Help with brush tool in CS5

[paulh921]

For some reason the brush tool has defaulted to a cross hair on screen. I have gone into the Preferences menu, cursors etc. and specified the 'full size brush tip', but it does not make any difference to what is being presented. It means that I don't get a visible representation of the size of the brush which makes it impossible to paint with any accuracy.
I have looked through the menu items and can't see any other item which would change the appearance of the cursor.
I wondered if anyone had any thoughts which would help me resolve this.
Thanks,

Paul

[FrankMi]

Hi Paul, I've had exactly the same issue from time to time and changing the preferences doesn't correct the issue. Sometimes shutting down and restarting PS CS5 helps and sometimes it doesn't. It seems that CS5 gets 'lost' in this regard and later on reverts back to proper behavior. I've not yet been able to determine exactly what causes the behavior or what will reliably cause it to go back to working properly.

Try switching to different tools and back and restarting. If you find out exactly what works please let us know.

[The Blue Boy]

Hi guys,

Have you tried just pressing the Caps Lock? This is the default keyboard shortcut for this action. I often find I knock this button from time to time.

Let us know if this doesn't work as it may (hopefully not!) be a weightier issue.

[paulh921]

Thanks fellas, I have shut down the system overnight and lo and behold I now have the full size brush tip! I don't know why but presume it is either ghosts in the machine or as a former colleague of mine used to say, ' the inherent perversity of inanimate objects.'
Thank you both for taking the time to respond.
Best regards,

Paul

[Lloyd]

Hi Paul,
It is as Paul said that the Caps Lock key was on. The reason the problem went away after rebooting was because when the system rebooted it turns the Caps Lock key off.
Regards
Lloyd

[FrankMi]

Hi Lloyd, I tried the Caps Lock but it didn't solve it for me. The one time I thought I found it I discovered the I was zoomed in and brush was bigger than the screen so all I was seeing was the cross-hairs in the center of the circle. The real issue still come up for me from time-to-time and disappears on its own. So far I've not been able to pin it down to a specific event that either causes it or clears it. All I can verify when it happens is that the settings are correct and haven't changed.

[Bushmoz]

Try to increase the size of the brush by pressing the right hand square bracket key. This one ]

[FrankMi]

Try to increase the size of the brush by pressing the right hand square bracket key. This one ]

Thanks Bushmoz, I'll try that next time it happens.

You might like to go to Forum Actions, above, and edit your profile with your name and general location. Unless you prefer to be called Bushmoz, of course!

[krispix]

Try to increase the size of the brush by pressing the right hand square bracket key. This one ]

Quite so. The other square bracket reduces the brush size. It's a much better way of controlling the brush than the drop-down and fiddling with sliders. This works with all brushes, dodges, burners, sponges and clone tools.

There are loads of keyboard shortcuts in PS and it's worth checking them out.

[Hansm]

just a question, do you face this problem on a mac?
If yes, I had a weird behavior with CS4 on the Mac that sometimes some tools did not react as expected.
Just switching between work-spaces was enough to get rid of it.
With CS5 however I have no issues.