P: brush cursors not working on 2011 Mac/MacBook Air (OS X 10.7.x Lion)

Guys! Today I just added a second external display to my setup (via USB) and the brushes/ eraser etc work again in both PS and LR!! I can see that at the critical values the ghost ouline of the brush jitters a little bit but keeps centred and keeps the right size!! Maybe the second external display slows down the update/ refresh rate or something similar... I hope that helps in fixing what was the reason in first place for that misbehaving brush outline...

I have reported this issue to Apple. If/When I hear anything from Apple that I can share I will update this list.

The first comment is important. You really don't know programming, how OS vendors establish and support APIs, how OS vendors make mistakes, how OS vendors must fix their mistakes, etc. You seem to have some mistaken impression that application authors have to change their code every time the OS coders make mistakes. That would be like expecting Toyota to change the design of their cars for every new pothole in the road.

AMD/NVidia/Intel give Apple some video driver code, which Apple further modifies and integrates. Apple is also responsible for the APIs that call into the driver code and can cause issues like this one. Even if the bug was in the GPU makers code, it ships with the OS, and Apple is responsible for that.

As far as everyone can tell, Adobe got the code right. But Apple made a (more than one) mistake in Lion and needs to fix it. I don't know how hard this is for Apple to fix, because I don't have their code to find the cause of the bug. But I do know that it would take Adobe a huge amount of work to bypass the OS driven cursor.

We are trying to work with Apple to get this, and many other, Lion bugs fixed as soon as possible. But we cannot set Apple's priorities, and we cannot fix Apple's code for them. If you want bugs in MacOS fixed sooner, please let Apple know that you want them to fix the bugs sooner.

Hello Chris- Your first comment is gratuitous and easy to ignore. You make some good points in the rest of the message. However, my main point was simply to say that the "blame" for this problem can't be just one-sided. Do you really think Apple is writes the video drivers when the hardware comes from third-party vendors like AMD/ATI and Intel?

It cannot be good for Adobe to have a flagship program like Photoshop not work properly on the Mac platform so the company should be highly motivated to get it right, which they have not. Lion has been seeded for a long while and there aren't actually many types of video hardware Apple uses in their current line-up (check their web site). How hard can this be for two big companies to solve?

I don't care who is to blame. I just want a fix for this problem as soon as possible. If this doesn't happen I will be looking for alternative image editing software that works with Lion.

Well, I'm pretty sure you've never written software before.

Adobe made sure that Lightroom and Photoshop worked with the available versions of the OS when their software shipped. Adobe made sure that they worked with the APIs published by Apple. Adobe did everything by the book. Adobe couldn't guess that somewhere years later that Apple would break the video driver code. That's like buying a new car and guessing exactly when and how you'll get a flat tire 2 years later.

Apple made a mistake in Lion for some video cards/GPUs. And it turns out that Apple has a lot of mistakes in their GPU driver code -- different mistakes on several different GPUs. Adobe can't easily work around those. Apple has to fix the mistake in their code.

Now, Adobe did test Photoshop and Lightroom with Lion. But could Adobe guess that Apple would have different bugs on all sorts of different hardware configurations? Probably not. And there are too many possible combinations to test them all completely. Adobe reported a lot of bugs to Apple during the Lion beta test phase, and Apple fixed many of those before shipping Lion. But Apple doesn't write perfect software. Apple does have bugs in their OS, and Apple needs to fix those bugs so that all software will work correctly.

We're documenting the cursor issue (and several other graphics driver bugs) so Apple can fix it. It's obvious enough that Apple probably already has a couple of similar reports and might already be working on a fix.

With respect you all have it around the wrong way. Adobe should be making sure Photoshop works with Lion. If it does't it's likely that Adobe has done some funky things in the programming and Apple is just forcing Adobe to comply.

BTW I have the same cursor issue and really need it resolved.

I think it's fairly unlikely that Apple do any serious testing with third party software. And Adobe's options are fairly limited, even with access to beta OS builds, as things often change between Apple's betas and final releases.

Hopefully Apple will take care of their bug soon, but it may be worth making some noise on Apple's own forums in the meantime.

similar problem in the liquify filter...wonder if apple did any test with Adobe CS before major system "upgrade". The problem is just too obvious that you can't avoid seeing it.

Ok, the OS update today (10.7.1) didn't take care of that yet...

Ligthroom 3.4, MacBook Air 13" 2011, Mac OS X Lion

The brush tool (shortcut k) does not work. Symptoms:
- the cursor changes to the zoom in cursor, instead of the brush cursor. The erase brush cursor is the zoom out cursor.
- the brush does not paint where the cursor is display, but further down and further right.
- the cursor jumps all over the place making the feature unusable.
- the issue still exist when using a mouse instead of the trackpad.
- works well on an iMac using a trackpad