Photoshop Ninja
Expert Photoshop tips and tricks for designers and photographers since 2005
Photoshop troubleshooting – all my tool palettes have all disappeared!
You spend ages setting up your palettes exactly how you like them in your workspace, and then you maybe knock the keyboard and they all disappear! This can be infuriating for people working in Photoshop, especially those who are just learning.
This is both a blessing and a curse – but once you know what causes it you will be working away at full speed in no time. In-fact, once you know this little shortcut you will be using it all the time to really maximise your working area (unless you are blessed with a dual monitor setup!).
You simply have to hit Tab on the keyboard – this hides AND reveals all palettes, which allows you to view your whole image without all the clutter of the tool palettes getting in the way!
There is also the option off the top menu Window>Workspace>Reset palette locations – which surprisingly does what it says on the tin! It puts all the palettes back into their default locations. An option on the same menu ‘Default Workspace’ should be avoided, as this will reset all the palettes back to default. This means any custom styles, brush sets, actions etcetc that you have will unload themselves (you did remember to save these didn’t you!) and Photoshop will literally go back to how it was when it was first installed… not a great idea as you will have to spend some time loading in all your custom stuff again. You can see why ‘Reset palette locations’ is a much better choice!
(5 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Written by Jonny Allbut - freelance graphic designer
Last modified: 4 August, 2007 (10:37) | First published: 4 August, 2007
Filed under Photoshop Troubleshooting 13 Comments »
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Comment by Emi-san
March 11, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
Oh my. You saved me.
And to think it was something so simple. =]]
Comment by Carsten
April 13, 2008 @ 11:42 am
Hi
I have another problem, when I use the menu “Image size”, it sort of comes up somewhere, but I can’t find or see it, I have tried everything…
What can I do !?
Thanks
Carsten
Comment by Jonny
April 13, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
Carsten – I guess you are using a PC (I use Macs mainly, but have a fair bit of experience with PC’s too). If you are sure that you have tried hitting ‘tab’ as discussed above, there are a few possible things that may be causing this:
- Your Photoshop preferences may have got messed up – try reading this post http://www.photoshopninja.com/2007/04/deleting-photoshop-preference-files/
- Are your menus ok in other applications on your computer? If not, this indicates a problem with your Windows installation or graphic card/driver issues.
- The only other thing to try is uninstall and reinstall Photoshop
Comment by Carsten
April 13, 2008 @ 4:54 pm
It worked, thanks a lot
Carsten
Comment by Keir
July 25, 2008 @ 3:49 pm
I knew about Tab, but was still having this issue…Window>Workspace>Reset palette did the trick. Thank you!
Comment by colin
December 3, 2008 @ 6:43 pm
thanks much for the help man,
it helped calm my art teacher down ;]
she’s a little dramatic
Comment by admin
January 6, 2009 @ 2:07 pm
Yes – teachers can be (I know – I have done a-lot of lecturing in graphic design!)
Comment by Richard C. Goodlett
January 22, 2009 @ 11:33 pm
We have a user that has Windows XP service pack 3, and Photoshop CS3. Pentium 4 with 2 gig of RAM. Quite often the icons on the pull down menus in Photoshop CS3 will disappear. All of them, the entire menu is blank. In fact all of the pull down menus are blank. She has to reboot several times for the thing to come back to life. This only happens on her machine and when the files are opened on another machine, all is well. So the problem is in her machine. No one else has this problem. She has several versions of Photoshop and this happens in all of them. We have reloaded Photoshop CS3 and it still happens. Outside of reformating the machine and reloading everything, is there someone that has an answer? PLEASE!!!!!!
Richard Goodlett – I. T. Director
Urban Design Group, Inc.
Comment by Photoshop Ninja
January 23, 2009 @ 4:12 pm
Richard – not sure about that one – sounds like a system problem as it is not something I have ever encountered… may I suggest it might be something to do with the graphics cards drivers on the PC? I’m afraid I only use Macs, so I would imagine you would know a-lot more about PC’s than me, sorry!!
Comment by Ofy
April 21, 2009 @ 2:44 pm
Saved me. Thank you a lot =)
Comment by Ricardo
August 27, 2009 @ 4:57 pm
I’m still using Photoshop CS from time to time, and I noted that this software when it supossed to finishing starting up in the screen, suddently and totally disappear from the screen. You can’t see it anymore unless you hit the Control+Alt+Delete combination keys to open the task manager, only in there you’ll see it, it appears to be active, using your PC resources.
It can not be the register because I’ve revise it in the proper page in Adobe.com, even I’ve installed Photoshop 5.0 in this same PC and be able to use it without problems. The error still happenned when I try to run this Photoshop 8.0 or CS in other PCs, this totally crazy error happen again and again and again.
How is this possible, I’m not able to work with this CS version software anymore? Could someone have an idea of what is happening here? Comments and guidance donnations are very welcome!!!
Comment by Michael
September 8, 2010 @ 7:45 pm
Thankyou sooo much, You saved my life!!
Thankss
Comment by Beth
November 9, 2010 @ 6:48 am
THANK YOU! You saved my mind (and my sleep). I lost my tool bar and you found it for me! I’m going to find a place to link my site to yours! I know our growing traffic would love to know about your site.
Appreciatively,
Beth Goehringer
Joyful Expressions Photography Art