Best guess without a screenshot of the left side docks arrangement.
You have several docks grouped on the left side. The layers dock is somewhere near the bottom. Raise the layers dock to the top.
example:
https://i.imgur.com/XqP5obz.mp4Edit:
Quote:
When I click to open the blending mode of a layer, the option menu opens with a bunch of empty space at the top that I've never seen before. The real problem is that as I toggle down through the menu, the layer mode is not changed on the image
Did it ever work that way ? Use the mouse scroll wheel to get a preview.
example
https://i.imgur.com/ld2FDtq.mp4edit again: If you are using a graphics tablet, then the scroll function might be inconvenient. The keyboard up/down arrow keys work as well.
example
https://i.imgur.com/6yO8dnk.mp4Quote:
Can anyone tell me exactly what resetting the preferences will do for me? Will it fix this? Will it wipe all the special settings I've installed for doing things like soft-proofing?
You can just reset the windows positions back to default.
Edit -> Preferences -> Window Management -> Reset Saved Window Positions to Default Values