Cursor trouble

I am having trouble with my tool cursors. Sometimes the crop tool changes to a crosshair and every brush size will only produce a small crosshhair cursor. This makes it impossible to see the area being worked on.

Rebooting fixes things for a very short time. Deleting preferences didn't work. And even a reinstall went bad after a few hours work. I have a P4 2.8GH processor and 1 gig RAM on XP Pro. Shouldn't those resources be sufficient to handle things?

Is there a fix for cursors gone bad? Thanks.

Welcome to Team PS!
Are you sure that you do not hit CAPS lock by accident? it is used to change the cursor to the precise one.

[QUOTE=sPECtre]Welcome to Team PS!
Are you sure that you do not hit CAPS lock by accident? it is used to change the cursor to the precise one.[/QUOTE]Thank you, thank you! That must indeed be it because I was using the cap lock to name some of the files. There's so much to learn in Photoshop and I bet this forum is a great place to study. Thanks again and see you 'round.

You're welcome! this is why I always hold shift to type uppercases, rather then caps lock.

I didn't see anything under preferences about a keyboard shortcut so had no way to know. I usually use lower case for my file names - this project was an exception - so never ran across it before.

I've been browsing some old threads and see you have a lot of tricks up your sleeve. Learned a few new ones already! Very cool!!

Don't forget your Photoshop Help files, which are usually quicker to consult for simple questions than waiting for an answer online:

Thanks for posting the page the info is on. I do use the Help files regularly (though I find them a little hard to work with) and actually did a search before I posted. But I wasn't using quite the right words to search for so nothing came up. It all seems so straightforward now . . . hindsight *sigh*. You've all been very helpful.

[QUOTE=earther]Thanks for posting the page the info is on. I do use the Help files regularly (though I find them a little hard to work with) and actually did a search before I posted. But I wasn't using quite the right words to search for so nothing came up. It all seems so straightforward now . . . hindsight *sigh*. You've all been very helpful.[/QUOTE]

You're welcome.

A smart thing to do (I've done it with every release of Photoshop I've owned) would be to carve out some time and go through every page in the Help Files, skimming for keywords, and to get a general sense of what's where and how the Help FIles themselves are organized. This way you'll have a better idea about how to go about finding the answers they contain quickly. Something else this will help teach you is the proper terminolgy for tools and functions. It's difficult to ask for help if you're not working from the same glossary as those who are familiar with the terms.

Also, don't forget to keep your Quick Reference Card (or the PDF thereof) handy. It's a huge wealth of information.

Good suggestions. I have actually thought of doing that myself but to sit and RTFM is probably more than I could bear! LOL!! My approach tends to be more intuitive/by osmosis than methodical - I usually just experiment till things work properly. Along the way, I'll go here and there for reference. In the end, I discover that somehow I have learned the nitty gritty too . . . don't ask me how. Who knows . . . maybe one of these days, I'll steel myself and have a go at the manual . . .