Extreme beginner

[leca07]

First of all I wish to thank you for patience.
Concerning OS and application installation I always stick to the procedure and I’ve never had any kind of problems, (my PC is on the Win98SE platform).
Now, answers to you questions:
- I tried to open several photos but as I placed them one at the top of the other, nothing happened: all of them remained independent files. Naturally, I couldn’t change any of the settings – merge mode, tansparency…since photos were assigned as background(s).
- When I open a new blank Untitled file, I can use brush etc. but when I want to place a photo in it, the photo opens as an independent file and cannot be moved to a blank file not even on the new layer of the blank file.
- Other thing I discovered today: if I duplicate a photo, then the tools (brush, pen) can be applied on both original and duplicate. But if for a moment I switch to another program, say Acrobat reader, when I switch back none of the photos can be selected – their titlebars became greyed out and again none of the tools was available.
- I tried with saving jpeg photo as tiff and psd, but the same thing happened as with the original.
I’m not sure if that update would help. Maybe it’s something with PS general preferences or such. I even reinstalled it this morning. I’ve never had such problems while working with Photopaint.
That's it for now. Bye...

[Erik Heyninck]

Yeah, I know that something like this is frustrating.
Far from being paid by Adobe to make publicity for their software, I must say that I never had this kind of problems. That's why I thought that the problem might lie on install level.

And there are some different approaches between Photopaint and Photoshop... Personally, I never got on well with Photopaint.

Will you try this out? Open a photograph in Photoshop, hit Ctrl.+A to select it and then Ctrl+C to copy it to the clipboard.
Now open a second photograph, add a new, empty layer and click Ctrl.+V to paste the photo on the clipboard unto the new layer. This should normally be activated automatically. If not: click on its name in the layer panel. Now try if you can paint on this layer.

If not, then I would suggest you contact the Photoshop forum at Adobe's (you have to be registered to get access to it) because this is beyond my ability to solve. Sorry.

[Mark (theKeeper)]

Hmmm... well... this looks like a interesting thread. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Jane, after reading all of the posts, i must concure with Erik here. This sounds like an unusual problem, that might very well extend beyond Photoshop itself.

Just wanna ask you to try a couple things too, to be more sure. Ok?

At first i thought you might be in either Index or Bitmap mode, but you're able to add new layers... so that rules that out. And looking at the screenshot, i see nothing 'locked' on that layer... so... that's ruled out also.

You're not using a Tablet by any chance are you Jane? Or are you using a mouse?

Test:
Either way... have you tried painting on the new layer anyway, even though your cursor doesn't turn into the tool you clicked on? Try that... click on the airbrush, then even though you still see the normal mouse cursor, try painting on the layer like usual.
That would indicate a mouse driver problem if you CAN paint.

Even if Photoshop will not allow you to use a tool on a document, it does NOT usually grey out the title bar. That is an indication, within windows itself, that something else has been given 'focus' by the OS, or application. And if you only have 1 document open, then something is very wrongly going on in the program.
And even if it turns out to be something grossly simple that's wrong... it would be something that i myself have never come across; and thus wouldn't recognise.

My guess is that you're having one of a few problems:

1) Mouse driver conflicts.
2) Graphics driver conflicts.
3) Bad PS install (or corrupted program files)
4) Something is wrong with Windows, or one or more of it's essential files.

In any case, seeking more advanced help is preferrable for you. Chris Cox and a few other guys that helped create Photoshop, answer questions at the Adobe forum. I suggest you sign up there (for free), and post this problem to those guys on that board.

Good luck Jane and please let us know what happens ok? I'm REAL curious about this now.
Thanks.

[leca07]

Since I’ve never been a panic type I decided to do the only thing left – I upgraded my OS to Win2000 professional and guess what! Photoshop is working perfectly. None of the things mentioned earlier happened. Therefore, I guess that the latest version of any software is far more compatible with the latest versions of OS.
Though I still don’t understand why all of that happened ‘cause I’ve been working in Illustrator 10 as well and I’ve never had any problem with it. Anyway, thanks for your nerves and time. Now I’m going to step on some real work.
Bye. (and yes, I’ll bug you some more when I get stuck)

[Mark (theKeeper)]

hehee ya go ahead and bug us Jane... that's what we're here for. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Glad you got things sorted too.

[Erik Heyninck]

Jane, I'm very glad this is finally solved. And, being on Win2K myself, I can assure you that you won't regret it.

And keep on posting. Why not post an image you did in Photopaint? We are not single-minded here, and we're all learning from one another.
Some people prefer portraits to have an impression of someone, I prefer something they created.

Good luck.

If you don't work against time, time often works for you.