Lesson Info
9. Troubleshooting Tips
Lessons
Lesson Info
Troubleshooting Tips
all right. Well, we have a few minutes, and what I would like to do is just talk about things in general and talk about troubleshooting. That was funny, that one image messed up on me where I'd have to trouble shoot it. So let's see if I can find an image that might have a few layers in it. So it might be easier to have problems and have to troubleshoot. This one has a bunch of layers in it. So for the first thing, this is like what my brain goes through when it thinks about troubleshooting first, my brain thinks if something's not working, maybe I try to make a, um adjustment and dark in the picture, and nothing gets darker when I try. First thing my brain thinks of is, Is there a selection somewhere that would limit where the adjustment is happening? And it just happens to be in such a small area that I can tell it's there. Sometimes what it is is I've used a selection tool by accident. I had the tool active. I just clicked from milliseconds and bumped it, and there might be literall...
y one pixel selected somewhere in It's so tiny that I can't see it in the picture. So the first thing I do is I go to this select menu, and if the choice called de Select is available at all, it means there's a selection somewhere on your screen in that selection is limiting what part of the image would be able to work on. And so if I glance out of ammunition, I don't see a selection. I'm still going to go up here and see if the select is available. And if it is, I'm gonna choose it to make sure there is no selection that I wasn't aware of. The second thing would be if I'm trying to do something and it's working in a way I don't expect. I'm gonna look in my layers panel and I'm going to say, is the layer that I'm thinking about actually active because I might be thinking about this car. But Photoshopped might have a completely different layer active, and it might be a layer that when I adjust it, I don't really notice it happening. Maybe it's a layer that contains shades of gray, and I'm trying to make it more colorful and just didn't do anything because it doesn't know what color is supposed to be. So I glance at my layers panel and make sure the layer that I'm thinking about might be active. Other things that can really mess me up is sometimes I'll end up using a brush instead of seeing a round brush cursor like this one I see across hair, and it doesn't seem to matter if I change my brush size. It's always across there. It just bugs me. Well, there are two times when your brush is gonna look like across there. The first time is the most obvious time. That time it'll happen most frequently is if you press the caps lock key on your keyboard. Pressing caps lock will always give you across here with whatever painting, tool or retouching tool you use. Even if you reinstall Photoshopped, you're still gonna get across Erica's caps. Lock is still pushed down, so glance down at caps lock. See if the little light on your keyboard is on for that, and if it is turned off, we'll get back to your brush with. Second time is if your brush is so large that it can't show the edges of it. It is so huge that it is beyond the edge of your screen. Then it can no longer show the edge of your brush because it's out beyond my screen. It's out, you know, sitting out here. So it still tries to show you that you have a brush in use by showing you just the center so I would glance in the upper left corner of my screen and see if this number is huge. If so, that's a hint that you probably have humongous brush. Maybe you opened a Web graphic that's tiny, and you were using a brush that was appropriate for a print size document, which you might be a lot bigger. Other things that can mess up on me if I find a lot of my menus are grayed out. Things I'm used to using just aren't available. Then I want to go to the image menu. Choose mode in C if it's in 16 bit. 16 bit is the mode that gives you more brightness levels than usual, and it is occasionally helpful, but it's rare that anybody would need to use it. But not every feature is available when you're in 16 bit mode. And so if you find that a lot of your menu commands or just great out not available, go to the image menu. Choose mode in glance to see if you're in 16 bit mode, and if you are switched eight, then all your menus will suddenly become available. If you find that regardless what it is you try to do, it's just not working. You might be in some sort of mode, like when I'm transforming something where the rest of photo shop is locked out until I'm done with whatever it is I'm doing. Like if I typed command t here and I just might not realize that this is somewhere on my screen, it might be a tiny object, or I might have typed command H, which hides the edges of things, and I can't even tell it's happening. So if you find that you try to get to a tool and it won't let you or you go to menus in every single thing, just about his great out try hitting the return key. Return means finish this transformation. Isn't that how we usually finished scaling and rotating press return and then press enter. I'm sorry. Not enter escape. Escape aborts things. So if you're in some weird mode where it thinks you're doing something odd, return this. First gonna try to accept it and say you're done. And if that didn't happen to get you out, hitting escape will usually abort whatever it waas and then double check your menus, see if they're available again. If you for some reason have been told to use a particular menu command and you simply can't find it anywhere, it told you to use the polar coordinates Menu Command and you're going. I don't know where the heck it is. I can't find it anywhere. Go to the help menu at the top of the help menu. Its automatically highlights search. Type in what you're looking for. P. O L. And it will tell you where it's located. I was typing in polar coordinates. Just take the first few letters of it, gave me within a list, and if I highlight it within that list, it will show me where within Futter shop that particular command is found. So if you read a magazine article and it tells you to go Ghazi and blurrier image, and it doesn't tell you the path it takes to find that command. Go to help you start typing in the name that they asked you to find. Highlight it within the menu and it'll show you where it is. And Photoshopped, Another thing that could mess me up is if something is not working the way I expected to Quick mask mode might be turned on quick mask mode. You're used to be able to make a selection and typing que to get this overlay. Well, if you happen to bump the cuchi when no selection is present, then it doesn't look like you did anything. You can tell that you went into quick mask mode, but now anything that you try to do. Look, if I try to choose a color to paint with and I choose blue, it's not gonna look like blue. It looked like a shade of gray because you only can pick paint with shades of gray when you're in quick mask. So glance in the bottom left of your screen and see if this icons indented. If it is your in quick mask mode and either click it or type queue to get out. Then. If any tool ever acts really weird on you, here's a little tip for getting it to act normal again. Whatever tool that you have active in the upper left of your screen will be a copy of the icon right there. Press the right mouse button when you're on top of that icon. If you're on a Mac and you only have one mouse button, the equivalent is to hold down the control key and click and you'll find a little hidden menu appears and you can reset just that tool to it's default settings are reset all of your tools so somebody else has spent on your machine and they messed up all your tools. You can reset them all. That's also nice. When you're teaching, you go to a student's machine and everything seems to be messed up. You come over here, you right click on that icon in the upper left, reset all their tools, and those are the things that I mentally go through my head when something in photo shop is not working the way expected to. That's kind of the list of what I go through
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Ratings and Reviews
Karl Donovan
Brilliant! Incredibly helpful. The most useful set of tutorials for beginner photoshop I've found. Plus well taught and easy to follow. Thanks heaps.
fbuser 500c136e
Ben is an incredible presenter. Engaging, enthusiastic, and informative, Ben had the difficult task of hold my attention for hours; and he did it effortlessly! What a great presentation! I highly recommend this one! :-)
user-b3892a
Thought I'd let you know, I watched several "classes" and I found yours the only one I was confident I could replicate what you have done. You provided all the steps verbally as well as visually, most presenters have gaps in their verbal instructions. Also, it was so packed with useful information, I actually got "full" before you were done. You provide a good return-on-investment in several ways. Thanks!