Fix A Broken Photoshop Without Re-Installing
I want to share a very useful tip with all of you who have ever wanted to throw your computer across the room because of Photoshop for one reason or another. It’s inevitable, every once in a blue moon, software can just make your day a living hell for no obvious reason. It can be anything from the Layers palette won’t show up, to menu items grayed out when they shouldn’t be. I want to show you a quick way to put your problems behind you without having to re-install Photoshop.
Last week, I was Photoshopping and I noticed that (screenshot below) all of my brushes looked pixelated. not only did they looked pixelated in the Brushes palette, but even when I used the brushes, they even drew like the document was in bitmap mode, but of course it wasn’t. I tried everything under the sun to fix it, and I even called a few good designer friends of mine and they had never heard of such a thing. This is a recreation of what my brushes palette looked like:
When it should have looked like this:
And this is what the brush looked like when I used it:
When it should have looked like this:
After some discussion with colleagues, we decided that it wouldn’t hurt to try and delete the Photoshop Preferences file from my system and see if that works. Well I’m not exactly sure where to even find that file or if it’s a hidden file or not, so I did some searching. I came across a thread in the Adobe forums that was a godsend.
(*Works for Photoshop 6x and newer!) All you have to do to delete your settings and start fresh is 1) Close Photoshop, and 2) Hold Command + Option + Shift (Control + Alt + Shift, PC) while you restart Photoshop. This brings up a dialogue box where you can choose to delete your settings file, no need to search through your system folders to find it.
After I did this, my Brushes palette was back to normal. Who woulda thunk it! Now, this little shortcut may not fix every glitch you run into, but it’s a butload faster than re-installing, so It’s worth a shot if Photoshop is acting up on you :)
Perhaps you’ve heard of a problem involving adobe help viewer opening at random times?
It’s happened to me when doing blending options, running actions, even changing text properties. It will randomly open, and I was no where near the F1 key.
You think these kind of glitches could be related?
You can do a similar thing in Windows by moving the stuff in the Photoshop settings folder (see path below). Create a new folder labeled OLD, and drag the brushes settings file into it.
C:\Documents and Settings\Your_User_Name\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop\9.0\Adobe Photoshop CS2 Settings
I’ve got a question PS question that maybe someone here can help me with. I just switched to a Mac and CS3 and when I go to use the type tool the flashing vertical line/spacer/tool thingy (what is that actually called?) is huge no matter the size of text and it places text at bottom of it, a few inches below where I want the text to be or sometimes off the image. Any idea what the problem is? I’m sure it’s probably something in the preferences but I’m still new to the Mac workspace.
Great tip Bitt!
I wonder if you have a fix for this Adobe problem: http://iandmac.com/2008/06/adobe-cross-grade-fun/
Great hint. I remember reading this somewhere before. By the way: PS seems to be full of mysterious bugs. Every CS3 app crashes on my Mac (10.5.) by starting Spotlight directly via cmd + space. :-/
Does anyone know if that would work with Illustrator?
I usually have more problems with Illustrator than PS. I have the CS2 version (Mac 10.4).
I’m well behind in reading my feeds, but I had to do just this thing earlier today, several hours before I read your story. Every time I moved a palette, Photoshop would crash and make me cry. :’(
Just tried on illustrator cs3 (pc) and the key sequence works.
Thanks Bitt
This trick has come in handy more than just a couple of times. The amount of time and headaches this saves is great!
Just out of curiosity… was the pencil tool selected and not the brush tool? That’s what happens to your brushes panel when the pencil tool is selected. Also, you need to warn people when the reset their preferences that they will loose ALL unsaved brushes, shapes, styles, etc etc..
Otherwise, this is my first comment and I just want to say what an excellent blog you have!
The biggest problem I have had with photoshop is that it randomly resets all of my settings. Custom brushes are gone, have to reload them, rulers no longer present, swatches reset…things of that nature. Has anyone else ever had this happen?
That happens to me every once in awhile AJ. Even more so in Illustrator.
Always save your workspace! =]
I’m pretty sure it works in CS2 as well, but it doesn’t bring up a dialog about it, it just deletes the file as it starts up.
Glad to see that shortcut is still around. It saved my butt quite a few times back in the day.
Well.. usually when you select the pencil tool and use one of the texture brushes is that it happens…
Maybe you tapped SHIFT+B and it selected the pencil tool.
More importantly, why work in Photoshop in Windows in the first place?
Re: You can do a similar thing in Windows
by moving the stuff in the Photoshop settings
folder (see path below).
See how I did that? That was a Mac vs. Windows joke. That’s what that was.
Now, that’s brand new to me and hella useful! :D
The only one I remembered which worked last time for me was using Reset Warning Dialogs. Forgot what it fixed. LOL!
niiice one, thank you.
LOL… nice one Jamie ;-)
save my workspace? hhhmmm. that word save, i don’t know what it means, but it sure sounds like a good thing. i’ll have to research more on this “save” thing you speak of. it was so good to hear it…saaave. I like it.
-_- i should save my workspace
I have recently been having a huge problem with going back and forth between Illustrator, especially with .eps’s. When I try and open in Illustrator it gives me a random size and dpi such as 26.66″x26.66″ at 1200dpi for every file, and I’m not able to change it. Now when I try and bring it over I don’t even get the .eps dialog box, now I just get an error that reads:
“Could not complete your request because the plugin entry point could not be found..”
Any ideas? Could deleting the Photoshop file settings help with this?
Oh Em George. It is just the pencil tool! :P
And in regards to saving your workspace. It saves your menus, palettes and any key commands you may have customized. and if you save your brush sets somewhere you wont have to worry about losing that.
So do that before you reset.
Good day Bitts.
@twoeightnine: it sounds like you need to check your Character palette. If I’m ever having problems with text in PS, that’s the first place I go. Sometimes you can inadvertantly toggle one of the buttons at the bottom or change values you didn’t mean to. See if the Subscript or Small Caps buttons have been turned on.
Sounds like you had the pencil tool on instead of the brush tool…
But nice tip, even though I’ve never had a problem with Photoshop in the past 7 years I’ve been using it. :/
I have had a problem with every version of photoshop I have ever used going back to version 7 both on PCs and MACs.
Every so often, I will be using the brush tool, always set to the “Normal Brush” setting. The cursor will, for no apparent reason, become the “precise” brush, will then have to go to the setting and change it to a “precise” brush to get the “Normal Brush” cursor back, and then after a few minutes it will switch back.
Anyone else have this issue?
thank you so much! you genius!
Hey Josh.
In regards to the problem with the precise brush tool issue, you are probably turning on caps lock. This activates precise brushes.
Bitt even made a post for it!
Link:
http://www.bittbox.com/photoshop/photoshop-101-the-annoying-phantom-brush/
Yeah, I’ve been using that one for a while. I believe Photoshop just has some personal issues. For me the biggest annoyance is when I click on the layer styles icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and multiple browser windows open to Photoshop Help. Ugh…
I actually like the pixelated brushes better, lol. Just out of curiosity are those brushes you created or did you get them somewhere?
Ha, if I’ve been turning caps lock on all these years by accident (and I could completely see me doing this) I will stab myself in the eye.
Thanks.
something like this for flash would be nice ;-)
@Doug, the answer is both for those brushes. Bitt made them, but they are available as a free download (and I love these brushes, used them extensively for my blog design!)
@Josh, hehe, I’ve done that so many times! It’s aggravating!
I thought burshes appear like that when your in pencil mode?
twoeightnine, check your leading. It’s probably set really hgh.
my circle tool wont work it makes the circle yea but it’s not the size i wanted to it be it start out that way but it gets smaller when i fill it can someone help me with this
This tip just saved my life
Cheers BB
Thank YOU!
This tip really saved me from throwing my computer out a large window into the street.
My text tool would just not work any more. The size/kerning/paragraph settings etc. would just randomly reset to some massive negative number and not return.
This seems to have fixed it – really, thank you.
Oh gosh. You are a life saver…I was serioulsy about to throw my laptop across the room because I couldn’t fix my text.
Thank you!
i need to can how make brochures if any one know told me plz
i need to see any brochures it doit to know how it doit
Wow! A colleague just lost all his fonts for photoshop and was getting more than a little stressed. I remembered reading this a few weeks back and suggested he tried it and it worked a treat! Thanks!
What’s the shortcut for a mac?
my save for web option is inactive and i need that shortcut for my mac
please help
thanks
thanks buddy.. lately i couldn’t use the crop tools. when i did that the tool, it won’t crop the images, but it leaves the images to 1×1 px.
thanks to you.
broke image link http://www.bittbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/reset_photoshop_preferences_5.jpg
=(
broken image link http://www.bittbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/reset_photoshop_preferences_5.jpg
=(
oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah, after a hard days night i have found this thread.
manymany thanks
Thanks for this very handy article, Couldn’t have came across it at a better time my color settings had went very strange and even the settings i used before were messed up. Thanks for this.
What a godsend – this just happpened to me (pixelated brushes) and thanks to you, within seconds it’s fixed.
I intsalled CS-4 but the images in photoshop CS4 are totally distorted or some graphic problem, i dono wat is this prroblem and i dono how to fix this problem!!
plz help me if anyone know what is the problem!!
Your brush tool glitch reminds me of an old video game code. lol
Anyhow, this is a really excellent read you put up. Thankyou so much for showing this. I keep on having trouble with adobe photoshop when I connect my monitor to my lap top (extend desktop) and this, as a temporary solution at least, has for some reason fixed the glitches I’ve been experiencing.
Hey-
Not sure if someone already mentioned this- I haven’t read through all of the above comments- but if so, forgive me- but your problem with the pixelated brushes has nothing to do with the preferences file- what happened was that rather than having your brush tool selected, you actually had your pencil tool selected – (ya probably hit “b” one too many times & didn’t realize it)., Then, when you deleted your preferences file, all settings (not just the actual EDIT> PREFERENCES dialog box settings- but tool, action, color, palette, etc settings as well) reverted back to the default set up- this, in turn, reset your tools back to default- meaning that for all tools that share the same button & hotkey, rather than remembering your last tool used (which, in your case, was the pixelated-brush-looking pencil tool), the default tool of that set was instead displayed (ie, the non-piexelated brush tool) – which, in turn ended up inadvertantly- by proxy- solving your problem of the pixelated brush :)
Several of the Photoshop plug-ins were grayed out and I could not use them. Adobe suggested a serpiginous method to alleviate the problem which would have taken one to two hours. I tried your suggestion and miraculously I fixed the problem in 30 seconds.
I am indebted to you for all of the time you saved me.
Harold
Hi Dear,
You really helped me a lot..Thanks so much for this a very powerful tip.
Regards..
what is the options button?
When I click these it brings up my Properties box? I have lost the shapes and need to find that. Any clues?
Photoshop Elements 7