Gray drop down menu bar

[jrswifey6264]

I just installed photoshop 7 and almost ALL the tabs in the drop down menus are grayed out? I am by far computer literate and really want to use my photoshop and cant use hardly anything. I also want to place a picture and crop it into a circle instead of a rectangle. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[mscallisto]

Have you opened a picture File > Open or File > New?

Most menu items are grayed out until you open a picture.

After opening a picture you may need to unlock it before other menu items become available.

The quickest way to unlock is to look at the Layers pallet (click windows and make sure layers is checked).

If you see a padlock on the right side of the layer name (probably named "background")then double click anywhere on the name area and choose OK) The padlock will go away and more menu options will be available.

Some other menu items will only become avail when you do things that make them available.

 

[mscallisto]

Sorry forgot the circle crop.

Use the elliptical marquee tool to create a circle.

Click on elliptical tool and while holding down the shift key drag out a circle. Without the shift key you get an ellipse.

Click inside the circle and while holding down the click mouse key you can drag the circle to wherever you like.

Click select > inverse to select everything but the circle.

note... unlock the picture as I said in the above post.

Click edit > cut

Click File > Save for Web

Click Save.

Now when you open the pic with your picture viewer you will see just the circle with a transparent background.

Hope this helps.

sam