Where’d My Brush Go?!

Here’s a tip for a phenomenon that has been driving me absolutely crazy in Photoshop: the vanishing paintbrush.

Every so often, I find that my brush tip has disappeared. I use my brackets – go bigger, go smaller … and nothin’. Just that stupid crosshair (great, I can tell where it’s centered, but I can’t see exactly where the paint is gonna go).

As it turns out, there’s a good chance that the culprit is the Caps Lock key. When Caps Lock is on, the brush tool’s shape and size disappear, and all you’re left with is the crosshair. You might have hit it when you were working with text, or you might have hit is accidentally when you were going for the Shift key (which I, for one, use all the time), but if Caps Lock is on, so is the crosshair-as-cursor.  To be honest, I’m not sure WHY that would ever be useful, but it *is* a deliberate feature in Photoshop. Turn off Caps Lock, and your brush shape/size reappears.