Caught in the Crosshairs: My Misbehaving Brush

Dear Debbie,

I have Adobe Photoshop CS3. When I'm using the Clone tool, the Brush, or the Healing Brush, sometimes I get a nice circle. Sometimes I get a crosshair, which is harder to work with. How can I get the circle back?

Signed,
Cursed by the Crosshair

***

Dear Cursed,

It's your Caps Lock key! You can switch between a crosshair brush and a circle-shaped brush by clicking it on and off. Another way to modify your brush is to go to Preferences > Display & Cursors. You can even have it both ways:

Just choose Full Size Brush Tip, and check Show Crosshair in Brush Tip.

Hope that helps, and good luck,
Debbie

Comments

[Stanri]

THANK YOU Debbie. I had the same problem this afternoon, and kept mumbling to myself. I had the caps key earlier while working with some fonts.

[Melanie]

YES - thank you! I was trying to close and open the application to fix it - I knew there had to be a better explanation :)

[James]

I have CS3, and I have this very same problem, but it's neither the caps lock, nor the preferences. It's driving me insane. I've tried everything I can think of to get the circle back.

Now here's something odd I've discovered. If I set my brush size to 7 pixels, and 7 pixels only, I get a circle??!!?

I have it chalked up to beta bugs, but I'd love to find a way to fix it.

[Debbie]

Hey James,

Are you using CS3 on an Intel Mac? Reader Mike L. wrote to me about a beta bug in those machines. The only solution is to run CS3 in Rosetta. It's fixed in the final release, of course.

--Debbie

[al]

i missed ur smiling face in last
two issue of popphoto.

[Debbie]

Thanks al. It looks like you'll have to visit the blog to see my photo from now on -- we couldn't fit the picture and the "Ask Debbie" box into the new layout. Hopefully, though, Digital Toolbox's new look makes it easier to read and understand than before.

--Debbie

[e]

THANK YOU