Has your Photoshop ever misbehaved?

Recently months I have had issues with my Photoshop misbehaving usually its over things like if I do multiple layers of pasting, drawing and certain point it gets tired stops working.
That is manageable I have been dealing with it.
But today my tool bar quit working all together all I get is that hand symbol, nothing else.
Couldn't use any selection tools, nothing.
Has anyone ever experienced this?

What version of photoshop do you use? I'm getting the feeling that CS4 is freezing much more than cs2 did. But that's just my feeling. It also feels a lot slower than CS2 and CS3.

I've never had that happen, but I can think of a couple of possible explanations. One is perhaps your computer was out of memory. Did you try rebooting? The other is maybe your Photoshop installation is damaged or corrupted somehow. I might suggest reinstalling with the repair function, or even better, uninstalling and reinstalling from scratch.

How much RAM do you have, by the way? Unless you're physically maxed out, get more. RAM is incredibly inexpensive these days. There's absolutely no reason not to have the maximum your machine can support.

Also, when was the last time you defragged your hard drive? Poor hard drive health can have a huge impact on PS. The fact that you've got SL on your computer, by the way, is an instant strike against you in that department. SL is particularly brutal on hard drives. Even a brand new drive can start to look like an explosion at a Swiss cheese factory after just a few days of heavy SL usage. Regular defragmentation (at least once a week) is absolutely essential. (Or just get Diskkeeper, and keep it running in background at all times, so your drives never get fragged in the first place. The last few versions of DK have been really, really good.)

Further, how much free space is there on your drive? If you don't have at least 30% of the drive empty, delete some stuff or get a bigger drive.

How about your PS scratch disk? Is it set to be the same physical drive as your system disk? If so, you can be in for a world of hurt, especially as your working files become large, which would seem to fit your description of your problem with multiple layers. If you've got a second hard drive in your machine, use that as your scratch disk. Put your SL cache on it, as well. If not, get one. They're cheap enough, there's not reason not to. (Unless you're on a laptop, in which case, you may be SOL for that.)

Ideally, you really want three drives. One for your system, one for your data, and one for your scratch disk/cache. If that's not possible, then at the very least, use partitions. It won't be nearly as fast as having three separate physical drives, but it will still be better than having everything all one one partition.

What it boils down to is that like most resource-intensive applications, Photoshop needs certain things at its disposal in order to behave properly. If any of what I mentioned above is inadequate or out of whack, performance will suffer quickly.

If you're on a 32-bit OS, then sadly, that's going to be the case. CS4 really needs at least 4GB of usable RAM, preferably 8, to be fully stable. And the only way to accomplish that is to use a 64-bit OS.

If you've got the RAM available, CS4 really flies. It's actually faster than all previous versions, and it's rock solid. But if you don't, it blows. If for any reason you can't run a 64-bit OS, then you're better off sticking with CS3. The new features in CS4 are great, but they're not worth the stability problems that come from not having enough RAM available for the program.

Photoshop badly misbehaves in terms of price, making it a nonstarter. That's why I use The GIMP.

When GIMP can do everything Photoshop can do, then maybe you'll have a compelling argument. In the mean time, you get what you pay for with PS. It's worth every penny.

If you can't afford it, that's your own problem. And if you can, but you choose not to, well, that's your prerogative. Either way, don't say the product itself "misbehaves" just because it costs more than you'd care to spend. You make it sound like you think those who buy it are somehow inferior in your view, and that's really not cool.

My take: use the Gimp until you're good enough that you really want the tools Photoshop has.

It's like buying a musical instrument. A good student grade instrument is perfectly fine for a learner - but useless in a full Symphony orchestra.
A Symphonic grade instrument would be wasted on a student - especially while they're still at the 'make farting noises' stage. (Or 'make cat screeches', as appropriate to the instrument.)

IMO, the Gimp is better for learning enough computer-art to know whether it's something you'll enjoy; solely because it's cheaper. Much cheaper.

But at some point, and exactly where depends on your wealth/skill ratio, you'll probably want to shell out for Photoshop.

But since I'm nowhere near the artist Chip, Robin or Chosen are, Gimp is still perfectly fine for me!

I got older computer, it's about four years or more older, has only has 768 ram.
I have 60 gb hard drive and still have close to 39 gb free. I got the first version I think of Photoshop Creative Suite it was gift along with the Photoshop 6 educational version from a very kind SL friend who was kind enough to send me my first Christmas as FD in SL when she upgraded to CS 2. I think I got like CS version 7.02 or 8.0.
I was grateful for the gift it's not something I could afford on my own.
I used PSP for years but often had major issues with it but I really love PS.
Some day when I can afford upgrades I get them.
My PSP7 I get major memory issues and it ceased functioning too.
Not sure what you mean by scratch disk. I got the CD's of the PS if I need to reinstall.
It's been few months since I defragged and cleaned the registry.
There are free programs out there that are wonderful but they aren't as good as PS and I am just grateful I was given one. I spend numerous hours a week in it and I am not happy camper right now in how to resolve the misbehavior issues.

How much free space do you have on your hard drive?

Ok checked it says I got 69.33 capacity and 35.98 gb available. 51% of hard drive is free.

I'd think that should be enough space left to keep the lack of hard drive space from being an problem.

I'd do the repair install Chosen mentioned for Photoshop, defrag the hard drive, and see if that helps.

If that doesn't do it then I'd do an uninstall and reinstall of Photoshop.

You only have one hard drive on your computer, and you are not wanting to fiddle with partioning your hard drive, right?

ZOMG DEFRAG or no tickling FOR YOU!

Also, you might want to purge periodically if you are working for a while and get to a point where you can save and not need any undos. PS is holding a lot of information in case you need it, and like a juggler with many balls in the air, can only handle so much reliably. Purge is inthe Edit menu.

I wonder about purging how do I purge? I remember purging in PSP but I don't know in PS
but thanks to you Osprey I have learned so many cool wonderful things.
Thank you

I have no clue how even if I wanted too. I thought about adding more memory or get external hard drive enclosure for back ups though.

When you are in Photoshop and need to purge go to the Edit menu ---> Purge, then you can purge Clipboard, History, All - but be careful you have your work the way you want it before you purge. If there's nothing to be purged the choices will be greyed out.

Ok I will do that now. I just finished defragging.

Thanks tool bar is working now, but couldn't find the clipboard guess it was all grayed out will try again later.

Merry Christmas, FD.

You too Osprey, reminded me to send you a new thing I did with my camera. I did christmas tree.
Anyone else interested in free tree Christmas tree textures let me know.
I am work on some metalic fancy design christmas gift boxes now that I got it working.
I am going to try put it up in on Onrezz tonight if I have the energy.