Problem w/ PS 7 Actions & Brushes Pallete

SH
Posted By
starina_hope
Apr 14, 2004
Views
378
Replies
9
Status
Closed
Hi there,

I have just been trying to load in some Actions that I downloaded from the web.

For some strange reason the Arrow on the Actions pallet will not do anything. I press it and it just does nothing, so I can’t load in the action that I want to load in.

I also noticed this with my Brushes pallet. The arrow does not bring up the sub-menus.

There are no other pallets that this happens to. I tried them all and the sub-menus work fine.

I have already uninstalled and re-installed PS7 to see if that would fix it and it did nothing.

The only other thing I am wondering is if I have too many .abr or .atn files in the Preset folder?

I actually have several folders in the Preset folder.

I have one for Brushes that are ‘In Use’ and Brushes that are ‘Not In Use’ (25 Objects in Folder: all brushes categorized by type, not sure how many files in total). I also have the same set up for Actions: ‘Photoshop Actions’ (11 files) and ‘Photoshop Actions Not In Use’ (there are 96 actions in this folder).

Has anyone else run into this kind of thing.

I deleted all the brushes from the Preset Manager manually and tried to shut down and restart to see what would happen. Now the brushes pallet is empty.

Is there a way to get back all the default brushes again? I don’t know what they are called.

Thanks for your help.

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M
mudclown
Apr 14, 2004
I have the same problem with my action panel. I click the arrow and nothing! The submenu will simply not display. Somebody had suggested that I move some of my .atn file to another folder. Now that I think of it…. I do have a rather large collection of actions in the preset folder. It might be that some of your .atn files are just too large to begin with.
SH
starina_hope
Apr 15, 2004
I actually did move all but the PS7 default .atn files to another folder and it still doesn’t work.

I am gonna try to delete the preferences file and do some other things and see if that works.

I remember this happened to me after I first upgrated from PS6 to PS7… it wouldn’t take all the brushes I had loaded and did this to the Brush Pallette.

I’ll let you know if I fix it.

Thanks
SH
starina_hope
Apr 15, 2004
Fixed the issues:

1.) Tried deleting preferences and that did not work to make the Pallettes function, but it DID bring back the default brushes.

2.) Tried this and it worked:
-Made a ‘Brushes and Actions Not In Use’ Folder in the Main Photoshop 7 folder (outside the Presets folder)

-Went to the Presets -> Actions In Use Folder -> Cut all but one action and placed those in the seperate ‘Actions Not In Use’ Folder -> Cut the ‘Entire Actions Not In Use’ Folder and pasted it in the ‘Brushes and Actions Not In Use’ Folder

Did the exact same thing for the ‘Brushes Not In Use’ Folder (cut the folder out of Presets and pasted it in the ‘Brushes and Actions Not In Use’ Folder in the Main Photoshop 7 folder)

This seems to have made the pallette options arrow work and bring up the options. I can now load in actions and brushes from that outside folder with no problems.

I think what happened is that I had way to many folders/files in the Presets folder. Even though the files were not in the main Brushes or Photoshop Actions Folders, it seems that even having them in the Presets Main folder was clogging the system.

Well, that was a fun technical lesson. Hope this helps someone down the road…

If what I have explained still doesn’t make sense, let me know and I will try my best to clarify it for you.
DR
Danny_Raphael
Apr 17, 2004
Neither of you mentioned which version of Windows you’re using.

If Windows 98, there’s a known menu limitation. (Glad you got around it.) If an OS other than W98, you’ve reported a unique issue.
SH
starina_hope
Apr 18, 2004
Yes, Windows 98SE is the OS.
M
mudclown
Apr 21, 2004
I placed over half of my actions into a new folder (within the preset folder) and the menu still it didn’t work. However, you did say that you had to remove all your brushes and action file from their default folders and it worked. Still, I don’t understand what cause the problem in the first place. I mean my action panel always use to work. I wonder if adobe has a patch for this problem?
SH
starina_hope
Apr 21, 2004
Get all of the actions and brushes out of the preset folder except for a few. Apparently there is some kind of overload issue. They fixed it in CS, but PS 7 still ha the issue. There is no patch as far as I know.
DM
dave_milbut
Apr 21, 2004
not cs, it’s a win 9x/me problem (and to some extent nt). everything works fine in xp or 2k. it’s an os limit on items in a menu list, not something PS can control.
SH
starina_hope
Apr 21, 2004
Oh OK. Thanks for clarifying that.
Time to upgrade the OS!

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