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Adobe Photoshop hand tool

April 2 2009 by Scott in Technology, Web Design

Ok, I’m working in Photoshop happily designing away, I go grab a drink and when I return the only tool available is the hand tool!?!?!

So… I saved my work, closed the program and then restarted. Still the same!!!! I couldn’t live without Photoshop, I had to find a fix.

There is a few topics regarding this issue on the internet, some say its memory, some say it’s a keyboard issue. I decided to try them all. I went into preferences and assigned more available memory to Photoshop, then I did edit > purge > all. I then closed Photoshop and restarted again…no change.

At this point I started to panic and slammed on my keyboard, hey presto! back to normal.

I really don’t know what the exact issue is, but banging the keyboard, or more specifically the space bar seems to fix the problem every time.

I hope this helps any other Photoshop users that experience this problem.

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12 Comments so far

  • Dom Ioanna
    Dom Ioanna
    April 7

    This has happened to me a few times too. As far as I can see its a memory issue. The only way I can resolve this is to close Photoshop and restart. Might try the ’slamming the keyboard’ technique next time though!

  • Nils
    Nils
    April 9

    As far as I know its a memory issue, had the same problem a couple of times. Just bring up the windows task manager and close it again. Works like a reset. No need to close Photoshop.

  • Peter Velichko
    Peter Velichko
    April 22

    Your space is just stuck, try changing your keyboard :)

  • Scott Parry
    Scott
    April 22

    Heh Peter,

    I actually thought that too, £40 and a new keyboard later, still the same!

    I have now increased my pagefile in Windows and the scratch disk in Photoshop and this seems to have cured the problem…for now…

  • Chris Buckley
    Chris Buckley
    April 23

    Seriously it might be your space bar, I have had similar problems in the past. Just try pressing space a few times if it happens again. Annoying as hell!

  • thomas
    thomas
    May 2

    Confirmed!!!

    Slamming the spacebar works for me.

  • Janki
    Janki
    May 14

    hi,
    can you believe, I read your article, and after that i opened photoshop and guess what? everything got fine…:)
    thaaaannkkss….

  • Scott Parry
    Scott
    May 15

    It really is an annoying problem, I’m glad it helped you Janki.

  • Drummond
    Drummond
    June 30

    I had never heard anything so stupid, but nothing else worked so I tried banging the space bar. Sure enough, it worked!!! Thanks for the tip.

  • RoaldA
    RoaldA
    July 17

    Hahaha, that’s funny! xD

  • brown
    brown
    September 12

    I pushed the “ctrl” button and it solved the problem for me. weird…

  • Ken the tech
    Ken the tech
    January 14

    This was bothering me a few minutes ago but I happily solved: go to Edit, Preferences and click on Reset all Warnings Dialog. I don’t think is keyboard related.




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