P: Pixel locking does not work in background layer

[Art of Walls]

Imagine this:

You hace a pencil black and white drawing scanned and you want to add colour without destroying the pencil art. So you create a new layer over the background and start painting your colours there, maybe with layer in multiply mode.

Then, for some reason, you inadventedly change active layer to background. You keep painting and then realize half of your painting work has been done on the pencil art layer (the background) ruining your work!

The solution is locking the pixels of the pencil art, so, if you inadventedly try to paint on that layer, the cursor will become a forbidden sign and you will get a pop up warning if you try to paint.

The problem is apparently you can't lock the pixels on the beackground even if you have pixel locking (or all locking) activated. This doesn't seem to work in the background layer (maybe because it is not really a layer).

The workaround is create a new layer from the background so pixel locking works, but I think Pixel Locking should work also with the background without having to convert it into a layer. Some lockings like transparency locking have no sense in a background, but pixel locking makes perfect sense.

[jane-e]

@Art of Walls 

The Background layer is a unique layer with unique properties. It was a required layer through Photoshop 5.0.

In your situation where you are accidentally selecting the wrong layer and failing to notice it, you might try this:

• Convert the Background layer to a pixel layer by clicking the padlock or by renaming it
• Click the Lock icon near the top of the Layers panel to apply a different kind of a lock, such as Lock All to prevent painting on the layer or moving it.

Doing this at the start of your project should prevent further mishaps. The History panel stores 50 undos by default, but you can change that number in Preferences to cover what you think you might need.

Jane

[J453]

That locking UI used to be disabled because it has no affect on special "Background" layers. I've asked engineering to take a look.

[Art of Walls]

Yes Jeffrey, it is disabled when you only have the background layer, but as soon as you create a new layer, it is enabled also for the background (but, as you said, it has no effect at all).

But pixel locking of the background totally makes sense to me so I think at least this locking should work.

[Art of Walls]

Hi Jane.

The solution you proposed is exactly what I said I was using as a workaround but it would be easier and would make perfect sense if pixel locking would be possible in the background "layer". So maybe it is not a bug, but it is a feature that should exist.

[Kukurykus]

Today 23.3.2 update does not solve the problem the author reported 😕 Now background works exactly same as in 23.3.1 version. It only doesn't let click one of 5 options (incl. 4 for different kind of locking). They of course didn't work for background like for ordinal layers, but were clickable so idea was to have 'Lock Pixels' icon available for Background layer as well (to prevent from painting).

Something no one had problem about has been fixed. That raises questions, because when I requested through years to do something about 6 - 8 bugs, either to fix for consistency as little things didn't work correctly or because of spoiled single users workflow I have been recieving unsatisfying answers.

Like no capacity to take in account requests of few of us to make broken functionalities work again, and eventually asking of good explanation how that could improve my work...

Did anything change that the bug reported (or rather an idea) on Apr 01, 2022 has been taken care so fast? If that's for serious what I see, I'm going to bring attention to all old 'little' bugs I found myself 😄

[PECourtejoie]

@Kukurykus Maybe should you bump the bug reports, and ask others coders to take a look? maybe ping engineers who visit this forum. Make sure to explain why and how the bug impedes the work, but you know this already. (posting so that it can benefit others)

[Kukurykus]

My idea about those bugs was to have everything working correctly, especially all that worked previously. The things I'm talking about didn't really stop us to use Photoshop beside some specific scenarios, but were enough simple to do something about them offhand. I was only one who reported them, while the internal policy is to focus on serious stuff, that is affecting many customers or referring to important for company features.

When you have a 4 bulbs lamp and one is broken you still can see everything around. From my experience these kind of bugs are ignored. Tracking them is not an interest of company that look for buisness benefits.

Without new official bugs sections where users aspire for self happiness I doubt this situation can change, all the more I'm surprised someone made time to take care of insignificant element, that actually only visually makes things for better, and only if you knew it was broken.

[Mohit Goyal]

Hi there,

We're happy to announce the release of Photoshop 23.3.2. This update includes the fix for this issue. To see the list of all fixed issues, click here

To update Photoshop to 23.3.2, click "Update" in the Creative Cloud desktop app next to Photoshop. More detailed instructions for updating  

Let us know if the update resolves the problem for those affected and share your feedback with us.  

Thanks,

Mohit

[Kukurykus]

If I haven't been aware the only you do is providing messages of fixes or updates I would say of arrogance I'm seeing in your post toward followers of the report. You could at least refrain from marking own post as correct answer, but yeah, you're only news messanger - I hope next time more adequate to the subject 😉 Yestarday on 10 May, 2022, I described what this thread is about, and the fix doesn't reflect author problem (which is more as request, not a bug).