[Art Doerge]

Hi Jack,

Okay, hold down the Alt (option on a Mac) key and place your cursor (pointer) on the line between the adjustment layer and the layer below it. You should see the pointer change to two overlapping circles. Just click there and you will create a clipping mask that will limit your adjustment layer to just that layer directly below it. There’s also an icon at the bottom of the adjustment layer palette that will do the same thing (it also has those two overlapping circles).

Hope this helps.

[Art Doerge]

Hi Justin,

Selecting “Pen Pressure” in the control menu does not mean it will “simulate” pen pressure. It means that you are choosing to control your brush size, angle, or roundness using your pen tablet. Obviously, if you don’t have a pen tablet installed, that choice is not going to work for you 🙂 The only choice that will work for you (other than “Off”) is “Fade”. Select that choice and just use the sliders for your settings. If you try to use the Pen Pressure choice, Photoshop will put the warning icon up as a reminder that you don’t have a pen tablet installed. Choosing “Fade” will remove that warning icon.

Here’s a link to a good web page that explains a lot about the Shape Dynamics dialog.

https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/brushes/photoshop-brush-shape-dynamics.php

Hope this is helpful.

[Art Doerge]

Theo, it appears your life is much about helping people. Not only with your cancer research but apparently in many other areas as well. That’s very admirable, thank you for being that kind of a person. I’m sure Creative Cow is proud to have you as part of their leadership team. I just wanted to take this opportunity to say congratulations! The honor is certainly well deserved!

Art

[Art Doerge]

Hi Theo,

Yeah, you can copy fonts like that on a Mac too. However, if I understand Tim correctly, I don’t think he’s saying that his fonts are bad or corrupted. I think he’s just saying that certain fonts refuse to cooperate when he tries to ‘scroll’ through his list of fonts in Photoshop 🙂

While using the Type tool in PS, if you type a word then highlight (select) that word and also highlight the font in the font list (on the options bar) you can ‘scroll’ through the fonts using the arrow keys on the keyboard. As you scroll, the word you typed changes to the various fonts. But…certain fonts refuse to cooperate and stop that scrolling action. In my case there were just a few (and I didn’t use them anyway) so I simply disabled them.

Thanks for jumping in and trying to help Theo!!!!

[Art Doerge]

Hi again Tim,

Yes, when I turned those problematic fonts off I saw those messages about some of them being system fonts. However, they were mostly foreign language fonts (that I figured I didn’t use anyway). Actually, the fonts that are really necessary to the system can’t be turn off in Font Book (see link below) so there’s really not much to worry about.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1538

Anyway, other than turning them off, I don’t know of any other solution. Hopefully someone else will come along who does; I’d like to know the answer myself 🙂

[Art Doerge]

Hi Tim,

I don’t know if there’s a better solution or not but I had the same problem and ended up just turning those fonts off 🙂 You can use the “Font Book” application to turn off any fonts you want to (I have a bunch of them turned off). The fonts are still installed and can be turned back on anytime you want. You might consider doing something like that.

[Art Doerge]

Oops, sorry Theo, didn’t see your post when I posted. At least we agree on what is probably causing his problem 🙂

[Art Doerge]

Peter,

It normally does stay within the selected area. I’m wondering if maybe, when you make your selection, there is some number other than zero in the “Feathering” box on the options bar? If so, enter 0 px in there and try your gradient again. You’ll probably want to keep the Anti-alias box checked however.

[Art Doerge]

Hi Jim,

To the best of my knowledge, the Displacement Map must be flattened. The image you’re applying the displacement map to does not have to be flattened but I’m pretty sure the map itself must be. If your map is not flattened, do that and try again.

[Art Doerge]

Don’t know if this will solve your problem or not but Alien Skin has some updates available. You might want to check them out; here’s the link:

https://support.alienskin.com/Article_9FC26.aspx