Adobe Photoshop hand tool
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.
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
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
April 22
Your space is just stuck, try changing your keyboard
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
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
May 2
Confirmed!!!
Slamming the spacebar works for me.
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
May 15
It really is an annoying problem, I’m glad it helped you Janki.
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
July 17
Hahaha, that’s funny! xD
brown
September 12
I pushed the “ctrl” button and it solved the problem for me. weird…
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.
Claire O'
May 19
Laughed when I read this, and then laughed again when the hand tool disappeared after bashing the space bar!! Can’t believe it!