When Photoshop isn’t working, try these tips

Sometimes when working in Photoshop the tool you’re trying to use just won’t work, or won’t work as expected, or some command is greyed out in the menu and just isn’t available, or things just seem to not be working properly. 

Here’s a list of a few things to check if this happens to you. 

You have the wrong layer activated. 
Click on the correct layer to activate it. The active layer is shown “highlighted” in the Layer Panel.
 
You have the Layer Mask active, rather than the actual image content (or vice versa).
Click on the Layer Mask icon to work on it, or the image thumbnail to work on the image itself. The one that is active is shown with a white highlight around it in the Layer Panel. 

The active layer has the Visibility turned off. 
Click on the Visibility “eye” icon to make it visible. 

You have too many (or too few) layers selected. 
Some commands will only work on one layer at a time; some require multiple layers to be selected. 

The layer is “locked”. 
Check for the padlock icon in the Layer Panel – click it to unlock or use one of the Lock icons at the top of the Layer panel. 

You cannot see the circle around the brush that shows the brush size just a cross-hair in the centre of the brush. 
This can also occur for tools that operate like brushes (eg Clone Stamp, Healing Brush). 

You have Caps-Lock turned on, press the Caps-Lock key to turn it off. 

Your brush (or other tool) is not working as expected. 
- Check that the tools Blend Mode is set properly (usually Normal)
- Check that the tools Opacity and Flow are set properly
- Check that the Brush colour is set correctly (eg brushing white on a white layer mask instead of black)
- You could have the wrong tool selected (eg Eraser instead of Brush or Mixer Brush instead of Brush). 

The menu command you wish to use is unavailable (greyed out). 
This is often because certain commands do not work if the bit-depth of your image is set too high. Use the Image / Mode command to reduce the bit-depth (eg from 32-bit to 16-bit, or from 16-bit to 8-bit).

Check that you are not in Quick Mask mode (the layer will usually be highlighted in red if this is the case). 
Press Q to toggle Quick Mask mode. 

Some tools such as Free Transform and Crop require you to accept or reject the changes you’ve made before you can move on and do something else.
Click the Stop or Tick in the Options bar or press Escape or Enter respectively to reject or accept the changes and continue. 

The Clone Stamp, Healing Brush or Patch tools are not working as expected. 
If you are working on multiple layers, check that you have the right sampling option set in the Options bar (eg All Layers, Current Layer or Current and Below). 

You might have an active selection that you cannot see. 
Only selections of 50% or more show the “marching ants” and you may also have turned off the display of the “marching ants” by pressing the Cmd(Ctrl)+H key (press again to toggle these on and off). 

Some operations (such as many in-built filters and add-in filters) require a pixel based layer to operate on.
You might want to create a “stamp visible” layer using “The Move” - Cmd(Ctrl)+Option(Alt)+Shift+E. 

A tool is missing from your toolbar, or is not found in the usual place.
Choose Edit / Toolbar in the Photoshop menu, then click the Restore Defaults button to restore the default Photoshop toolbar. Obviously if you have moved tools around, this will reset those changes too.

Your Photoshop preferences file may be corrupt.
A common cause of weird behaviour in Photoshop is a corrupt Photoshop preferences file, you can recreate your Photoshop preferences file easily, but before you do you should back up your Photoshop workspace as it will be reset as well when you recreate your Preferences file. Once it is backed up, you can easily restore your workspace layout by reloading the saved copy.

To reset your Preferences file, go into the Photoshop Preferences and click the Reset Preferences On Quit button on the General tab, you will then need to respond OK to a warning dialog to confirm. The next time you open Photoshop it will be with a clean, fresh Preferences file, obviously if you have made changes there, you will need to reselect them.

So, while this is a common fix for many weird problems, it does not come without the pain of having to re-choose your previously set preferences.