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I take a lot of screenshots of the work I do and paste them in to Photoshop (CS2). Sometimes, every other print screen event does nothing, and when I go to paste in Photoshop, it just pastes the same screen from before, not the latest one. This is so infuriating that I start punching things and wanting to throw my laptop against the wall.

I've tried to figure it out, looked for answers, but I see nothing anywhere about this. I swear this was happened on my XP system as well. I have been unable to duplicate this issue with pasting screenshots in to Word, so I figure it has something to do with how Photoshop imports the clipboard.

I've tried mashing the Print Screen key about 10 times before reentering Photoshop, but that doesn't help. Has anyone else dealt with this annoyance and figured out a solution?

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  • Can you please let us know how much RAM your PC has.
    – Dave
    Oct 2, 2012 at 12:24
  • Can you try using Snipping Tool to take the screenshots? (Its a built-in Windows 7 tool meant to take screenshots)
    – Ganesh R.
    Oct 2, 2012 at 12:29
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    Regarding Snipping Tool, I tried it out, and I wasn't able to duplicate the issue I mentioned above, but it adds a lot of hassle to the process. To use it, I would need to bounce between three different programs instead of two.
    – Exit
    Oct 2, 2012 at 12:39
  • It seems to be the less annoying solution, but if I hit Ctrl-C before PrtSc, it seems to force it to work.
    – Exit
    Oct 17, 2012 at 4:34
  • Nope, hitting Ctrl-C prior does not help anything, it still isn't working right. I have to assume that there is an error in Photoshop CS2 that doesn't properly import the clipboard (or possibly notice it was changed).
    – Exit
    Oct 19, 2012 at 22:18

1 Answer 1

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Go to 'Edit > Preferences > General' (general preferences may be located somewhere else depending on your version) and then deselect 'Export Clipboard' NOTE: If you do that, you won't be able to Ctrl+C at photoshop and Ctrl+V at another application. Check that again if you like to do that and just do a File > New and paste there instead or wait a few seconds

This has annoying me for years, I finally figured out after some research: As far as I know, Photoshop puts a cache on the 'clipboard' for a few seconds. Some people suggested creating a new file before pasting to solve the issue, which does, but is inconvenient for me. So I figured out that unchecking the 'Export clipboard' will avoid this lock/caching of the clipboard content. I tested on Photoshop CC and seems to work fine.

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