Photoshop Creative

Here I am again...asking an obvious newbie question. My curser appears to be "stuck" on the Hand (zoom) tool. This has happened to me before. When I click on anything else, it just stays on that tool. After a while it may change back. Is this just a glitch, or is there anything I can do to get it working again?

I have absolutely no idea. But..... whenever something like that happens, try simply closing Elements. Exit the program and get back to your desktop. Then start Elements again.

If it continues to happen, post back and somebody smarter than I am may be able to help.

Rusty

It sounds like you're running out of memory on the computer. Photoshop is a memory hungry program and sometimes it will just lock up until it sorts itself out. The way you can tell is by hitting ctrl-alt-delete to get the windows task manager up and look at the bottom where it says CPU usage - if it's up around 100% you're using all the memory and need to wait until it sorts itself out. Go make a cup of tea or something. I have PSE5 and found that when I'm editing a photo, I need to save a psd copy at the start and keep saving as I'm creating new layers, otherwise I max out the ram on the computer.

Try tapping the space bar - it's a kind of 'toggle', though I've no idea when it might be used for that.
It could also be that your space bar is stuck.

If/When it happens again, I will be sure to try either or both of those suggestions. Thanks so much for the ideas!

Mine will do that sometimes when i am working on a large file, most of the time if i just wait it catches up.

The question is raised from time to time on both the PS and PSE Flickr Groups and the answer always seems to involve the space bar.