problems with photoshop elements 9 please help

I admit I am new, but there are a lot of guides on the net , and I try to follow them. In the following pics , I was trying to get my lighting right in different areas of the picture. Then photoshop stop letting me make adjustments. It didnt freeze , it just would not apply my adjustments. Then I noticed that there where large (but faint) digital artifacts in the sky.....Why? has anyone had this happen before ? The only thing Ive done to the sky was use the magic brush to apply a little blue sky to the blown out sky. Help please. btw, the file that i originally brought into photoshop was a raw file un edited in anyway.

Maybe be a bit more clear -- for one thing, were you trying to do an operation on a 16-bit per-channel image when you could only do it on an 8-bit per-channel image? So, what operation where you trying to perform?

I took the smart brush and added blue sky....then darkened a little with the gradient tool. As far as what bits I use, I dont know what is a 16 or an 8 bit action on photoshop, but i took the raw file through camera raw and it converted it to 8 bit before it went to photoshop

Is the first image a screenshot or the actual file?
It says "Rectangular Snip". If it's a screenshot, it might be a glitch in the software used to do the screenshot, if it's not a screenshot, you applied some kind of watermark maybe?

René Damkot wrote in post #12022815
Is the first image a screenshot or the actual file?
It says "Rectangular Snip". If it's a screenshot, it might be a glitch in the software used to do the screenshot, if it's not a screenshot, you applied some kind of watermark maybe?

nevermind the snip ...and its not a watermark

What artifacts are you referring to then?

René Damkot wrote in post #12023312
What artifacts are you referring to then?

They are faint watermark like squares, to the right of the snip watermark.

Ah. I assume they belonged together

Examine the masks you are using, and check the separate layers for transparency.
Not sure in Elements, but in PS:

Alt+Click the eyebulb in front of a layer to show just that layer.
Alt+Click the layer mask to show that in B&W.

Maybe the squares are parts of a mask that's just not white or black, but gray.

Hard to say what happened without knowing what you did, or why PSE froze.

I assume you tried saving the file, quitting PSE and reopening?

mosteller wrote in post #12021505
... Then photoshop stop letting me make adjustments. It didnt freeze , it just would not apply my adjustments. ... The only thing Ive done to the sky was use the magic brush to apply a little blue sky to the blown out sky...

Regarding not being able to make further adjustments -- are you sure you are working on the correct layer? The Magic Brush adds a new adjustment layer, and if you have that selected instead of the image layer, that would affect your ability to apply further adjustments such as brightness, contrast, etc.

Rimmer wrote in post #12023556
Regarding not being able to make further adjustments -- are you sure you are working on the correct layer? The Magic Brush adds a new adjustment layer, and if you have that selected instead of the image layer, that would affect your ability to apply further adjustments such as brightness, contrast, etc.

im doin it right

Could you put a smaller version or a small part of the problem area online as .psd somewhere?