Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 4:01 am Post subject: Menus deactivate?
Hey,
The last couple of weeks I've been working with some pretty heavy PSD files on my macbook laptop, it is clearly having a hard time handling those....
However I've now a thousand times experienced my menus to deactivate, so that I cant click on anything at all.... I can use the toolboards on the sides, but the upper menubar (File, Edit, Image, Layer etc.) is completely dead.
It's not that I've a transformation or fontbox open or anything that would explain the deactivation. :S
I've noticed this to happen especially after saving those big files. And then the only thing I can do to be able to use the menus again is to restart my Photoshop. Even the "quit photoshop" is deactivated, so I have to force quit it.
Can somebody please help and tell what's wrong and what I should do to solve this?
Joined: 05 Mar 2003
Posts: 3987
Location: Cheltenham, UK
Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 5:00 am Post subject:
Hi Lacrimosa welcome to the forum.
I don't know your problem or how to solve it, but could suggest a few things.
Have you purged your clipboard and other settings from within Photoshop? Edit>Purge>Clipboard/Histories/All Bear in mind it will eradicate all your 'undoes'.
I would also check your preferences to check how much RAM or resources you have allocated to Photoshop Edit>Preferences>Performance Depending upon how much RAM you have allocated either bump it up or leave it. I won't go on about scratch disks and the like, you can read up on those at your leisure if you feel the need.
I don't know if you are working on 8bit or 16bit images, but if the latter converting to 8bit should make things easier on your system, especially if you don't have to work in 16bits.
Other than the above, perhaps a reset of preferences file. Hold Cmd+Option+Shift and keep them held, whilst opening Photoshop, it should give you the option to trash your preference file. _________________ If life serves you lemons, make lemonade!
Hey,
Thanks a lot for trying to help, really appreciate it.
How do I purge my clipboard now that the menu is deactivted? Is it nescessary to restart, so they're activated or can I use a keyboard shortcut to do this?
Same question concerning the RAM checking....
Also I forgot to mention the fact that it is painfully slow at opening new (heavy files). A 85 MB PSD file can slightly take up to 15 minutes to open The loadbar is moving with the speed of a half dead snail :///
RAM allocation for MAC is allocated at 70% by default I think (55% for Windoze) I would check those values. Your OS will always keep about 500mb free for itself, but if you ramp up that percentage then make sure you are not running any other apps. Not sure if you can change the preferences for RAM outside of the user interface (I imagine it's possible, but I don't know how). _________________ If life serves you lemons, make lemonade!
Hey again,
True, it was 70 now I changed it to 50%, but my menus keep freezing!! Argh, this drives me crazy.
This is a huge problem, since I constantly have to restart my photoshop. The files take a very long time to open, as previously mentioned, so it's deeply frustrating to keep restarting the programme... Takes a too much time...
Any other suggestions, anyone?
Joined: 26 Nov 2010
Posts: 368
Location: Australia
Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 10:02 pm Post subject:
I'm just offering sympathy really, as I'm not sure what to do. Out of curiosity, how much RAM does it say you have? (see edit>preferences>performance). You can also set history and cache to suit the type of files you use (e.g Big and Flat vs Tall and Thin).
Still in preferences>performance, make sure your cache level is not 1 (around 4 is supposed to be OK). Don't ask me for what it all means, it's just that I was watching a Deke video where he set it to 1 for demo purposes then told us not to do that because it will grind to a halt...
Another question for curiosity - when the menu bar is frozen, do the shortcuts still work? e.g if you can't go File>Exit, can you still go control Q? Note that there are shortcuts for lots of things. I'm not sure if this is true on the Mac, but the ALT key can be used to access a lot of menu items (e.g ALT F gets you the file menu, ALT gets you the Edit menu.
When Photoshop is frozen do other programs on your system still work? Can you close Photoshop with (Windows?) shortcut such as ALT-F4? Can you use (Windows?) Alt-Control-Delete to see what else is running and get info on memory usage?
Sorry I don't have answers, it sounds like a real pain. Maybe somebody else can have a few more ideas.
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