Weird Unusual Circumstances | The Photoshop CS2 Help Desk Book

Weird & Unusual Circumstances

What do I mean by weird or unusual ? Here are some examples:

You launch Photoshop, and where you would expect to see the Crop tool, there's an empty box.
You click on the Foreground color swatch and choose red in the Color Picker, but when you click OK, the color displays as something else, no matter how many times you try it.
A filter is "missing" from the Filter menu.
Photoshop repeatedly quits or freezes .

Many times these odd problems are caused by the Preferences file giving "bad instructions" to Photoshop. The technical wording is that the Preferences file is corrupt, which means that, in effect, it is leading Photoshop astray. The solution is to reset the Preferences file. We'll learn how to do that shortly, but first let's talk about this a little further. People often tell me that they were advised to fix a problem by reinstalling Photoshop, and although this will indeed fix most problems, those same problems can usually be fixed by simply resetting the preferences. The difference: Resetting the preferences requires a quick restart of Photoshop, versus having to completely reinstall the program. So, I would recommend resetting the preferences first; if it doesn't work, you can always resort to reinstalling.

But wait! Before resetting (and in particular, reinstalling) do this: Create a backup of anything you have customized, including brushes, swatches, shapes , styles, gradients, and patterns. In addition, if you have recorded actions or saved any tool presets, you'll want to create backups of those too. This is not really necessary when you're resetting your preferences, but is a must if you plan to reinstall the software. If you read the section before this chapter that covered upgrading from Photo-shop CS to CS2, you already know how to do this. But in case you didn't read that part (it's okay, I'm not hurt), please go take a look there now, keeping in mind that the same procedures applyalthough in that section I'm referring to upgrading, while here we're talking about creating backups before reinstalling.

You can read the detailed steps in the Upgrading to Photo-shop CS2 section, but basically you're going to save copies of all your custom settings: brushes, swatches, shapes, styles, gradients, patterns, tool presets, actions, workspaces, Web Photo Gallery layouts, Picture Package layouts, keyboard shortcuts, new document sizes, and color settings. Then, after reinstalling Photoshop CS2, move all these settings into the appropriate location (again, see the Upgrading to Photoshop CS2 section in the front of this book for full details).