Photoshop CS5 Clipboard Issue (Win 7)

[JanGeloen]

I have a copy of PS CS5 installed and i can only paste an image that i copied from before the program was started. When Ps is already started and I copy an image and try to paste it in PS it will paste the image I copied before I started the program not the one I just copied...

It's a pretty annoying situation... not being able to copy and paste once the program is running. I have to shut it down, start it up again to paste the image I want...

Anybody a solution?

I work on: Win 7 ultimate 64 bit - i7 - 8 gigs ram

[Noel Carboni]

That's great news!  Enjoy it while it works.

One caution though:  An old software developer's adage:  If a problem seems to go away for no reason, it will usually come back by itself.

I hope your situation proves this adage wrong.

-Noel

[JanGeloen]

Yes, you are right. After a restart everything went back to normal and the issue reappeared...

damn.

[sob59]

I'm having the same problem on 64-bit Win7. No plug-ins installed, tried the registry hack -- no luck. However, the type of seleciton makes a difference.

• If I simply select a layer (bounding box appears with handles) and click the Edit menu, the Copy commands are disabled
• If I make a selection within the layer (marching ants appear) the Copy commands are enabled
• If I CTRL+Click the thumbnail in the Layers panel (marching ants appear) the Copy commands are enabled

Is anyone else noticing these different behaviors? This issue basically renders Photoshop unusable for serious production work, and it's clear this issue is affecting a large number of users. Adobe needs to get on this issue. 

[WickSmith]

I think this is normal behavior. To copy the contents of a layer you need to Select All (Ctrl-A) and then the Copy command will be available.

[sob59]

Doh, you're right. I'm confusing my frustration with the intermittent system clipboard, and been using Fireworks too much recently.

CTRL+A selects all, but to copy a layer press CTRL+J or click Layer > New > Layer via Copy.

[Anthake]

It's not a solution to your problem, but it might be a workaround...

Why don't you open the image you want to copy in Photoshop (if it is f.e. on a website, right-click and select 'save target as...', then open in PS)?

You can then duplicate the (background)layer of the saved image into the document you are editing. If you save the image as a TIFF, there's no loss of quality...

As I said, it's not a literal solution but combined with a droplet or action it should be quite straightforward...

[nickpudar]

Anthake,

Thanks for the suggestion... however one of the things that I do frequently is to take a Screen Capture to the clipboard.  Unfortunately other approaches (such as Microsoft Snipping Tool) are too cumbersome and require too many steps.

Thanks,

Nick

[Noel Carboni]

Not that I want you to have to live with a broken paste functionality, but consider the freeware app Irfan View for screen capture.

Run Irfan View, press C, choose what you want to capture, select a function key for the capture (or a timeout), and voila.  When your window/screen is captured, it's shown in Irfan View's window and all you have to do is File - Save As.

-Noel

[diveares]

Having the same issue with Mac / Leopard.  Not confined to windows.  I seem to remember a FILE option called Open New Document from Clipboard that is now gone.

[IdaMJ]

I am experiencing the exactly same problem. Is there any solution to this? I have a user that uses Photshop CS5 64bit that only can paste the things that was copied before the program was started...

[jdemattia]

I have seen this exact issue with Photoshop 64-bit on Windows 7. It's really aggrevating.

Taking a print screen, I usually paste it in mspaint and save that as a png and open the png in Photoshop, but that's not really an effective way of doing things...

[Bojohnso]

Since you are not able to copy paste files into Photoshop, use the drag and drop method.

[Jonathon_P]

Hi All,

Just wanted to add myself to the list of people suffering this problem. Interestingly with CS4 PS-64bit, not CS5.

Windows 7 Ultimate (Ultimate indeed...) 64 bit. Minimalistic start-up, tried running no other software and killing processes all to no avail.

Otherwise exactly the same issue.

Copy item, open PS-64, new document = correct document size etc.

Try and copy item after PS-64 already open, no dice. I tried purging the clipboard in PS-64 and after that the paste options are completely greyed out regardless of what you try to copy.

I am specifically trying to copy images from ID to PS. Bad form I know, but for what I am doing, if the clipboard was working, it would be much quicker than retrieving the original images, merging, cropping etc.

Drag and drop works, but this is no good if you want to create a new document from the clipboard.

So rather than just a CS5 issue, it appears to be a Windows 64 bit/PS-64bit issue, regardless of release.

Cheers, J

[Guest]

CS5 Photoshop on Mac

My issue with the clipboard is slightly different.

We often have to copy a pic from Word, then paste it into Photoshop.

With CS5, when I hit new... the window that opens is for a much smaller file...

ie on the clipboard is a 26MB pic, but CS5 cuts this to about 350K

CS4 does not have this problem.

Any idea what's going on?

[Guest]

You will have to ask the MAC forums.

I am guessing it is normal for a MAC to lose over 25 mb of data.

[Guest]

Nobody have talked about the fact that is an old bug. Photoshop have clipboard discontinuity problems since a long time, about since version 8.0 (CS). In some distributions, you could find a AlwaysImportClipbd_ON.reg file to update your registery. This bug fix used to not work for everyone.

The trick was:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Photoshop\$version$]
“AlwaysImportClipboard”=dword:00000001

After many years, this bug is still here and still difficult to fix...

[David Dobish]

We have been trying to reproduce this at Adobe for some time now.  Nobody who has tested this inside of Adobe is able to reproduce this issue.  I am not doubting your findings,  I am just saying that we are not able to reproduce the problem.  Their has to be some sort of configuration or difference that we do not have locally.  If I understand the steps.  They are this.

1. PS unlaunched

2. open web page and right click on image.

3. Select copy from context menu

4. Launch PS

5. select different image and copy or print screen

6. Create new in PS

7. Paste

Result:  The first images is pasted but not the second image as expected.

If I have the steps incorrect please alert me.

Can you think of any special settings or apps you have present on your machine?

1. Try trashing your prefs.  Ctrl+alt+shift on launch.  OK the trash prefs dialog.

2. In the PS directory out a ~ in front of your plugins and relaunch PS.  This will cause plugins to not load.

[Jonathon_P]

Well I have found this rather interesting!

On further investigation I now have no problem pasting different size images from web or other sources into new documents and having PS-64 correctly set up for what is on the clipboard.

I did however add the registry entry as per Lacrymocephale's post before testing this, so that could have been the remedy.
I added the entry as a new 64-bit Q-Word value.

My problem pasting images into photoshop from Indesign persisited though...

until...

I deleted (after searching for prefs) 3 files called "PhotoshopIimporterPrefs.eve"

After restarting PS-64 it now works correctly again, creating new documents according to what is on the clipboard. Sweet!

I consider this an easy fix if it happens again and therefore, for me anyway, solved.

Many thanks to Lacrymocephale and David Dobish for the advice and clues on where to look for solutions to this!

I'm chuffed! J

[David Dobish]

One other thing.  If you see the problem again I would like to see a screen shot of "task manager".  See my screen shot for an example.

[Jonathon_P]

No Problem - will do! (Have bookmarked this page)

Thanks again - J

[Noel Carboni]

Jonathon P wrote:

I added the entry as a new 64-bit Q-Word value.

You'd need confirmation from Adobe to be sure, but a quad word value is probably not the right choice.  I assume you did this because Photoshop is 64 bit, but it's not likely the Adobe programmers changed the registry access function (if it still exists) to use a quad word instead of a double word just because they're compiling for 64 bits.  The size of registry access functions is not normally tied to the natural integer size; you have to specifically code them to a particular data type.

Honestly, I've never tried reading a quad word from the registry with a double word access; since the Intel processor is little-endian it may well work out to the same thing.

-Noel

[studio aquarel · Accepted solution]

i had exactly the same issue with clipboard in PS CS5 described by David Dobish above. I solved it by removing Selective Tool (64 bit) Pluging from NIK SOFTWARE. Now clipboard works fine.

[JanGeloen]

I have 2 extra plugins installed on both systes with the bug. They are: Alien Skin Exposure 3 and Alien Skin Blow Up 2. But I'm to dependant on those two plugins to remove them and check if they cause the problem... Anyone Als has the problem with these plugins?

[jdemattia]

I can confirm that uninstalling Alien Skin Exposure 3 fixes the issue!

As this issue apparently occurs with a few different plug-ins, I wonder what those plug-ins have in common.

Is it an issue with the plug-ins, or with Photoshop when the plug-ins are installed?

It would be great if Adobe could install Alien Skin Exposure 3 and see if they can finally reproduce the issue.

[JanGeloen]

( I apologize for the dodgy spelling in my last post)

This is a great! To bad I really need those plugins... Hopefully Adobe is reading this and they can check if there is a problem with the plugin part of PS or if it is actually the plugin itself causing the problem.