Blacked out curves & Histogram window

[Ray Hudson]

I just bought PE 2.0, and your book. In fact I bought PE because of your book. I'd read a reference to it in a camera magazine, and saw it would allow me to overcome the reasons I'd not bought PE in the first place. (Curves, Channels). I installed PE and immediatly installed Hidden Power tools. Now in using PE I find that the Levels window is blacked out and when using the Hidden tools to get to a curves layer, the curves window is similarly blacked out. I don't know if it's PD 2.0 or the Tools doing this, as I never even opened PE before installing the Tools. Have you run into this before? I thought about uninstalling Hidden Tools but then read the thread here on uninstalling and thought I'd write you instead.
Thx

Ray Hudson

[BobJones]

Ray, check the mode of your image. Not all features work in all the modes. Levels will be unavailable in indexed and bitmap for example. Try changing the mode to RGB or greyscale through the menu Image->mode dialog and see if that takes care of the problem.

[Ray Hudson]

Thanks Bob - but that wasn't it. All the images I've tried using either 'Levels' from PE2, or the Curves adj. from Hidden Tools show the same black box instead of the expected one, and all have been RGB. I'm wanting to ask Adobe about this, but finding how to email a tech question on their webpage is not easy!. I finally did get a phone number I can use tomorrow. I'll post whatever response I get here.

Ray

[BobJones]

Ray,

I misunderstood what you meant by blacked out. So, your menu links are active but when you click on them the dialog box window that comes up is black. Is that correct?

I've never seen anything like that before. I have elements 2.0 and Richard's Hidden Power Tools and I've had no problem with them at all. I originally had Windows 98 and upgraded to Windows XP and both worked fine.

The problem is between your system and Photoshop Elements. Richard's tools act as the interface to features within Elements and don't add or modify executable code. It could be an installation problem with Elements or a video card or driver issue. Your best bet is to talk to Adobe and see if they've run across this before.

I'm sorry I couldn't have been more helpful.

Bob

[Stephen M]

Sounds like a corrupt pref file, if PSE is like the full version - when weird things happen it is a good sign that prefs are shot.

From the help system:

"To restore all preferences to their default settings:

Do one of the following:

Press and hold Alt+Control+Shift (Windows) or Option+Command+Shift (Mac OS) immediately after launching Photoshop or ImageReady. You will be prompted to delete the current settings.
In Mac OS, open the Preferences folder in the System Folder (Mac OS 9.x) or Library folder (Mac OS X), and drag the Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Settings folder to the Trash.
New Preferences files will be created the next time you start Photoshop or ImageReady."

[your_local_install_path/Adobe/Photoshop%207.0/Help/1_4_20_0.html]


Regards,

Stephen.

[BobJones]

Ray,

Stephen is right, PSE is like the full Photoshop in that regard. It can't hurt to try to recreate the preferences file and ADOBE will probably want you to try that anyway.

Good Luck,
Bob

[Susan S.]

This one turns up from time to time in both the Photoshop and the Elements Adobe discussion fora. My hazy recollection is that it is a problem either with the colour (you need to switch it to/from 32 bit - can't rememember which way offhand!) or a problem with video card drivers. (That is if deleting preferences doesn't fix it - it's the photoshop/elements equivalent of a nice cup of tea and a lie down that seems to cure just about anything!)
Susan S.

[Ray Hudson]

Thanks to all for the suggestions. I used the tech help phone number for PE2 and got a nice person who suggested I start by seeing if my video card had updated drivers available. Although it's only six months old, turned out NVIDIA did have a newer driver on its site so I installed it. Voila, no more blacked out levels window. So.. now I can see what I'm doing - getting a lot better results...

Thanks again for the help - I just discovered this site and forum - I'll be hanging around

Ray

[Richard_Lynch]

Ray,

Thanks for keeping us up with your resolution as well! Too often a question gets put up and we don't know that it was ever fixed.

Glad you dropped by the forum, please continue to ask questions as they arise. Even if I don't get here, it seems other helpful souls can.