Gah! Photoshop question

[Ramah]

I have a quick PS question that I hope someone can just snap their fingers and know the answer to...

So I made the stupid mistake today of leaving my PC on (monitor off) when I left the house to nip to the shop for supplies. I was gone 10 minutes but when I came back in and saw my two young daughters leave the room where the computer is sheepishly alarm bells started ringing.

So I closed down all the windows and apps that they had started by bashing keys... cancelled the Sticky Keys query... closed the MSN windows... stopped the search for mail including the word "snsndaaxxxx"... cycled back through my Photoshop history and gor rid of the various masks etc. that they had managed to create... in short everything was good.

Except now when I come to do some work my cursor has changed. I no longer see the size of the brush or the outline of my custom ones. Just a small precision cursor that is most awkward to use. :s

I went into preferences and checked the cursor status in there and it is still set to Brush Size. So frankly, I am at a loss to know how they changed it. They must have done it through a keyboard shortcut - while they had the mouse and one of them knows how to use it kind of, I doubt that she managed to change it that way...

So does anyone have any idea where my missing cursor type has gone?

I'm hoping some can help me as it is frankly a nuisance without it.

Thanks in advance for anyone who can offer advice.

[guyanonymous]

I hope you find out. I've had this periodically happen and it drives me nuts.

One suggestion - though I can't remember if it actually works, or if the problem is just fixed randomly down the road - is to hold down Shift and Control immediately after you double click (on Windows) to start Photoshop up. This resets, well, everything back to defaults.

[ravells]

This happened to me...I don't know what I did. And when I restarted PS it reverted back to a normal brush size again. Occasionally it goes back to a precise cursor but when I click off canvas it behaves again. I just live with it now because I have no idea why it does it. Have you tried googling it?

[Ascension]

This happens to me all of the time. Usually because I type in names for each of my layers and sometimes forget to actually dbl-click the layer so that I can rename it so strange things start happening. You're right, it is in Edit - Preferences - Display & Cursors. It usually takes 2 tries to get it back where you like it. Click one thing then click another then click on the one you like and it should be fine then.

[Nomadic]

The photoshop precision cursor is activated by hitting caps lock. If you closed photoshop and then realized that caps lock was on and turned it off photoshop might not have realized that you turned it off and so pulled from your last settings. Alternatively if you have a shift lock key that can also activate the cursor.

[guyanonymous]

Three cheers for Nomadic!

[Ramah]

Thanks all for the help, especially to Nomadic who hit the nail on the head.

I'd already tried restarting it to no avail and was almost ready to uninstall and reinstall it just to return it to the defaults.

Damn kids. Hehe. Bless 'em.

[overlordchuck]

I think Nomadic deserves some rep for solving a problem that apparently everyone in the world has encountered.

[ravells]

Hurrah Nomadic!!!

[Nomadic]

Well I guess that proves that the photoshop class I'm taking up at the college has been money well spent.