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.)

[CJButler]

We don't have any useful information to share at this point. The problem is not being ignored and is being actively worked by multiple engineers.

As mentioned last month, Daniel has a fail case which just happens when using a pen. His mouse works just fine.  I have been trading builds with Enhanced Event Logging with him in an effort to understand why things are going sideways in his environment. The hope is that this will give us some insight as to what might be happening on a larger scale. Other Developers and Quality Engineers at Adobe still cannot reproduce.

That's where we are at the moment. The upcoming 25.5 will not have any changes to help this situation.

[ericman2323]

@CJButler  - As of the latest version 24.5 the issue still exists and is being worked on, this is useful information to those just encountering the issue and coming to the forum. 
 As it stands one is left looking at the pinned replies, seeing the latest date of Nov. 30th 2023, and most likely wondering .."well, where are things at now in Feb of 2024?" They then would have to start clicking through posts to find out where things are at now in 2024. Is not preventing that very scenario why pinned replies exist?
I honestly don't understand the pushback about updating the state of the bug as of the current version and year.

[CJButler]

"I honestly don't understand the pushback about updating the state of the bug as of the current version and year."

No pushback. Done.

(I am not a community manager, nor do I pretend to be one. So I neglect community manager duties. I'm just a Dev trying to figure this problem out.)

[ericman2323]

@CJButler  Ahh.. that explains a lot.
Well, I will start with apologies for thinking you were a community manager. With how often I see your post I was mistaken about your position. Also, thank you very much for taking the time to hop into the forum and reply outside of your development position as well as the work you are doing toward resolving the issue outlined in the forum. It's most appreciated.

[Jqqerry]

@CJButler We're always grateful for the hard work of Adobe employees and developers, including you.

I have one question.

It sounds like your current investigation, approach to this bug is to try to fix the problem itself through reproduction, right?
But that seems to be not as easy as it seems, and there are delays.

But what if we tried a different approach?

To the best of my recollection, this bug has been apparent since version 24.5.
So what changes were made in version 24.5 and earlier?
I suspect that one of the changes is causing this bug (but maybe not).

When i saw Newfeature in Adobe Photoshop 24.5

- Generative Fill

- Adjustment Preset

- Remove Tool

- TaskBar work

- Gradient tool improove

And we can check fixed issue in 24.5

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/wacom-hand-tool-stuck-after-next-selection-i...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/p-gpu-stops-being-used-after-opening-many-fi...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/p-menu-flicker-when-painting-in-full-screen-...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/p-moving-two-adjacent-points-of-a-a-rotate-r...

I think the first link's Fixed issue has something to do with the bug we're currently experiencing. Could that be something that causes something as it fixes? (Wacom - Hand tool stuck after next selection in Photoshop)

[CJButler]

@Jqqerry 

> It sounds like your current investigation, approach to this bug is to try to fix the problem itself through reproduction, right?
But that seems to be not as easy as it seems, and there are delays.

> But what if we tried a different approach?

> To the best of my recollection, this bug has been apparent since version 24.5.
> So what changes were made in version 24.5 and earlier?
> I suspect that one of the changes is causing this bug (but maybe not).

To truly fix a bug we generally need to reproduce it so that we can verify that any change to the code actually fixes the problem. That's why reproduction is a critical step in the process. That's true for pretty much any bug we tackle. It is especially true for Event Handling bugs.

We think this problem actually started (at a low rate) earlier than 24.5, but something has increased the frequency to a level where a larger number of folks (as indicated by this thread) are now affected.

We have looked extensively at the changes in source code that support event handling, like mouse and pen tracking. This includes all trackers, like the hand tool, the marquee tools, and painting. Everything suspect that has been done since 2019 has been re-reviewed. Nothing we have seen has obviously looked like the culprit. At least not yet.

A typical day will see 30-50 checkins to the Photoshop source code, each of varying size, so you can see that this becomes a very large number of checkins to review if you look back from 2019 until now. Even when we narrow to specific files, it is still a very large number of changes that are typically supporting features which have been been getting their own bug fixes. Backing these changes out would be extraordinarily expensive, and I'm not sure it would be successful as it would certainly break other parts of Photoshop.

So, yes, we have looked at the changes. Extensively. No, we have not seen anything obvious.

We have looked at the Prefs files provided, but have not spotted anything that might be a clue.

We do have some other theories which we are following up on right now. We do have a reliable failing machine (with Daniel), although his failure are only observed with a Pen, and only with the Brush Tool. Even so, we are augmenting the Event Logging Tool and feeding him updated builds, trying ideas, and carefully examining his log files looking for clues. That's where we are at. I don't know if our candidate changes will make the cutoff for 25.6 or not, but we are working on that. When they do, we should have some things for people to try. We'll let folks know when these changes are available in the Beta builds.

[simonc24446986]

Glad this is being looked into. Sad it's looking like a tough one to fix. I finally upgraded to 25.5 after the brush/colour dynamics bug was fixed. But alas, this sticky hand bug happens on ever 2nd or 3rd click. Back to 23.2.2 I go again :}

[Trevor.Morris]

Unfortunately, Photoshop 25.5 is completely unusable for me as well: panning, zooming, etc., all stick to the cursor when using the Wacom tablet. All drivers are up-to-date, as is the OS (Win 10 22H2). Instead, I'm currently using Photoshop 25.6 Beta instead, which doesn't seem to suffer from the same issue.

[RobinJean]

I've felt so lucky for a while, the bug completely disappeared.  Upon update to 25.5 recently it came back at close to 100% of the time.  I followed the suggestions posted by DiodorS on January 27.  It didn't go smoothly but after dinking around with it a while I'm back to what appears to be sticky-free.

I suggest pinning DiodorS's post as a possible work-around.

[Trevor.Morris]

Followup: I tried @Oliver34572615yts9's suggestion (Jan 27, 2024), and removing my prefs/PSUserConfig.txt does indeed seem to remedy the issue of tools sticking to the cursor when using a Wacom tablet in Ps 25.5. However, the unintended side-effect is that it causes another, more frustrating issue to occur with greater frequency and regularity: the active document window freezes (ceases to refresh), and must therefor be saved, closed, and reopened.

[infinityphotorob]

This fix is still working great for me.  I think it is resolved.  The only weird thing I have now is if I click too close to my clone tool to sample it does not take.  But his is a sperate isssue.  No weird sticking anymore.  Editing and panning around freely.

[Kuttyjoe]

Version 25.2 has been working for me for a good month.  I installed 25.5 and the performance was terrible.  Scrubby zoom breaks immediately upon opening a small jpeg and trying to zoom it. And The sticky tools problem happens within the first minute.  So I uninstalled 25.5 after just a minute of attempting to use it.  At this point, I think Adobe owes us some credits for continuing to pay for software that we have been struggling with for a very long time.  

[RobinJean]

About that fix:  The price I paid, at least the way I did it, was that I lost a bunch of preferences.  I keep encountering them.  Just now had to fix the Lorem Ipsum thing in new text boxes.  Worth it though!!!

[NamiStudio]

In version 25.5 there is still this error haha

[GeRich]

Adding myself to the pile of folks struggling with this bug, even after upgrading today to v25.5.

Though I can add some info to the "we're having a difficult time reproducing the issue" comment (at least from my experience):

I found I was able to reproduce the issue reliably when making quick movements where the mouse is in motion when I released the mouse key. This most often shows up for me when flick panning, but also frequently happened while making quick selections of a large area, selecting a large amount of text, etc. In those cases, the issue seems to occur near 100% of the time.

If I make more deliberate movements such as panning and coming to a complete stop, pausing before I release the mouse key, the issue was far less likely to occur if at all. I wasn't able to get it to reproduce at all when testing this way.

[alpha_channel]

...aaand another (photoshop 25.5) it's just not letting go (though a double left click seems to unstick it then I have to undo to get back to where I was before the double click). I can't say it's been happening in 24.7 though... mind you I've not used 24.7 much due to the general performance of Photoshop being fairly rubbish vs earlier versions (it seems the choppy performance seems to have started since they started running multiple instances of Microsoft Edge Webview2) I've gone back to Photoshop 20/21 which is smooth as butter and no clingy pan (and no Webview 2 either).

How on earth do you break a perviously functioning (and intergal) part of an application that's been working for years? (Adobe aren't the only ones though, Autodesk are at it too, select multiple objects in 3DS and the movement handles won't stay still so you can't move said multiple objects along a single axis, as with Adobe, they aren't fixing a basic, fundemental part of the software either, though at least Adobe are acknowledging that there's an issue).

Tech specs - Win10, 3900x, 64GB RAM, 5700XT, Cintiq Pro 24

[Michael Elmkjær Madsen]

Same here. 25.5 Is unusable because of this as of march 2024. 25.5.1 same. Totally consistent on all windows machines and easily reproducable - we're staying on 24 and strongly advice our clients to NOT UPGRADE under any circumstances. 

[Michael Elmkjær Madsen]

Removing PS User Config is not an option for most of us using PS for real work - sorry. Its pretty much unusable with out it. 

[Oliver34572615yts9]

I totally understand this.

After removing the PS User Config, I was messing around to set most of the thing ins Windows Ink to get it working in an acceptable way, but it was still pain in the...

A weird thing that I copied back PS User Config (switched off Windows Ink) and everything returned back to normal. No sticking issues.

So, I guess my original suggestion was not a solution to the root of the problem (as others reported the issues also with using a mouse). And I cannot explain why my Photoshop is working now as it should.

Sorry, that I could not provide valuable information.

[nando1111]

This thread was created in june of last year and yet this bug still remains.

I don't even understand why Adobe keeps on launching those updates if we can't even use it. 

Pretty much all of my posts on this Photoshop board has been about those bugs and seems like Adobe has been working only in upgrading their AI stuff.

Since we are paying for paying for this product I think the minimun that we can expect is a bug-free kind of software (or at least some kind of problem solver kind of support that goes beyond something like "oh please reset your preferences").

[Fantoga]

It's a mystery why this issue is such a mystery. Understatement to say finding a fix needs to be top priority. Please let us know if the team has any breakthroughs. Thanks!

[GrafiskWingman]

Do you guys have pen pressure, I don't.

Haven't had it for a long time I think - it's not every day I use the pen. 

[DanielAllen]

This happens to me and my Wacom tablet from time to time too. It's not a
Photoshop problem, you need to restart your tablet. That usually fixes it
for me.

[Jqqerry]

@DanielAllen No it's photoshop problem. This may be related to tablet, but I don't think it is. Because I made this thread last year, when I reinstalled OS on multiple PCs and installed only Photoshop without connecting or installing wacom, I was able to reproduce this bug with my mouse.

[CJButler]

We think weve made some progress on this bug.

I have made some code changes which are reflected in the current Beta builds, m.2528 or higher, and will be avaialble upcoming 25.6 release. I am hoping these changes will offer some relief for Mouse users. There is more work to be done with Pen devices which will unfortunately have to wait until a later release (hopefully 25.7).

For those of you who have access to the latest beta (check your build number), if you can try things out and report back, that would be appreciated. The bug is still really hard for us to reproduce, so if you can still reproduce the bug, I definitely would like to know and I would like to collect Event Log files.