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Blinking cursor


L

limey

Power User
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I've got a situation where my cursor will blink on and off when I am trying to use the clone stamp tool.
When it happened this time I had selected the Elliptical Marquee tool and created a circle on an object. I then chose the clone stamp tool and proceeded to clone inside the circle. I was just using the circle as a guide for the area I wanted to clone. When I did this I noticed that the clone tool cursor would blink on and off it will also keep on blinking as I move the cursor outside of the circle for a small distance and then if I keep on moving away from the circle it will eventually stop blinking. [confused]

Is there some kind of an adjustment that I can make to prevent this from happening.
Thanks
 
Tried to do this in PS CS, but I didn't notice anything of what you described. It could be video driver related I guess.
 
limey said:
I have a fairly good video card, NVDA,GeForce4Ti 4600 128vmram so I'm hoping it's not that.
Click to expand...
I was talking about the software (driver), not the hardware.

Video drivers are still the major cause of the graphics related problems on Windows computers.
 
Is it happening only in a mid tone section?
If so it is probably the "Smart Cursor" jumping about trying to figure if it should be a dark cursor on light or a light cursor on dark.

HTH, Al.
 
JoeD said:
limey said:
I have a fairly good video card, NVDA,GeForce4Ti 4600 128vmram so I'm hoping it's not that.
Click to expand...
I was talking about the software (driver), not the hardware.

Video drivers are still the major cause of the graphics related problems on Windows computers.
Click to expand...

Sorry I thought you were talking about the card, in any case I'm using a Mac.
 
Rantin Al said:
Is it happening only in a mid tone section?
If so it is probably the "Smart Cursor" jumping about trying to figure if it should be a dark cursor on light or a light cursor on dark.

HTH, Al.
Click to expand...

No Al it happens anywhere inside the circle I selected with the Marquee Tool regardless of colour or tone.
 
OK, I'm on a Mac too. Post your OS and PS version details.
If you could grab a shot of the Brush Options and pop that up as well.
Are you using standard brushes?
If you are using PS 7 do you have the 7.0.1 updates.

Al.
 
Rantin Al said:
OK, I'm on a Mac too. Post your OS and PS version details.
If you could grab a shot of the Brush Options and pop that up as well.
Are you using standard brushes?
If you are using PS 7 do you have the 7.0.1 updates.Al.
Click to expand...

Al I'm using OS 9.2.2 on G4 DP 1.25Ghz.
PS 7.0, I don't have the update yet didn't know about it but thanks I will get it.
I'm not sure what you are looking for with the brush options, I am using a Hard Round brush. I've tried different types of brushes but it still does it.
 
Don't you have OSX on that machine? PS 7 will run on it.
I have a DP 867 dual boot but I hardly ever run 922.

Part of the PS 701 update is X specific, shortcut keys I think.
It is still worthwhile installing the other components. Check with the documentation first.

I asked about the Brush options just to set my machine up as yours and see if I can replicate the problem.

Al.
 
I'll keep an eye on this thread, too, Al. I still have a hard drive with all my old OS9.2.2 system installed in my G4. I have booted it up a couple of times this last year to use TypeStyler, GIFmation, and a couple of other old apps which don't run so well in classic. :B
 
I do have X on my machine but I haven't completely made the switch yet from 9.

Did you have any luck replicating the problem ?
 
limey,

I was able to recreate the odd cursor behavior you described in OS9.2.2 using PS7.0.1. The way I did it was to open a document, use the oval marquee tool to draw a selection, while the selection was active I made the Clone Stamp tool active and established the target inside the oval selection. When I tried to use the Clone Stamp tool the brush cursor kept blinking...very annoying. I don't know why but the key seemed to be Option + clicking in the active selection and then trying to clone inside the same selection on the same layer. I found several workarounds.

1 .Make the clone tool active and Option click to establish your target first and then draw your marquee and clone away.

2. Duplicate the layer you intend to work on then while your selection is active click your target on the lower of the two but then clone on the upper. After you're through toss out the target layer.

3. Create your selection, save it as an alpha channel, deselect, establish your clone target, load the alpha channel as a selection and clone away.
 
Wow , Welles you did a lot of research, thanks. Two of the work arounds I can manage just fine the 3rd one I might have to experiment with to get it right. I'm so pleased that someone else has been able to replicate my problem it has been bugging me for ages. I was beginning to think it was something in my setup.
Thanks again :righton:
 
Welles, great job and a workaround too. I keep a OS 9 partition for all the old applications which don't like Classic as well.
I hardly ever use them but you can be sure that as soon as I stripped them out I'd need them for the next job. ;)

G4 dual processor architecture and OS 9 in the huff.
I'm not sure if 9 utilises the Altivec plug-in or not?
That is part of the 701 update so who knows.

Limey, this could be the time to jump into the Aqua. ;)

Cheers, Al.
 
limey,

The third work around probably isn't the best anyway. However you might wish to learn what it is about because saving selections as alpha channels and then reloading them is very handy and quite simple. At the bottom of the Channels palette are a series of buttons. The left-most is 'Load channel as selection' and the next to it is 'Save selection as channel.' To save a selection simply click on the Save button and a new alpha channel appears. To load an alpha channel as a selection, go to the Channels palette, highlight the channel you've saved and click the Load button and then return to the RGB view. An interesting aspect of alpha channels is that you can use the to add and subtract from an existing selection by highlighting the channel and then holding down the Option (Alt)=subtract or Shift=add keys as you click on the load button.
 
Welles said:
An interesting aspect of alpha channels is that you can use the to add and subtract from an existing selection by highlighting the channel and then holding down the Option (Alt)=subtract or Shift=add keys as you click on the load button.
Click to expand...

Wow Welles, it's true, you do learn something every day.

Nice tip. Thanks for that. :righton:
 
Don't forget the Command+Alt+Shift click for intersect selections.

Limey, where do you think I got my name from? ;)
 
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