Okay, let's review this one more time, shall we? If you haven't started using a tool yet, go through a quick checklist before you start:
Check the tool's settings in the Options Bar.
Check the Layers palette to make sure everything is "as it should be."
Check to see if you do have or should have something selected.
On the other hand, if you've encountered a problem and you want to try to figure out why it has happened , go through a quick checklist:
Check the tool's settings in the Options Bar.
Check the Layers palette to make sure that everything is "as it should be."
Check to see if you do have or should have something selected.
Just as saving multilayered PSD files should be an every-day work habit, so too should this checklist method become part of your everyday work in Photoshop CS2.