Strange Layer Style Behavior CS3

I'm having a problem with creating a custom layer style. When I click the layer style button at the bottom of the layer pallet, or chiise a layer style from the Layers menu) Photoshop does not open the Layer Styles dialog box. It instead applys some sort of default style and I see a message in the top tool bar that says "Click and drag to reposition the effect." Double-clicking the layer in the Layers Pallet switches to the hand tool and disables most menu functions. I either have to hit Enter or Cmd-Period to cancel and return to normal functionality.
Is this some arcaine setting I've never encountered before, or is PS broken? The problem seems to have started after I ran the OS X Software Update yesterday-- I'm using OS X 10.4.11. I also recently switched my Workplace setting from a custom two-monitor pallet layout to a single monitor default layout.
Thanks--

It seems like the layer effects dialog is popping up off-screen somewhere... When you double-click on a layer with styles/effects applied to it, it usually pops that up, and then if you mouse over the image while that's up, you get the hand tool and allows you to drag to reposition the effect.
That would also explain the disabling of the menu items, that also happens when the layer styles dialog box pops up.
I'm not sure how you go about fixing that, though... I would try saving your workspace layout as something else, and then hitting window>workspace>"reset palette locations" or "reset menus" (although you'll probably lose any custom menu stuff that way) and I would also try applying other default workspaces.
Best of luck!
-Caleb

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sorry if this is a very broad question, I am new to CS3. I usually use elements.
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Hi Guys,
Yesterday I went to a CS6 workspace and installed After Effects.
I just imported a CS5 comp into After Effects CS6, it looked like everthing worked fine. After working a while I saw some really strange layer bugs happening. Layers pop off randomly in the composition viewer.
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thank you for your quick replies!
I updated After Effects but the issue is still there.
I found out that:
- it has something to do with the alpha channel, because it only happens when an alpha "set matte" or "track matte" is applied.
- It only becomes visible after a precomposition of the comp (before updating to 11.0.2 also in the comp with alpha channel)
- the issue is gone when the resolution/downsample factor is set to half (in the composition screen)
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Hi. Anybody else got problems with the the blend modes in the "stroke" layer style, or am I doing something wrong?
right click on layer > blending options > stroke > blend mode
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I often use blend modes, for example "darken", etc. I know how they work, but somehow for the stroke layer style it seems not to work at all.
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Ed Hannigan wrote:
So it seems. But the Stroke doesn't seem to work that way.
A question for Adobe techs?
Mylenium wrote:
... (or maybe it isn't and the bug has now become commonly accepted behavior?). It is strange, I grand you that. Maybe one day it will be changed/ fixed for the better.
As there's only a single sentence refering to the stroke layer style in the CS3 manual, I'd also be thankful for an Adobe comment, clarifying whether this is a bug or not and if it will be improved.
Just to depict the current behaviour in a more graphic way:
test image: layers:
stroke settings:
expected results:
actual results:
I'd suggest to add a checkbox "knockout", which would let the user choose between the two results.

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I'm running Photoshop CS2 on PC. When right clicking on layers to bring up the Layer Styles / Blending Options palette, I can get the palette okay but the selections won't work when I check the boxes.
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I've reset my preferences (alt+ctl+shift) but it didn't help.
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Thank you both for your responses.
John: The file is PSD, RGB mode, 300dpi. Last night, I tried the layer styles in another file and it wouldn't' work.... another NEW file. Today, I opened an existing file that had layers styles already in effect and I can see them, I can click them on/off AND I can put layer styles onto other layers in the existing files that did not have them previously. I just tried creating a new file and, of course, the layer styles now work in the NEW file.... this is something I tried last night and it didn't work at that time.
Ed: Yes, I'm on the right layer. I've tried it on several layers, none of which are transparent. Thanks for the heads up.
So, this tells me it's something to do with this particular image file. I must've accidentally hit something that's put it into a strange mode. Last night, out of frustration, I just gave up, shut it all down, and turned the computer off. This morning, I went in and created a new image document and then one by one I copied and pasted the layers of my malfunctioning image into the new one. Now I can get the layers to work.
I have no idea what was wrong, but it seems I should just trash the problematic file and start fresh. At least the individual layers were not compressed and it's still salvagable.
Thank you both for your time and consideration!
Lisa

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I am finding at random times that when I draw a rectangle with rectangle tool and then use layer style to apply a 1 pixel border, the border sometimes have a fade on either side of the that 1 pixel and it becomes 2 pixel. It doesn't appear on all four sides, just randomly left,right,top, bottom...
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Pixels are the building blocks of raster images but you can put vectors anywhere, even at half pixel increments. So what happens when you tell Photoshop to make a 1 pixel stroke in such a way that it shows 25% in one pixel and 75% in the one next to it? You cannot fill half pixels so it has to either resize your vector so that it snaps to the pixel grid or, and this is what Photoshop does, add anti-aliassing which makes the 25% selected pixel 25% gray and the 75% selected pixel 75% gray (if the stroke was black).

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I was just able to take the CS6 beta for another test run, and it seems the following ancient, but high-priority bug (at least for me) hasn't been addressed:
When saving large Photoshop documents (composites in resolutions like, say 7000x10000 pixels) to Photoshop PDF, certain layer styles are often not exported correctly when applied to text layers. The layer styles that are affected are those that render pixels that are then clipped inside the text, such as Gradient Overlay, Bevel & Emboss etc.
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Two possibilities: Pre-compose everything and fade the comp or use a second layer that has the layer styles, but in its Blending Options for the layer styles has set Fill opacity to zero, so only the styles are rendered, but not the source. Whjat you are seeing is normal behavior based on how styles are supposed to work. Whenever there is a non-zero (non-transparent) pixel, the get applied, where the pixels opacity acts as amultiplier for the style's intensity. Looks good for some, but often causes this popping appearance...
Mylenium

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Well, I ended up copying all of the layers from the old PSD to a CS4 psd and it worked. Since it is a web page it had a lot of layers and it was a major pain in the hooey... but it did work.

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hi! :) i'm using after effects cs3 on a quadecore pc, 2gb RAM. my output is in quicktime .mov. layer styles that i've added doesn't come out in my rendered project like drop shadow or stroke. none of my layers are in 3D so i don't know what i may or may not be doing right in my render settings or project switches. help?

Well, depending on your output module templates and render settings, OpenGL may be enabled by default for some of them. You can easily change that by going in the menu and choosing Edit --> Templates --> Render Settings (the setting is a checkbox called "Render using OpenGL").
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I have a jpg image in AE CS3 - I used a layer style - stroke of about 10 pixels to make it look like it had a white border.
When I put the image into 3d space and zoom move it further into z space, the stroke gets very big - as I zoom in the stroke gets smaller.
How can I make the stroke appear to stay the same size? I'm zooming in and out with a camera.
Thanks!

I've found a solution for this...I put my jpeg into a pre-composition and moved all of it's attributes to the new composition. The stroke now stays in place.

A bug? Layer styles change or dissappear when you flatten/merge layers.

Does anyone else experience this problem in CS3?
An example for me would be,
right now I have an outer glow with noise applied to something but when I flatten the few layers I have in the file, the noise simply disappears or the glow becomes faded. With other layer styles, there might be a change, too, but usually the effect just weakens in color when i flatten the layers.
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I either used too many words or too few, but I'm not really sure.
The specific layer style combo and layer merge I am talking about is simpler than you might imagine..(see the pictures I posted of the results of the merge.)
Yellow outer glow at full opacity with 100% noise, merged down with a single layer. (and that single layer does not have anything other than a fill in it)
When i merge the two, (both blending modes are set to normal) the noise then disappears and the glow fades. It really does not have anything to do with how close or far away the "view" is.
Trust me, I tried it.
I even used a microscope and a telescope..
It doesn't change anything.
In other words, the layer styles always look okay regardless of how they are viewed, UNTIL you flatten or merge them.
So to finally answer Buko's question, the answer is no.
And I did actually take into consideration what D.Katz said about possible interference with the appearance.. view needing to be at 100 to even judge what's going on.
The problem I am experiencing only occurs the minute one layer combines with another layer that has a layer style(s).
If you compare the two images I posted, you will see that there is a very large loss in quality rendering the layer style not even worth using in the first place.

Photoshop Layer Styles do not come over to FCP

I have a .psd file. It's a logo on one layer with a blank (alpha channel) as the background. I want to put a stroke on the logo. In photoshop, I use blending options to add my stroke.
When I import the file into FCP, it does not have the stroke. I tried other effects (drop shadow, bevel, etc) and none of those come over to FCP either.
So is it known that photoshop does not recognize the photoshop layer styles? Or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for the help.
-Carl

Layer - Rasterize is grayed out...
Wonder what I'm doing wrong...
Even if I can somehow do this, why can't FCP just understand these layer styles... It works so well with photoshop, but there's this one issue. And if I rasterize it, I'm not going to be able to make it bigger later. Kind of defeats the purpose of wanting to go back and edit it later on..
Strangeness...

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I am having a problem in CS6 Photoshop where I never experienced this in CS3-5.
I am designing a website and when I apply a drop shadow or inner shadow to a layer through layer style/blending options in the layers tab. It applys the same angle etc.. to all the other layers I have done styles too...
I will have 5 + layers done with styles and I will make a new layer and give it a shape, open up blending options and when I do a drop shadow and change the angle I literally can see everything on my layout change angles also when I move it around for just ONE layers style... What on earth is going on? This makes it impossible to make unique designs unless I keep flattening my PSD and transfering stuff over which destroys workflow.

Thank you for the reply's. I actually was able to figure it out shortly after making this thread.
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Cannot choose layers w/o going to layer style menu

I'm on CS3, on a network. Over the weekend the network admin put through updates to several programs, none of those were Adobe. However, in photoshop, now I can't select a layer by clicking on it. I have to double-click, which opens the layer styles menu, click OK or cancel to close the menu, then the layer will be selected. This isn't happening anywhere else. Illustrator gives me error messages when trying to apply a layer effect, but I don't know when that started, it may not have anything to do with the current network updates. Any ideas, especially for the PS problem? That's quite annoying to deal with.
Thanks!!!

Hi
thanks for the response. I've always done that, that's what was so puzzling.
We finally figured it out - what happened was the couple of files that were
open when IT started the update were the only ones with the problem. They
were corrupted when a force quit was initiated ... or at least that's what
we think.

Strange Layer Style Behavior CS3

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