can't i use the twirl effect in photoshop?

[gbrown]

I am currently trying to make a background for a poster in photoshop and i am at the point where i need to twirl one layer of the background but when i go to Filter>Distort>Twirl the twirl is gray and will not allow me to select it. I can't figure out why photoshop is not letting me do this. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks guys.

[Virgo Nightingale]

I know that some filters in Photoshop are grayed out if you're in cmyk mode, but twirl shouldn't be one of them. Try making your image rgb and see if the option becomes available.

[Alan G]

Is Liquify also greyed out? Anything you could do with Twirl you can do with more control in Liquify. That said, I can't think of a good reason Twirl would be greyed out, without almost every other filter being greyed out with it (e.g., if you were in 16-bit mode, or were targeting a layer group instead of a single layer).
One old standby for Wierd Photoshop Phenomena (WPP for short) is to quit and restart. If that fails, reset your preferences (hold down Cmd/Option/Shift or Ctrl/Alt/Shift while Photoshop is initializing).