help much appreciated!

[ricktas]

the cross hairs means you have caps lock turned ON. tap the caps lock button and turn it off and your brush shape will return.

[Analog6]

So simple! Rick, you are a lifesaver!

[Terri]

You're joking! Every time it happens to me I've been re-booting my computer! Thanks Rick!

[Tannin]

Photoshop has several cursor-related bugs. The worst one, or at least the worst one that I know about, locks the cursor into the hand no matter what tool you select. This is a known bug which has been around for many years, but like so many other Photoshop bugs has never been properly fixed. (Maybe CS5 - CS4 certainly still has it.)

When it strikes, you can't do anything other than save your work and exit. A Photoshop restart sometimes (hardly ever but once in a while) fixes it. A reboot occasionally works. The best-publicised fix for this bug on the web is to go into preferances and "reset all warning dialogs to default" (there is a tick box to do this), then exit Photoshop and restart. This works maybe three times out of four. I know of people ho have been forced to uninstall/reinstall to get rid of this bug. But it always comes back.

The BEST thing to do when you get afflicted with this nasty bug, at least in CS3 and higher, is press the space bar. That cures it nearly every time.But if you don't know, you could very easily end up having to reinstall, because there is absolutely no sense in it, and absolutely no attempt so far from Adobe to fix it, and absolutely no Adobe help or documentation .... if I hadn't read about the spacebar trick on some obscure forum somewhere, I'd be as ignorant of a cure to this nasty bug as anyone else. So I take every opportunity to spread the word, 'cause it will happen to you one day.

SPACE BAR. Remember it. You will need it one day.

My god they are a terrible company. At least in this one regard, Steve Jobs was right.

[Kym]

Having the latest video card drivers is known to help fix the PS bugs outlined by Tony.
I use the word bugS as there are more than one that seem to interact.

[Tannin]

^ I've been down that route, Kym, long ago. I agree, there are several. The root cause has to do with poor memory management, I am told. .... Well, memory leaks are something like half of all the bugs in the universe, so maybe this doesn't get us very far.

[Kym]

Well, memory leaks are something like half of all the bugs in the universe, so maybe this doesn't get us very far.

100% correct. Given modern runtime profiling/debug tools etc. there is also no excuse.

[Analog6]

The caps lock is it for me. I went back to it, I had CL on and the eraser cursor was a cross, turned it off and there was my dear little circle.

Blessings on Rick, his ancestors and his descendants!

[mcdesign]

"My god they are a terrible company. At least in this one regard, Steve Jobs was right. "
You are not wrong there Tony, wish they would fix the bug in the new Adobe Flash Player!

[Tannin]

"The bug", Margaret? You mean they have got it down to just one now? That's a nice change. Though about 5 years sooner than expected.

The sad thing is what is happening with movie standards and the web. Flash has got rid of all those 17 zillion other proprietary formats that were even worse (does anyone remember Realplayer? Quicktime? They made Flash look fast, reliable and bug-free by comparison - which gives you an idea of how bad they really were).

Now Microsoft and Apple are pushing their own proprietary formats. Apple has Quicktime, which is pretty much dead in the water, thank god, and Microsoft have Silverlight, which is trying hard to carve out some market share but not getting anywhere. Ignore these two. The real action is with another proprietary player called H264. This is owned by a consortium of indusry heavyweights led by Apple and Microsoft. Their idea is to give it away free of charge to begin with, and get it included with all the web browsers. Then, once they have the market by the technicals, they can start charging people for it because here won't be any alternative. (Look it up if you llike. Pay particular attention to so-called "software patent rights".)

The only real alternatives are Flash (a very poor alternative - slow, buggy and memory hungry, though at least it's still free) and Ogg, which until recently was also proprietary. Ogg is now free: Google bought the company simply in order to get hold of the technology for Chrome, and have now open-sourced it - i.e., Google spent US$106 million to buy it, only to give it away to anyone who wants it! It is already in Chrome (of course), Opera, and Firefox.

It is free, fast, standards-based, and will remain free for ever - they have given the source code away, so now anyone can use it, and go on doing so forever. THis is the way of the future.

The only holdouts are the two usual suspects: Apple and Microsoft, who are both still pushing H264. Adobe are presumably doing two things right now: (a) trying desperately to turn Flash into a decent product, and (b) hoping like crazy that Ogg and H264 beat each other into a pulp and leave the way for Flash to go on into an extra decade.

By the way, Apple have been particularly evil on this one. They have been getting absolutely hammered by the trade press for their recent dirty tricks campaign pretending that they are championing open technology when in fact they are deliberately breaking all browsers except their own.

[Tannin]

With typical slightly sleazy wit, The Register wrote this up the other day using this headline: Apple reels as Steve Jobs Flashturbates

[farmer_rob]

There is something deeply flawed in the depths of Adobe IMO. I (sort of) like the products, but they steal your computer when they run/start (flash is criminal in this regard, so is acrobat reader when invoked from the web.) It just has a smell of very poor design right at the core.

Tony: I have to disagree with

...Adobe are presumably doing two things right now: (a) trying desperately to turn Flash into a decent product, and (b) hoping like crazy that Ogg and H264 beat each other into a pulp and leave the way for Flash to go on into an extra decade.

I think it is just b). a) I think requires too much of a complete rewrite of core software

Added: "El Reg" may have slightly sleazy wit, but they treat the IT world with the cynicism it deserves.

[dbax]

"My god they are a terrible company. At least in this one regard, Steve Jobs was right. "
You are not wrong there Tony, wish they would fix the bug in the new Adobe Flash Player!

Margaret don't get him started


Tony your absolutely right, I don't fiddle with moves much, but its almost more frustrating than Photoshop

[Tannin]

Adobe are presumably doing two things right now: (a) trying desperately to turn Flash into a decent product, and (b) hoping like crazy that Ogg and H264 beat each other into a pulp

I think it is just b). a) I think requires too much of a complete rewrite of core software

Well yes. You and I know that. But are Adobe smart enough to realise it? I reckon that they think it just needs restyling of the forward/reverse buttons and a more complicated licence agreement. But let's put it this way: if you hired me to fix Flash for you, and I asked you what tools you were going to provide me with, would there be any mention of nuclear weapons? (Take care! Depending on your answer, I may or may not take the job.)