Brushes, pencil, clone stamp won't work...

[Rockdoc]

I am feeling a bit stupid, as I am guessing that this is something obvious. In PSE 6, I cannot get a brush, pencil, or clone stamp to work. I have set a foreground color that should show up. I tried resetting the individual tools, resetting all tools, and clearing the preferences on startup. This happens with both the graphic I am trying to modify and a brand new file. The undo history shows that I used the tool, but nothing shows up on the screen.

I am using a wacom tablet with the mouse.

The color mode is set to RGB/8.

I don't know what else to try. This is driving me crazy! Any ideas?

[Steve Grisetti]

Can you get the tools to work with your mouse?

The first troubleshooting step should be eliminating that tablet as the problem. Disconnnect it. Reboot. Try the mouse.

If the mouse works, plug the tablet back in and go to the Wacom tablet and look for new drivers.

And, if none of that works, we can consider operator error -- though there's not much you can do wrong. You click on a tool, you write on a document, right?

[tjodork]

Are you using the tablet at the time that things dont work ? I know I have had what you describe happen and drove me crazy also.
I have a Wacom 4x5 tablet and at times when using my normal mouse things I would be trying to use my normal mouse. While this normally works to use my regular mouse, at times, not sure why it would only want to use the tablet...I'm pretty sure when I switched to the tablet things worked.

[Chuck Engels]

What type of image are you trying to use the tools on?
There are times when the tools will not work for me but that is because I have an image that the tools will not work on.
I am sure Steve knows why, I still haven't figured out what I do to make them stop working. Maybe it has to do with flattening the image or saving it as a jpeg or something.

[Rockdoc]

Ok, I pulled that same psd file I was working on into PSE on my laptop. I could work on it just fine, so I solved my problem with the graphic in about 10 minutes (though I spent about 5 hours working on it on my desktop where the tools don't work trying to select areas and fill them in, etc. Silly me). So, it is not the file. This also happens with new files - the drawing tools just don't work at all.

I quickly plugged my wireless mouse in and tried that - no luck. I didn't unplug the tablet and reboot, then use the wireless mouse. I will try that next. And then I will update drivers.

Thanks for the suggestions, I will post back and let you know.

[Chuck Engels]

Might want to reinstall too.