Lost Brush Tool from Pallet

Hi Folks,

I've searched this topic, but questions concerning the brush tool and its loss in/from the CS3 seem to be slightly different than mine:

The brush tool in my Tools Pallet is no longer there. It has gone away after I hit some keys (I think). I previously saved my brush presets and they are available to load (learned my lesson about losing them in the past), but loading does not bring back the brush tool onto the pallet.

Brush selection from a fly-out menu/tab is greyed (this is not from the pallet itself but over where you have all of the tabbed items).

The brush loss originated during work on a layer (masked) when I went to the Info tab and was clicking on the layer to better identify colors according to R, G, B, or CYMK values. The cursor had turned into the color picker/color id icon or similar (?), and I suddenly had the masked area enlarged (nice feature but not sure how I got it). I think that happened when I inadvertently hit the Alt, Ctrl or Shift key.

After that I could not get the cursor to change out of the color picker/id cursor (don't know exactly what the cursor is called) and back to any other. At some point, I did get back to the other tool selection cursors but can't remember how I did it.

I went to the History tab and tried to move back, but when I clicked on a past action, it changed the described action instead of moving things backwards - all during this time the cursor was the color picker/id.

I loaded defaults. No help. I got out of PS, closed it and restarted with no improvement.

I then restarted the PC and opened PS, but no help and really, after restarting the PC is when the brush tool disappeared from the pallet.

If you have any clues and/or advice, I'm all ears. I'm sure I hit a key and it went south from there, but maybe this will all make some sense to someone and they can help me get the brush tool back on the pallet. Or, maybe I'll need to reinstall PSCS3...

Thanks very much for any help,

Flanny

DId you try restoring your workspace (either the default, or a custom workspace you have maybe created and saved)?

I am a Mac user, so I can;t really help too much. Also, I believe there is a key-sequence that can be pressed during startup of PS to reset it - hopefully someone with PC experience here will chime in.

See this thread (CS2 related):

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=509213

or this approach:

I am guessing you may have to re-set up some preferences in PS if you do this.

Maybe you have a similar issue with a similar solution.

Kirk

Thanks Kirk. So far, I am moving in the direction of resetting the Preference file, so I appreciate the link and specific instructions.

Will have to wait to get home to try it, but in the meantime, will gather any other suggestions and advice sent my way.

Flanny

Went to reset my workspace last night to try the first suggested fix, and lo and behold, the brush tool was in the pallet and things worked fine.

What happened between the time of the problem and my next available time to try a fix? The computer had performed an auto security scan and two external hard drives had been rebooted thereafter.

Well I had rebooted the PC on my own to try to initially fix the problem but I hadn't performed a scan or rebooted the drives where the photos are located. Hmmm.

So, I'm glad to say that I'm back to work with no negative impacts.

Thanks for the input.