Disappearing Photoshop cursors

Sep 27, 2007

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I’ve had a problem for some time now: my cursors in Photoshop CS3 on OS X are invisible. I’ve no idea why, or how it happened, but it’s really awkward when you can’t see where your mask is going to start, or where you text cursor is going to blink into being.

The solution

After a lot of Googling I came across another person (maybe called Mark, from detective work in his Flickr stream) with a similar problem, which started me off to find a solution. So far the only way I’ve found of solving this is (and this is OS X specific):

Quit Photoshop
In Finder, Go to Folder: ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS3 Settings/
Delete, or move to another folder temporarily, this file:Adobe Photoshop CS3 Prefs.psp
Restart Photoshop and (hopefully) breathe a sigh of relief…

There must be a better way of doing it, and I still don’t know what triggered the problem, but at least the cursors are back. Cursors! I kiss you!

Comments

7 responses to “Disappearing Photoshop cursors”

Tom PH

November 7, 2007

This didn’t work for me :( You can also delete the pref file by holding cmd/alt/shift when starting up photoshop (on a mac).

Reply
Hashim Omar

August 17, 2008

Simply if you find your cursor inexplicably changes from brush shape to cross hairs or vice versa, it means you probably accidentaly tapped the caps lock key.Toggle caps lock key.

Reply
simonwheatley

August 18, 2008

Hi Hashim… this was very different. The cursors actually completely disappeared, they didn’t just change… good tip though, thank you.

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Coco Vega

November 19, 2008

it worked for me thank you!

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Lala

July 19, 2009

Hashim – you’re awesome – and I’m dumb X} But I accidentally hit caps lock [and I’ve done it before] and I didn’t know that’s what made my cursor disappear! Thanks – you saved me from the headache :}

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Chauncey Casalenda

June 26, 2010

Hai admin , This is good posting for my homework from university Do u have twitter account ?? i want to follow your twitt . bye

Reply
Farren

January 9, 2012

You might also try the CAPS LOCK button… it will cause photoshop to enter precise cursor mode… kinda annoying but simple. Thanks guys!

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