[Sheri Medford]

I am new and RetouchPro and Lynda.com are my means of study. So thank you for all the great information and practice opportunities.

My program Adobe Photoshop CS2 is giving me problems, but I am not sure if the program is bad or if I am doing something wrong. My problems are:

1. I can't get the quick mask to work at all.

2. when I heal or clone it works for a while then stops

3. I have my layers and if I do something on say the 7th layer and then think I need to go back to the retouch layer where I used the healing tool, I go back to find that it has been altered by the higher layers. I thought this wasn't suppose to happen? The retouched layer is splotted by my dodge and burn on softlight layer or something, but it gets messed up, is this normal?


I need to figure out if I need to return the program for another or if there is something I am doing wrong or can do. It could be my laptop, it crashes and freezes etc alot and I have 1 gig RAM and a external drive with 100 gigs so speed and freezing shouldn't be happening.

I am good inside programs but the stuff outside of that realm I am a moron!

[mistermonday]

Hi Sheri,
what Operating System are you using? Are you using a mouse or a graphics tablet.
You should probably deal with one problem at a time. I suggest you start with Quick Mask. When you try to go into quick mask mode, what type of selection have you made?
Regards, Murray

[Ed_L]

Originally Posted by Sheri Medford

I am new and RetouchPro and Lynda.com are my means of study. So thank you for all the great information and practice opportunities.

My program Adobe Photoshop CS2 is giving me problems, but I am not sure if the program is bad or if I am doing something wrong. My problems are:

1. I can't get the quick mask to work at all.

2. when I heal or clone it works for a while then stops

Could you be running low on resources? I'm not certain, but there was a recent post that suggested something similar to what you're describing.

Originally Posted by Sheri Medford

3. I have my layers and if I do something on say the 7th layer and then think I need to go back to the retouch layer where I used the healing tool, I go back to find that it has been altered by the higher layers. I thought this wasn't suppose to happen? The retouched layer is splotted by my dodge and burn on softlight layer or something, but it gets messed up, is this normal?

The layers above will not alter the lower layer. Are you making duplicates of the background layer, then moving them? If you have a layer for burning/dodging, then make another copy of the background layer to put above it, you will not see the effect of the burning/dodging unless you use a layer mask, painted with black on the areas of burning/dodging. That will allow the burning/dodging to show through.

Ed

[Sheri Medford]

Murray, to answer your questions:
I have a PC and windows xp
I use a mouse ( but want a tablet someday)
As for what selection, I am not sure what you mean? When I have a picture I want to make a quick mask of (like eyes), I click on the Quick mask icon below the toolbar and try to paint with the orange (the idea to then click the off icon and create a selection) but nothing happens!

Though one time, I did get a partial orange rectangle along the edges of the picture, so maybe I had the wrong layer selected.??

Ed, most of the time I just work from the bottom down. I probably have moved a layer or two, but mostly (and in this case) I did the healing on the second layer (and didn't ever move it) then did other adjustments layers on up, I did do a dodge-burn layer, which seems to be what changed it and mushed it up?? but I don't remember ever moving the healing layer or the background layer. So it should have been okay.

I find it so confusing how to figure out if I just clicked on something wrong? But I fear something is wrong with the program. I shouldn't have low resources because I have tons of memory (1gig ram). But I could have something turned on wrong somewhere. In the general preferences for Photoshop I did up the memory for Photoshop as well. So I don't know why I can heal for a while and then it just doesn't do anything, and I try other things like to paint etc, or patch and they quit too?

so the question is who is screwed up: the software, my laptop or me?

(HP Pavillion with a fast processor and everything needed for graphics)

I think I will go back and look at other files I have done to see if lower layers were mushed up during the process and see if I see a pattern.

[Janet Petty]

I've not been following this thread, so forgive me if this is out of context. What I think you are saying is that when you try to create a selection using quick mask that the selection won't work when you exit. Correct?

If so, then your opacity is set too low. Photoshop is unable to "find" the selection when you exit quick mask unless it has 50% or greater (preferably greater) opacity. Check opacity and flow settings on the brush you are using. If it/they are less than 50%, then the selection will not show up.

Clear as mud?

Janet

[mistermonday]

Sheri, I think I see what you are doing wrong with Quick Mask. The tool won't work until you make a selection first. You need to use one of the tools to make an initial selection. Then click the Quick Mask button. Then you can paint on your mask with a white or black brush to add or subtract from your selection or the mask. Everything outside your selection will be red. Don't select the entire image or else nothing will be red.

As for your tools that stop working; next time that happens, try doing the following. Edit>Purge>All. What this will do is purge the memory that Photoshop is currently using but it will delete all of your history states and layers and leave you with just a flattened image. If your tools start working again at that point, then you have probably run out of RAM. How does this happen with 1GB, you may ask? Well if your image is large and you have many layers, each layer will use as much memory as your background layer and history states also consume large amounts of memory. You can monitor your RAM usage by turning on your status window (View>Status) and select from the pull down triangle the Document option. This will be in the lower left corner of the Photoshop window. You should also make sure you have designated a large scratch disk area for Photoshop on your hard drive. It is preferable to assign this area on a physical drive which is not your C Drive. If your computer only has 1 physical drive but more than 1 partition, assign the other partition to the scratch area.
Regards, Murray

[Sheri Medford]

Oh, I didn't know either of those pieces of info. the percentage I didn't check nor did I realize I needed to make a selection. That explains alot.

Murray, as for the scratch disk, I don't know how to partition, but I read somewhere that it was possible to have a scratch disk on an external hard drive. I have a 100gig harddrive, do you know how or know where I could find out how to do that?

[mistermonday]

Sheri, When you double click the My Computer Icon on your desktop and view your hard drive, do you just have a C Drive which is 100 GB or is it partitoned (D Drive, E Drive, etc but do not count your CD or DVD)?
If you have 100GB C drive only, that's a bit like having a "floor to ceiling" kitchen pantry with no shelves. At minimum, you should patition it in two. Your operating system and all of your applications should reside on the C partition. Most people store all of their important files, documents, pictures, and music on the D partition. That way if you operating system gets corrupted and you need to do a complete new installation, the files on your D partition will not be affected. There are special programs to partition Hard Drives, like Partition Magic. However, if you do not feel comfortable using it, you can take your computer to any local computer tech place and they can do it for you quickly and inexpensively.

Having a 2nd physicall hard drive is also a good idea. Internal Hard drives which can be installed in the machine you have are pretty inexpensive and can provide additional security for your information in case the prime drive experiences a catastrophic mechanical failure.

Some people purchase an external hard drive like a Maxtor. These just plug into the USB port and provide 200 - 300GB of extra storage. The advantage of them is that they can be stored in a separate location for maximum security. The only disadvantage to the external drive is that they are more expensive.

Regards, Murray

[Peter S]

nor did I realize I needed to make a selection.

You don't (but it can make the task quicker), when you click on Quick mask make sure you have Black selecteed as your foreground colour NOT white (if you paint with White if removes selections), Check the opacity of the brush is 100%, paint on the back ground and it will appear to paint in a pinky red colour. When you exit Quick mask it should show the selection.

If you apply a gausion blur while in Quick mask it is similar to adding a Feather to the selection, and softening/fading the edges.

hope this helps

[mistermonday]

Technically Peter is correct. However if you click the Quick Mask tool with nothing selected, then the entire image is selected (exposed) and you will not see a red mask, and you will need to paint (or select) it all in. This would only be useful if you only wanted to mask a small part of the image.

By the way, while you are in quick mask, if you need to expand or contract your mask but do not wish to feather it, use the Fliter>Other>Minimum to contract the mask (choke it) or the Filter>Other>Maximum to expand it.

Regards, Murray

[Sheri Medford]

Murry,

I have a C drive only with 1BG ram. AND then I have a external HD that is 100 GB. It is the external that I want to use as a scratch file but I don't know how to set that up, do you guys?

Sheri

[mistermonday]

Sheri, just go to your Edit Menu in Photoshop and choose Edit>Preferences> Plug-ins & Scratch Disks. In then 1st box pull down menu, select the name or letter of your external drive. You do not need to put anything in the other boxes.
regards, Murray

[Sheri Medford]

Cool! So I went to the plugins and scratch disk dialog It only had start up listed in the first box. So I put C drive in the second box and F drive in the third??????????????? Is that right. Is Start up a separate drive from C?

I think I need to find information about scratch disks and paritioning HDs. Anything on this site or another place to get info without overwhelming myself.

Thanks Murray.

[mistermonday]

Sheri, in your case the Startup drive is your C drive. So in the first box you should have your External Drive. In the 2nd box you can enter your C Drive although it is very unlikely that your external drive will be full. Leave the 3rd box empty.

The disk that you designate as the Photoshop scratch disk is just used as a temporary scratch pad for Photoshop. When you work in Photoshop and you have a large image open and it has many layers and you have many history states, the reality is that Photoshop will need more RAM than you have available in your computer. So Photoshop just uses the scratch area as temporary storage. When Photoshop shuts down, it clears all of that disk space (usually in the hundreds of megabytes). The reason that it is preferred to have the scratch drive be on a drive which is not your system drive, is because you Windows OS also uses a scratch disk area (usually the C Drive). Having both scratches on the same drive tend to slow things a bit.

Regards, Murray

[Sheri Medford]

Thanks Murray, I just made those changes for the scratch disc and I hear my external activate when Im in Photoshop, so I think it is working fine. Thank you once again!