P: Completely broken Hand tool (PS24.5) Hand Tool Sticking, sticky, not seeing mouse-up

[Jqqerry]

This is a bug. Please don't move it to the Discussions tab.

And please don't merge into another unrelated thread. I will report a bug with this thread.

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I made a YouTube video using a keyboard mouse overlay to show what action I'm taking. I hope you can refer to refer to it.

https://youtu.be/Cle6dEgP5_Y

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I was disappointed that there were so many bugs that were not fixed in 24.5, but I was still trying to give it a shot.

However, this bug is pretty serious. Really...

Please see the video I attached.
If you watch the video, you will see that I am shaking the screen.
I'm not using a hand tool, it should release automatically, but that thing is sticky.

To release this sticky, pinned handtool, you'll need to make one more unconditional click.

Here's how I've organized them for your reference.

< What I can be sure of >

1. Window10 (Tested a total of 14 PCs)
2. Use WacomTablet
3. Not related to preferences at all (Especially not related to Spring loaded, Flick panning stuff things)
4. I've tried all the known Photoshop troubleshooting methods and no improvement.
5. Even reinstalling Windows does the same thing
6. Only in 24.5 does this bug occur with certainty. I can't reproduce it at all in earlier versions.

< I'm not sure about the >

1. Mac OS not tested
2. I couldn't even test if it was a GPU company difference. I and my team all use NVIDIA

And while there are a few threads pointing this out, there doesn't seem to be a proper plan to fix it.

If this is not fixed in 24.6, 24.6 will be equally unusable as 24.5.

Also check out the links below.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/hand-tool-lock-after-releasing-spaceb...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/some-ps-tools-keep-reading-wacom-pen-after-l...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/hand-tool-won-t-let-go-of-image/m-p/1...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/24-5-impossible-to-use-with-wacom-intuos-on-...

(cjbutler 1/12/24: edited title from "not reverting to cursor" to "not seeing mouse up" to reflect latest focus on lost mouse-up as root cause, and not just a stale cursor setting.)

[chrisell99]

@CJButler I think what's grinding people's gears is that we can all reproduce this easily, every time, in every version since 24.5, on just about every platform. In fact I'd say most of use can't NOT reproduce it. It's difficult to understand why it's so evasive on your end when it's so pervasive on our end. A multitude of different machine specs, with different hardware, in different countries with different users and it's easy to reproduce. Space bar, drag, let go of mouse, let go of space and now you're stuck. For the marquee tool, marquee, click-and-drag, release the mouse, and it's stuck. For the text tool literally left-click and hold, drag the text later, let go of the left mouse and you're stuck. It affects SO many tools. There must have been a checkin between 24.4 and 24.5 that did this. Your subversion or Git checkin notices ought to have something in that timeframe that gives a clue, surely.

[Winston Caulfield]

Is there a sense that the problem is in any way related to the presence of
a pen tablet like Wacom? Either one is being used, or it's installed, or it
was installed at some point in the PC's life?

Or, are people who have never had a tablet also seeing the problem?

I have a Wacom Inuous Pro, though I see the problem even when not using the
tablet to interact with PS.

John

[Richard Rosenman]

This is a good hunch. I too am using a Wacom Intuos tablet and it looks like a lot of the posts here are from people with similar tablets.

My Photoshop 2020 did not have this issue so something got changed after that, which caused it.

[SteveEE]

I've never had a tablet and it happens on my work PC and my home Mac.

[stevej24077661]

I'm curious about the testing platforms. Seems like the only constant seems to be it affects Windows 10 systems but not 11. I can see Adobe using VM's for testing so they can quickly spin up many different hardware configs and operating systems. If that's the case could be something that isn't affected by Win10 running as a VM but does crop up when running locally.

[chrisell99]

Never had a tablet, so it's not that. Our 60+ office machines are a mix of win10 and win11 and we can reproduce it on all of those, none have a tablet.

[CJButler]

>> I think what's grinding people's gears is that we can all reproduce this easily, every time, in every version since 24.5, on just about every platform. In fact I'd say most of use can't NOT reproduce it. It's difficult to understand why it's so evasive on your end when it's so pervasive on our end.

I totally get that. And I hope you can appreciate we're just as frustrated on the other end of the spectrum. With so many people reporting this, we don't understand why we cannot reproduce this as easily as all of you. We absolutely are not ignoring this bug.

>> Your subversion or Git checkin notices ought to have something in that timeframe that gives a clue, surely.

As far as tracking it to a specific checkin, without reproducing it and reducing it to a specific checkin, it's near impossible. There are literally thousands of check-ins to the code base between those two versions you mentioned. And there is further data that suggests it started happening at or around 24.3. Maybe earlier.  So it's not that simple. And yes, we have looked.

Our primary testing efforts are focused on Win 10 machines, both with and without Wacom devices. These are native machines, not VMs. The behavior has been reported seen on Windows 11, and in this thread at least one user says he saw it on a MBP/M1 with Mac OS 13.5.2. We have had dedicated remote sessions with people who can reproduce pretty much at will. We have seen it happen remotely with 5 engineers watching. We carefully follow the steps they show us on our machines. Nothing. And then days later we see it happen (Aha!, we say), but then it goes away. I personally saw it happen two weeks ago. And never since. At Adobe, as far as I know, we have only seen it (rarely) on Win 10 machines, never on Win 11 or Mac.

Without reliably reproducing, we will continue to have great difficulty making progress. I wish it were otherwise.

[Gabriel Carati]

I do appreciate your engagement on this matter @CJButler, as you're a member of the Adobe team, at least it shows to us that we're being heard. I understand the difficulties to reproduce bugs given the different environments, so I'll try to share some of my PC specs and some details as requested and I would suggest that the others colleagues do the same:

I'm using a Wacom Intuos Pro M PTH660, Adobe Photoshop version 25.1 and Windows 10 Pro version 22H2 (OS build 19045.3324 with Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19041.1000.0).

The bug seems to happen with mouse and wacom pen, until now I've been able to evade the bug uncheking the Edit > Preferences > Tools > Spring-loaded Tool Shortcuts, as suggested by someone on this very thread sometime ago, but I don't know if it will be a permanent fix. I saw some people saying that this bug won't happen on Windows 11 and that turning on Windows Ink on Wacom driver would solve the problem, but I didn't tested it since Windows Ink makes working on anything related to painting unbearable.

Hope that helps into futher troubleshooting.

[GrafiskWingman]

I am experiencing it even with no checkmark in Spring-loaded Tool Shortcuts. 
I also have disabled Gestures, Overscroll and Flick Panning. 
The Eye Dropper tool seemed to have had adopted this bad behaviour too, at some point earlier today, at least for a moment. 
Photoshop 25.1.0. Windows 10 Pro, 22H2. 64-bit. Intel i7

Edit: nope, I can replicate the eye dropper tool sticky thing. It's not every time, but it will stick until clicking again. 
I should say, it is not as frustrating as the other sticking tools. It's just that the "ring" stays on screen, instead of just when holding down the button. 

[Kuttyjoe]

Yes, I am too.  After unchecking spring loaded tools it still happens.  But, restarting Photoshop seems to resolve it for a few days and then it happens again.

[Guest]

It may not work for most of you, but reverting to an older Wacom driver may a more or less temporary solution. Autodesk informed me a few months ago that the most recent version of the Wacom driver can render Maya more or less useless, which was the case for me. After reverting to an older tablet driver version everything was fine again. Now, after some updates of Maya AND the Wacom driver it seems to be stable. 

So, we are talking about Photoshop, not Maya!? Yes, but i've read in several forums that people could fix strange pen behavior by reverting to older Wacom drivers, for several programs. So, if everything fails for you try this solution. Should take a few minutes, and if it is not working just re-update again. And feel free to bite in your table (cheaper than eating your Wacom tablet).

[Goyko]

But what does that really mean for us?

The bug will remain infinetley in the software?

So I am stuck with version 24.2, which by the way is the least version to run the latest version of Lumenzia on.

Just a thought:

All of us here have Adobe accounts.

So gather our email addresses and send us your survey by email, and additionally ask for our system info, that Photoshop provides.

That's the purpose of that tool anyways, providing Adobe with infos to debug the software, if there are bugs.

Then you can collect all the data from affected users/systems and find the similarities, which may lead to the solution.

BUT actively send emails out to all people here, who reportedly have this bug!

Many may have already given up on the topic and won't provide any info, if you are not proactive.

Additionally you have all the needed infos in one place (best would be a dedicated email-address at Adobe regarding this bug) and your devs can look further into it.

[Jqqerry]

@Deleted User It won't have much to do with the wacom. Because I've tested a lot of things... This is because I easily reproduced this with a mouse click while reinstalling Windows OS and only installing Photoshop. People talk about Spring Road, but I think differently. Looks like it has to do with the space bar.

[chrisell99]

It’s nothing to do with Wacom or tablets. This happens with the mouse on
machines that have never seen a tablet.

[7x8]

@CJButlerwhat about @Goyko survey idea?

I guess what's even more aggravating than devteam not being able to fix it quickly (or at all) is the fact that in the meantime there are new features implemented that for many of us are to be seldomly used, but hand tool, bread and butter of our daily work is broken. I also suppose that the most vocal people here are the ones that use your software to make a living, not say AI enthusiasts. Since v25 I've used these generative features once 🤷‍:male_sign: and could have easily grab another photo and with some masking add the missing background just as quickly, but the hand tool, I use it hundred times a day. It adds insult to injury.

For what it's worth, I set up a new rig few days ago, clean machine, fresh Photoshop installation, it's there, so maybe grab something Intel based with RTX GPU, install W10 Pro 22H2, update, move the taskbar to the window's top (I remember Photoshop going bonkers back in the day with taskbar on top) and see for yourself.

And to sum it up maybe we are frustrated also because it's not the only bug that plagues your software. random clipboard problems between your apps (suggested solution - something hijacks the clipboard, not our fault, like it's the only program ever that cannot into clipboard management, seriously?), Illustrator's inability to refresh layer thumbnails properly - it's there since version 10, we're using 20 something now, quirky guides in Photoshop, artboards in Photoshop acting unexpectedly, selections stopping working everywhere but Indesign (yet), stock libraries not loading, fonts not activating on a whim, I could go on and on, but living in the world of early access apps and constant updates we are conditioned to shrug those small bugsies off and continue, but you still manage to break things big time... And all that with the recurring payment when lot of us could easily keep using CS6.

[Jqqerry]

I can honestly understand that this is fixed update late. I don't know the programming, but I don't think it will be easy. A few years ago, bugs that had been reported for a long time also needed a lot of time to be fixed.

But I understand the delay in updates, but I don't understand that new releases keep being updated without this being fixed.
I'm not sure about the other bugs. But this bug is as unpleasant as people who actually use Photoshop want to press ALT+F4 right away. Over and over again.......

I don't think there's anything I can do in Photoshop to avoid this bug. Just press t and enter text?

For instance, this was also a serious bug that I reported a year ago or two years ago. It destroyed the image in real time without saving it, and some users even destroyed their own family photos. beyond repair.

So Adobe confirms it and the release is forever removed from the official release. You can't download it again.
Like that I think there's no point in a new release as long as this bug exists. I don't know if it's a bug that only happens to some windowOS users, but people who use macOS also go through this...

[CJButler]

>> CJButler what about Goyko survey idea?

In my judgement, not a good use of my investigative energies. I don't think there is much if anything in those system reports that will help get to the root of this particular problem. We've already seen the problem on very vanilla systems, and I have not seen anything remarkable in the system reports that I have looked at.

>> I guess what's even more aggravating than devteam not being able to fix it quickly (or at all) is the fact that in the meantime there are new features implemented that for many of us are to be seldomly used, but hand tool, bread and butter of our daily work is broken.

I and others are working the problem.

A few bits of information that might help frame things:

• Photoshop has a large engineering organization. More than 100 engineers contributing to various facets of the product.
• The engineering skill set is not fungible; that is a given engineer is not equally skilled at solving problems in all parts of the code base.
• The people who can help with this particular problem are aware of it and are supporting the investigations.
• Other engineers continue to deliver features which are supported by their specific skill sets. And to be very clear, the feature work I was previously assigned to work on is not getting attention from me right now; so that implied trade-off you are asking for has happened.
• Allocation of resources across the Photoshop product is done by the engineering management team. That's not me.

>> And to sum it up maybe we are frustrated also because it's not the only bug that plagues your software. random clipboard problems between your apps...

Separate issue. I hope it's logged. Do you know if it is being tracked? I don't.

>> Illustrator's inability to refresh layer thumbnails properly.

And... completely separate product. And team. I can't help there. Same with InDesign.

The Adobe Community Managers can be your advocate with the Product Management Team (those are the folks that prioritize work by engineering). Product Managers are also on these forums. They do post (just not in this thread so far). Please make your case with them.

[CJButler]

>> I don't know if it's a bug that only happens to some windowOS users, but people who use macOS also go through this...

I don't know either. The vast majority of fail cases seem to be Windows 10, so that's where we are focusing our energies. We've never seen it at Adobe on Windows 11 or Mac OS.

[Goyko]

>>> CJButler what about Goyko survey idea?

>> In my judgement, not a good use of my investigative energies. I don't think there is much if anything in those system reports that will help get to the root of this particular problem. We've already seen the problem on very vanilla systems, and I have not seen anything remarkable in the system reports that I have looked at.

You completely got me wrong!
I suggested a SURVEY, specialized for that bug.
Ask people all possible details about their system, especially about their software environment about things, the photoshop system info doesn't give you.
AND get their photoshop system info!
Collect everything that can help isolate the similarities/commonalities.
Software is binary... works or doesn't work.
If Adobe can create such a great software, they for sure should be able to debug their own stuff!

>>> I guess what's even more aggravating than devteam not being able to fix it quickly (or at all) is the fact that in the meantime there are new features implemented that for many of us are to be seldomly used, but hand tool, bread and butter of our daily work is broken.

>> I and others are working the problem.

Obviously not hard enough! 😕
Stop wining about not being able to find and fix the bug, while at the same not even taking suggestions from the community into consideration.
A thing btw, WE are not supposed to have to, because WE are the PAYING customers, not your team members.
I consider this behaviour quite ignorant and meanwhile it drives me mad!

This is a major bug, existing since many many versions of photoshop.
So stop finding excuses for not being able to find and fix it, while at the same time wiping everything off the table, that we try to provide for a solution!

>> A few bits of information that might help frame things:

Photoshop has a large engineering organization. More than 100 engineers contributing to various facets of the product. (...)
Allocation of resources across the Photoshop product is done by the engineering management team. That's not me.

As much as I appreciate your commitment:
What are YOU doing here then? 

Communicating with us users, smoothing things over, keeping us calm and putting us off?
Get someone up here, who CAN provide help with communicating to the community providing REAL help, to isolate and fix the problem!

[CJButler]

@Goyko 

I recommend you read the community guidelines.

[Goyko]

Hm... so what's your complain?

Consider me disrespectful?

As I mentioned:

I appreciate your commitment!

And I don't see any hate speech coming from me.

But you have to allow me to vent my anger, which isn't only mine, but of many many users, who read this thread every day, to check, if there are any useful news about it.

Consider me not being supportive?

How more supportive can I (or many others) be, than straining my/our brain(s), to find/suggest helpful things for you guys, to get the bug fixed?

Please explain further what part of the guidelines you exactly want me to read.

I will do.

[ericman2323]

For the individuals who are really being hindered by this bug, I think some kind of template, survey, web form, or whatever, is an excellent idea.
For the right-brain art nerds like me, a straightforward guide of what information is most vital to provide would be great. It would have the added benefit of making it much easier to collate the data for engineers to use more readily.
 I can only imagine that it is difficult to parse through several "creatively written" individual accounts of repro steps, written by those of us who are not as technically minded. Then have to interpret and transcribe their experience in order to collect any usable information for a bug report. 

 If I am not mistaken, (please correct me if I am) I believe that is what @Goyko  is really pushing for and is also something that was generally suggested by @CJButler  on Nov 2nd in a post with the text:
"I fully appreciate that for some of you, this bug happens all the time.

Please continue to post information about environments, conditions, and gesture sequences where the bug is observed. Those are helpful, and we are reading those and incorporating that information into our testing efforts."

If there was a uniform way to have everyone submit what they were encountering in the environment they were encountering it in, and then a clean and efficient way for that information to be collected and utilized, I just imagine that would be a good thing.

In the end, we all just want the same thing, a fix to the issue.. and of course chill vibes and world peace! 😄

[Goyko]

@ericman2323 thank you so much!

That is exactly, what I am trying to say.

A unified way to gather all of the needed information, condensing it to the similarities and finally fixing the bug.

I am not a native english speaker, so I have to try my best to make myself clear, with some help from an online translator, but not too much. 😉 

[Jqqerry]

@CJButler  There are also a lot of people reporting on macOS in this thread that I've created now. They're experiencing.... Ofcourse I'm WindowOS user.

And to many people who reported on my thread together, thank you.
I know you guys are not angry.
But we think it's enough to make the expression more soft or just convey the information we need.
The thread I've created has been my own reproduction of this bug, getting sympathy and votes from many people and incorporating many other threads into this thread.
How to recreate this and the causes I think have already been left in this thread several times, and I've emailed Adobe employees a lot of things.

Like the beginning of this thread, until the end of the thread (the moment when the bug is Fixed), we only want to talk about this issue.

[Vit Kovalcik]

Here are my findings:

This issue DOESN'T HAPPEN if I check "Use Windows Ink" in Wacom Tablet Properties in Control Panels and also I need to NOT have PSUserConfig.txt with line "UseSystemStylus 0" in it. (Though there is some completely separate flickering bug I am still ivestigating... not sure if it is related to this setting) The PSUserConfig.txt is probably all right already and doesn't even exist for most users, since it would have to be previously manually created and edited by them - I think Photoshop itself will not create this file.

In all three other combinations of those two settings the issue happens, i.e. all four combinations are YES/NO Windows Ink and YES/NO UseSystemStylus.

It is not related to keyboard. To reproduce it is enough to switch to Zoom or Hand tool, then don't touch the keyboard at all and just use the tool using the tablet (furiously clicking and dragging randomly 🙂 ). In about 15 % of time the tablet release is ignored and the tool is still active and zooming or panning even if I am hovering way above the surface.

My specs: Win10 x64 and Intuos 4 PTK-640, which is older version equivalent to current Intuos Pro line. The latest tablet drivers are therefore from 2020. Other specs if that matters: Intel i7-12700, 64 GB RAM, Nvidia 3080 with latest Nvidia Studio Drivers.