Photoshop 101: The Annoying Phantom Brush

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Have you ever had the creative juices flowing, your favorite music blaring, and selected your Photoshop brush, only to find that your cursor disappears and you can't see the brush outline? Photoshoppers everywhere have endured this little annoyance for years. It's really quite simple to avoid, but until you know why, it can be quite a thorn in your side.

Photoshop 101: The Annoying Phantom Brush

So you have your brush selected and all you see is a cursor like the one in the screenshot above? All you need to do is deactivate the Caps Lock on your keyboard, and you should see your brush! What was happening is with Caps Lock on, you are enabling “Precise Cursors,” a feature that is also accessible from Preferences > Cursors. Photoshop software is quite selective with the keyboard shortcuts and you have to completely adapt with this software as a designer. This software makes the maximum use of both the cursor and keyboard shortcuts at the same time thus you have to keep yourself aware of all the hidden shortcuts and commands. A designer should not ignore the keyboard shortcuts and learn all the shortcuts properly before making use of the Photoshop software. This means that keyboard and cursor shortcuts operate simultaneously in the Photoshop software.

Selecting a brush

Which of the other keyboard shortcuts had an influence on your work? Let us know in the comments.