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emmap56507312
emmap56507312
Participant
November 8, 2021

P: Surface Dial Brush Menu not Working with Photoshop 2022

  • November 8, 2021
  • 26 replies
  • 3672 views

After the recent update of Photoshop I'm having an issue with my Surface Dial's function in the app. The brush menu isn't working, if I select the brush icon my on screen dial becomes temporarily transparent and then disappears without pulling up the secondary brush menu which allows for brush size, opacity etc to be selected and controlled by the dial. I use these functions constantly in my work flow so it is certainly annoying although not impossible to work around. The dial seems to be functioning normally outside the app and can still for example control volume level or zoom in and out, but the primary function I use it for is brush control; particularly brush size. Does anyone have any ideas on how to solve this? 

I have tried:

Unpairing and repairing the Surface Dial to the computer.

Removing batteries to reset the device.

Resetting the computer and resetting Photoshop.

I am using the ~spaces plugin work around to prevent touchscreen crashes that came with the new update.

    26 replies

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    S
    Svein_Skogen
    Participating Frequently
    December 2, 2021

    Ok, thanks for the answer. Adobe's actions here will certainly impact my future decisions regarding where I spend my money. It seems spending it on a company that on a whim decides to deprecate my hardware is rather risky. (It's not just the dial. It's the arrogance).

      J
      J453
      Legend
      December 2, 2021

      Sorry, I had to confirm with another product manager whether this was intentional and whether it would be coming back.

      See: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/whats-new/2022.html

      Deprecating support for Surface Dial
      For technical reasons, Photoshop v23.0 and above will no longer support Microsoft's Surface Dial.

      To learn more, see Microsoft Dial support in Photoshop.

        S
        Svein_Skogen
        Participating Frequently
        December 2, 2021

        Seems the solution is to revert to the Photoshop 22.x branch, until such time as Adobe sees fit to release a less regressed version of the 23.x branch. Neural filters looked nice, but when the price paid is doubling the time spent in workflow, those new features rapidly become "Whistles and bells".

          S
          Svein_Skogen
          Participating Frequently
          November 24, 2021

          Hey, @J453 , while you're busy merging these, could you perhaps respond to the question if this is a bug, or intentional discontinuation of the dial support? Can we expect this functionality back or should we adjust our workflow to Adobe having deprecated our gear?

            S
            Svein_Skogen
            Participating Frequently
            November 23, 2021

            Seems the Photoshop 2022 update lost the surface dial integration present in the previous verisons. Not fixed by today's "bug fix" update. Is this intentional, or a bug? (it will probably double my editing times)

              emmap56507312
              emmap56507312Author
              Participant
              November 9, 2021

              Thought I'd just pop back in here to follow up. I worked with customer support and ultimately we just switched back to the previous version of Photoshop and the Dial is working fine. So if the Surface Dial is a big part of your workflow like it is for me, I'd just roll back to the previous version and turn off auto updates for a bit. 

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