Photoshop CC Brushes and Pencils not working

[Samdusa]

I was sketching some artwork in Photoshop CC on my Wacom art tablet.  The battery was running low but I thought there was just enough battery to make some quick changes to my sketch right before charging time.  Unfortunately, midway through making changes and constantly saving the project, the art tablet shut down from a low and empty battery.  I put it on charge and turned it back on to make sure nothing was damaged.  The tablet as a whole is fine, but Photoshop seems to have lost the texture of the pencil used and also does not match the texture of the grunge paper effect that I have set as the main layer.  All of my brushes have lost texture and only show up in small increments as I drag the Wacom pencil around.  I tried changing the texture, pattern, and brush spacing preferences for several of the drawing tools but the settings may have been corrupted due to the crash.  Any ideas on how to get Photoshop back to normal and still be able to draw with the same pencil and textures?

[Samdusa]

Also, is there a way to save Photoshop and restore it so that this is fixed, while also keeping the projects I have saved and worked on prior to the incident?

[kevin stohlmeyer · Accepted solution]

check your brush settings in Photoshop - spacing would cause the dots to show up, otherewise I would shut down the whole system and restart. Chances are your tablet is only sending intermittent pressure information to the computer since you had an interruption in service.

[Samdusa]

Update.  I was able to fix it just now.  In my case, something was wrong with the photoshop preferences and it couldn't be fixed with the program open.  I first tested to see if my pen and Wacom was the issue, but the pen was able to draw normally on small sketch programs.  Photoshop would only pick up the pencil properly if I held the pen with a sideways slant.  The fix for me was manually deleting the Adobe Photoshop Prefs.psp file and then reopening photoshop.  Thank you for pointing me in the right direction towards fixing the bug!

[Guest]

Have you tried reseting the brush and pencil setting?

[Samdusa]

Yes, but something was wrong with the preferences in photoshop in general.  I was able to fix it just a few minutes ago though.