What Chris Cox said, and remember that Photoshop saves its preferences only on an orderly QUIT.  If the program crashes, or if you force quit, then your UI size does not get saved.

Aaaaah... you hadn't mention Wacom before.  Wacom drivers can be trouble and I have no way to troubleshoot that.  I can only suggest you make sure you have the latest, Lion-compatible driver from Wacom.

No, not as long as the Wacom tablet is connected and the Wacom drivers are installed, if the Wacom driver is the cause.

Curt Y wrote:

 

In Bridge if you close program by clicking on the red X in upper right hand corner,  it closes the window and therefore forces close on Bridge.  To quit program you have to click on File/Exit.

 

Perhaps it is the same in Photoshop, to properly close PS you have to click File/Exit.  I know most people quit a program by just closing the window.

Curt,

Just FYI, there's no "red X in the upper right hand corner" of any Mac window.

The menu item to quit Photoshop is called Quit (not exit) and it's in the Photoshop menu, not the File menu. 

Closing all windows does not quit Photoshop on the Mac.

Noel,

I was just pointing out to Curt Y the differences between Mac and Windows.  The OP is on a Mac.

1.— There is NOTHING on the upper right-hand corner of a Mac window.  Niente!  

The Close, Minimize and Maximize buttons are on the left.  I choose the Graphite Appearance system-wide, so they're gray, with • – + symbols in them when you hover the mouse over them.  Those who choose the Blue Appearance see gaudy red, amber and green lighted buttons.  

2.— Closing all windows does not cause Photoshop to exit on a Mac.  You only do that by hitting Command+Q or through the Photoshop menu > Quit Photoshop command.

If the OP were not a Mac user, I wouldn't have pointed out these differences.

Noel Carboni wrote:

 

 

And lastly, pressing the button highlighted above in Photoshop in Windows does close the application gracefully, and (assuming Photoshop doesn't crash on the way out) preferences will be saved.

OK, you got me on the red X.  One more point for Noel.

But I know for a fact in Bridge if you have checked "Start Bridge at Login" and close Bridge my clicking on "grayscale/white X surrounded by RED" any changes you made to your preferences will not be saved.  They will only be saved if you click on File/Exit.  Therefore, I stand by my statement - using the X makes a forced exit and preferences will not be saved, at least in Bridge.

Don't think PS has the "Start PS on Startup" option, but mentioned the above as OP said their prefernce changes were not persistant when he exited program.

And Station 2 -  I admit to not knowing how a Mac works.  So whether the "X"  is on left and are color lights, and Exit called something different, I was assuming the Mac user is smart enough to compute the correct terminology for their computer.