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.)

[Spcgoat]

This happens both on my home PC and work laptop and can be reproduced at will.

My work laptop is HP Elitebook with Core i5-10210U and integrated Intel UHD graphics, using Logi MX Vertical wireless mouse.

My home PC is self built with Ryzen 5 5600 and GeForce RTX 3070, using SteelSeries Rival 3 wired mouse.

Both Photoshop installs are clean without any plugins or addons or such. The only common factors between the computers are Photoshop and Windows 10 Business 22H2.

[AMOS0D4C]

This is the ANSWER!!! Coming back everytime I updated my PS, pls, ADOBE you should hire this guy not even joking. PLS FIX YOUR FKIN PROGRAMMMM.

[A.L.5E2E]

Unfortunately this thread is months old and still no fix. We have even moved on from 24.x to 25.3.1 and still nothing.

In any case I want to at least push back again on the "it's only 1%." That maybe gives you comfort that it's ok left being not addressed, but as others have noted here, many users experience this all the time on many different platforms.

It is a very common problem and not a rare circumstance. It's also across many platforms, so it's indicative of a software issue and not common to some particular hardware. You even have users directly reproducing it here in this thread for you...so it is really frustrating to see that kind of dismissive response to such a major issue.

And and others noted - whatever data you need to make this issue go away, users are offering to provide.

[CJButler]

>  I want to at least push back again on the "it's only 1%."

I think folks misunderstood why I reflected that guess - and it is just a guess. There have been good points about users who don't recognize the behavior as a problem, and users who don't post on the forums or call technical support. Altogether those additional users imply a multiplicative value to just the folks we can count on this thread. At the same time this bug got past all our internal testing, our internal users, and our beta testers, and it continues to defy our engineering efforts to reproduce it internally. That is also a problem. We do not know the root cause of this behavior, and as such, there are no simple fixes.

Under no circumstances do I want to suggest that we are minimizing the impact of this behavior on affected users. We are not being "dismissive". The problem is not being ignored. This is not how the product should behave and it is prioritized as a critical bug.

> many users experience this all the time on many different platforms.

Can you be more specific here? We're currently focused on Windows because that's where we have seen it happen. What other platforms?

[KR Seals]

I have seen it on a brand new Mac Studio that belongs to a friend of mine. She had the stuck hand issue from the beginning in PS right after all the apps were installed. Through a series of updates, OS and PS, the issue has gone away. I was not there to see exactly how it was cured. Initially, we tested with different keyboards to eliminate a stuck space bar. That was not the cause.

[CJButler]

> She had the stuck hand issue from the beginning in PS right after all the apps were installed. Through a series of updates, OS and PS, the issue has gone away. I was not there to see exactly how it was cured. Initially, we tested with different keyboards to eliminate a stuck space bar. That was not the cause.

This sounds different from the lost mouse-up problem we are currently pursuing and which dominates this thread.

I'd have to see it happen with precise details on all the gestures: which Tool was being used, knowing exactly when the space key goes down, when the mouse button goes down, and when the space key and mouse button go up, and in which order. And which verison of Mac OS and Mac Photoshop. If you can reproduce this, the new Event Logger in 25.2 also works on Mac, and might offer some additional clues.

But it might be a completely different issue, up to and including being unknowingly stuck in some special keyboard mode offered by the Mac OS Accessibility Control Panel.

[KR Seals]

@CJButler Hopefully, we are beyond the point where the stuck hand tool is an issue on the Mac Studio. If it returns, I will do my best to provide the trouble shooting info.

Actually, we did review all the accessability settings ourselves and again on the phone with Apple. None of that was helpfull.

[Daniel Presedo]

I spent time on the break setting up my Windows systen to reproduce this problem and I have... I am actively pursuing the issue with engineering. 

[DanielAllen]

I also suffer from this issue--and it's 100% maddening!  I keep hoping that it gets fixed. 

I'm a software developer, so I can 100% sympathize with your perdicament and can relate to situations where events don't raise back from the OS like they're supposed to.  Normally, for my apps, this happens when the mouse travels outside of the object that initiated the mousedown event.  For example, if your application were to pop up a new layer/panel/object (I don't know the specifics of how your app is structured), that new panel/layer/object could hijack the mouse events so the original object never gets it.  I've also seen this when I have objects tracking the mouse location in the application. If the object tracking the mouse isn't 100% perfectly in sync, I've seen it stop registering the mouse events because of how Windows likes to automatically give focus to whatever is directly underneath the cursor.  That all could have ZERO bearing on how you guys have PS structured (my windows applications are all written with the Microsoft .NET Framework as a foundation, which I'm positive isn't the case with PS), but maybe it will give your devs some additional things to look into?  Just trying to help..

Ya know, after finding out about this possibly being caused by a mouse up Windows HWND event issue, I'm wondering if it could be related to another issue that I reported a while back that I still run into (albeit not QUITE that often these days, thank God!)  Although in that issue's case, PS is still registering the mouse movements off-canvas and when you click the mouse (or pen stylus) on the canvas, all the mouse movements you've done since the last click happen all at one time.  Not quite the same thing, but I'd be willing to bet money that there's at least SOME kind of connection there!

The issue I reported is here (includes a link to a video demonstrating the problem happening):

Mouse/Cursor captures off-canvas clicks (occasional/not-reproducible/restart necessary)

[chrisell99]

@CJButler @Daniel Presedo  I think I might have finally come up with a reproducable clue for you. As this stickiness also happens with the marquee selection tool, I spent some time this morning trying to rigorously figure out exactly what series of events caused the "sticky" to happen. Turns out it's the same for the pan/hand tool but that's harder to reproduce.

With the marquee tool, if I do this:

Click and hold left mouse. Drag. Stop moving the mouse. Unclick left mouse while the mouse is stationery. Then it never, ever sticks. I get the marquee selection and it works as I'd expect.

However, 9 times out of 10, if I do this:

Click and hold left mouse. Drag. Unclick while dragging.  Then it sticks and the marquee tool follows the mouse until I click the left button again.

For the pan/hand tool, it's a similar series of events. If I always let the left mouse button go while the mouse is stationary, then the pan/hand tool works perfectly. (Hold space, click and hold, drag mouse, unclick, let go of space) But again, 9 times out of 10, if I'm click-move-click-move panning, so the mouse is always in motion, it sticks.(hold space, click and hold, drag mouse and while it's moving, unclick to move back and re-click - ie. for panning across large or very zoom-in images)

The common event for me is the movement of the mouse. If the mouse is not moving when I let go of the mouse button (unclick), all the tools work exactly as they should. But if the mouse is moving, it starts to get this weird sticky behaviour. I did for a while thing there was a speed element involved and true - at slower mouse speeds it's harder to reproduce - but again - the common thing is mouse movement. Almost like you've got some sort of buffer overflow going on where the mouse movement is overwhelming the buffer with so much data that the button-up event gets missed.

Hope this helps? While a definite "not" condition isn't ideal ("it doesn't happen when..."), it might clue you in to where to look in the mouse handler.

[GrafiskWingman]

@chrisell99exactly the same for me. 
Edit: in fact... same can be applied to the color picker/pipette tool, the shape tool, magnifying glass, crop tool - probably more. 

[A.L.5E2E]

Bless ❤️ @Daniel Presedo 

[CJButler]

>>  ... "I am actively pursuing the issue with engineering."

>> Can you pin your post?

I'm the engineering guy with whom Daniel is actively pursuing the issue. We have another engineer who is trying to replicate Daniel's fail conditions, and so far is not able to. I'm working on an instrumented build for Daniel to try so that we can gather more data from his environment and steps-to-reproduce (STR).

At this moment, my last pinned post is still the latest status. But we are working the issue.

[ericman2323]

I'd wager that speed and fluidity while using tools play a large factor in being able to more reliably reproduce the bug.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that most who are in this forum and experiencing the bug are working at a very fast pace while swapping between pan, zoom, hand tool, eye dropper, lasso, or marquee selection before backfilling or some such thing. Perhaps it is this rapid succession with mouse or pen drags and simultaneous use of hotkeys that makes the bug easily repeatable for many of us while working on a project. While a more deliberate or mechanical use of the tools makes it less likely to reproduce.
 Please don't misunderstand, I'm not trying to infer that people who work at Adobe are not adept at using the program. I just think that perhaps while testing, the speed intensity, and flow are different than while actively working on a full project. Perhaps a key factor in finding a solution is the speed, intensity, or perhaps even the amount of time that most are working on projects.

[AlanGilbertson]

@CJButler  I normally do not see this issue, but I can reproduce it reliably exactly as @chrisell99 describes. Release any spring-loaded tool while it is in motion and (it seems) Photoshop doesn't get the key-up or mouse-up event and the tool remains sticky. That lends credence to @ericman2323's conjecture that  people working quickly (and being a little sloppy with it, apparently) run into it most often. Anyone working precisely would likely not see it, regardless of speed, and no engineer (precise to the core!) working carefully would ever be able to reproduce it.

I'm normally work quickly but I tried Tesla-style "ludicrous mode." Even so, it was only when I was deliberately sloppy with mouse or pen (release mouse button or keypress while the tool is in motion) that I was able to trigger the bug, and in those cases I could always reproduce it.

[alanp6536080]

I find that with my Intuos tablet it's very very hard to lift the pen with absolutely no movement, so this would seem to fit with what I have seen. With a mouse I can lift with no movement, but my system has never misbehaved other than with a tablet.

And does/can a tablet guarantee the ordering of the final move event and the pen-lift event? 

But I just can't provoke 25.3.1 into misbehaving now so I can't contribute, alas.

[ericman2323]

@AlanGilbertson  I understand your point sir but take offense to the inference that we are experiencing this bug solely because we are imprecise slobs. Your comment "..that people working quickly (and being a little sloppy with it, apparently) run into it most often." is nakedly backhanded and not at all constructive. Another comment that "Anyone working precisely would likely not see it" is conjecture on your part as the exact cause for the bug is as of yet undetermined. So, please try to be more constructive and kinder with your choice of words especially for us lowly humans clearly, not as great as yourself. 

[jane-e]

@AlanGilbertson 

Good sleuthing! Tagging @CJButler and @Daniel Presedo with the hopes that this will help them to recreate it and (possibly) come up with a fix.

Jane

[DanielAllen]

@AlanGilbertson I have to disagree.  I've tried slowing down my mouse movements when I'm panning (with both the mouse and the tablet stylus) and I still see this issue pop up with roughly the same degree of frequency.  Don't get me wrong, I prefer to work at a much faster pace, but I've tried slowing down several times to see if I can get it to behave better and it didn't seem to help at all (for me, at least!)

Plus, I'm sure Adobe's testing team is actively trying to break each build by doing WAY crazier stuff than we can even dream of (professional QA testers excel at doing that!)  I've seen QA testers do the stranges things to try to break a build: hammer on buttons multiple time, wild clicks and movements of the mouse, attempt to load files that aren't supported...you name it!  Not to mention any BETA testers they have who are probably using the app the same way the majority of the rest of us do! 

I'd venture to say that it's probably far more likely that there's a hole in the platform/hardware specs for the folks testing the app.  Maybe way too many Apple users or Windows PCs that are all configured the same way?  It's actually super common for the IT departments in corporations to clone all PCs to have the same mirror image as each other to make managing the worksations easier, so I could easily see this being a problem for them.

I've noticed that if I turn on the panning "flick" option thing (that will keep the canvas moving after I let up) I can at least get an immediate sense if I have to struggle to get it to let go of the canvas (if it's stuck, it won't "float" to a stop), which helps to take the guesswork out of whether or not it's stuck.  It's a small help, but it's something!

@CJButler if I can make a suggestion: maybe it would be a good idea to try to officially rope in one or more of the folks from this thread to do BETA tests on future releases--just in case there's some kind of hole in the hardware/platform specs for the test devices being used in internal testing?  At least until you figure out what that discrepancy is?  Just an idea...

[Jqqerry]

Everyone Happy new year.
I wish everyone a happy 2024.

https://youtu.be/Cle6dEgP5_Y

I've already reported a few months ago that this is easily reproduced even if I try to be honest like Newbie, who is just running Photoshop for the first time, using a mouse, very calmly and slowly, as I've reproduced on YouTube in the body thread.

It has nothing to do with speed.

[CJButler]

>>>  maybe it would be a good idea to try to officially rope in one or more of the folks from this thread to do BETA tests on future releases--just in case there's some kind of hole in the hardware/platform specs for the test devices being used in internal testing?

We have done that; but not everyone has the time and energy to download and try builds that pop out every two weeks.

I believe anyone is welcome to apply for the Beta Program. It's fairly wide open and it should be available in the Creative Cloud Application. I don't recomment Beta products for production work, though.

[alanp6536080]

@CJButler A bit of success here....

Just for a moment my system started misbehaving, so I tried out the "lift pen while moving" theory. 

There does seem to be something in it. It's very difficult to do, but if I held the pen absolutely still with one hand wihile lifting with the other, it didn't stick, ever. If I just lifted normally a bit of jitter is unavoidable, and I has the sticky behaviour every time.

Of course, the system has now gone back to working perfectly again. Sigh.

[alanp6536080]

@CJButler 

Another small data point for you. I've just been using a different system to my main one - this a Windows 10 laptop, nVidia graphics, PS 25.3.1

I was just idly trying to provoke the sticky hand issue using a wireless mouse. And I found that very rarely I could, but only if I was moving the mouse while I lifted the button. With the mouse not moving, never.

It was very hard to provoke, though - maybe depends on the speed of the movement, and there was a hint that the speed needed to be high, but not high enough to enter flick panning mode. I also found it's very hard to be positive that I don't momentarily hold the mouse still as my finger moves, which maybe accounts for at least some of the fail-to-provoke cases. (might need a two-handed action for this)

But at least there seems from here to be the beginninng of a finger pointing at button-up-while-moving being involved.

This is the first time I've seen the misbehaviour with a mouse rather than a tablet. I can't pursue this at the moment, but assuming you still would want logging data I will work this system a but more tomorrow.

[DanielAllen]

Okay, with @alanp6536080's post just now mentioning that the laptop doesn't seem to do it very often at all, I'm starting to wonder if screen resolution plays a factor?  Most of us (I'm assuming) work off of these giant monitors with precise calibration, etc...but his laptop is going to be a much smaller screen with FAR less resolution.  So the number of pixels he's moving to go from one part of the canvas to another (resolution pixels, not canvas pixels) is far less than he would on a really large display.  Which I would assume means that he can have more accurate and responsive mouse movements.  I'd be curious to hear what your screen resolution is Alan and if anyone else sees a significant improvement in the bug if they go down to that resolution as well.

[Spcgoat]

I just tried all resolutions from 800x600 up to 2560x1440 on my PC and there was absolutely no difference between any resolutions. Also image size and bit depth don't matter, tested those as well.