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The Reappearing/Disappearing Brush Tip

 

This one gets more people because it’s a feature that acts like a bug. Has this ever happened to you? You’re working in Photoshop, you’re using the Brush tool (B), and everything seems fine. But a little later in your session, you get the Brush tool again, and it no longer displays the size of the currently selected brush tip. Instead, it displays a little crosshair cursor. So you go to the Preferences menu and choose Display & Cursors, and sure enough, you’ve got Normal Brush Tip chosen as your preference, but for some strange reason, it’s not showing your brush size; it’s showing that stupid crosshair. Here’s the problem: Check your Caps Lock key. It’s turned on, and turning it on changes your Brush cursor from displaying brush size to displaying the crosshair. This is actually a feature to be used when you need to see the precise center of your brush. The problem is it’s assigned to the Caps Lock key, so every time you turn on Caps Lock when you’re working with type, you just temporarily switched your Brush cursor (or any cursor for that matter). Does Adobe need to find a better key for this feature/bug? You betcha! Will it happen? Not as far as I know.

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6 Comments

  1. Kim said on — August 4, 2008 @ 5:28 pm

    Thank you so much for that tip. I have had that happen a few times and wondered what I did to make that happen. You’ve just made my DAY!

  2. Kamui said on — August 5, 2008 @ 12:25 pm

    omg… sometimes i went crazy because of that “bug” ^^
    thanks a lot for that tip!!

  3. Emmy said on — October 15, 2008 @ 12:23 am

    Thanks a bunch for writing that!
    I was going nuts trying to figure out what was wrong in Photoshop.
    Thank God for google and thank God for your site and your contribution!!!

  4. Andrew said on — February 27, 2009 @ 1:26 pm

    Seriously, I think I was restarting Photoshop every time that happened. I’m glad that I looked this up, but I’m especially grateful that you posted this. Thanks friend.

  5. SBBurnette said on — March 22, 2009 @ 2:00 pm

    Thank you so much!

    Now I understand why restarting my computer seemed to be the only thing that fixed this every time it happened =)

  6. Andreas said on — July 20, 2009 @ 7:15 pm

    LOL

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