P: Spring-loaded tool feature is misbehaving

[leosn56185363]

Hey some of us had sound out this issue almost 2 years ago with the "feature" on the original feedback forum that had now been closed. Almost a year had past since one of your colleague claimed to have put in a "feature request ticket", and there are still no fix nor update on the progress. 

Again I want to emphasis that this is no longer a feature request (that your colleague had suggested) but a bug as it's not performing in the way it's supposed be.

For a quick reminder to the problem. It's way too sensitive, I estimate a rough 20-30% of the time I switch to another a tool, the feature will activate, and without me hitting the shortcut key, the tool will switch back to the previously used tool. 

In the time since I noticed this issue, I had change and tested with 3 different keyboards, changed my PC, upgraded the hardwares, and move from Windows 7 to 10. Gone through all the photoshop updates, and yet nothing had change, the issue stayed. 

And meanwhile photoshop had introduced plenty of features in between but there was not a single update concerning this issue. So for god sake, can you guys do something about it? 

[brobbeh]

+1 to leosn and deadlyninja, I never do long presses and switch really fast with quick strokes and on the second stroke the tool goes back to the other one as spring loaded would do but without the long key hold.
And +1 for our extreme frustration of commenting on this issue for several years and feeling ignored or not taken seriously.

I can also make a video recording if that helps but it ll probably look similar to what's been already shared.

[leosn56185363]

To be honest, concerning the option of disabling the Spring-loaded feature, my fear is that, this issue we are having now, is completely unassociated with the spring-loaded feature but something else within Photoshop. I am really hopeful now that we have staffs from the engineering department here, we can have some progress in solving this.

[defaultcm7lkkv8bebz]

THANK YOU for finally looking into this and giving us some transparency. This problem with tools swapping if I press the shortcut a tiny bit too long has been hindering me for 2 years now, to the point I have had to work in different drawing programs all together because of frustration. There's a reason the original thread about this problem has more than 1.3K views.

[rajneeshc68428823]

I've put in a request for you.

Thanks so much @jane-e , appreciate it.

[Lil Miss Jay]

With all due respect, which is dwindling, y'all have "Put in a request" about 300 times in the last 8 years that people have been asking for a toggle option to turn off Spring-Loaded Tools.

Can the lying stop, please?

Can we just get the feature toggle, please?

[leosn56185363]

Hahah let's chill

I think that request they are talking about is a user status change (from regular user to adobe employee) for rajneeshc68428823 

Though it will be nice if there's some update again

[leosn56185363]

Hi @rajneeshc68428823 

Is there any update on this yet. Oh something that I will like to add in case you guys are still running tests with a stylus, I am using Wintab with my Photoshop instead of Windows Ink.  

And the problem is still around with the latest 23.0 update

[rajneeshc68428823]

@leosn56185363 we hope to have an update on this soon. 

[brobbeh]

Yesss!

[leosn56185363]

@rajneeshc68428823 

Honestly, is there any way we can help? Because I figure it might be rather difficult to replicate the issues on your end with the different stylus brands/drivers etc

[rajneeshc68428823]

@leosn56185363 the video that you posted earlier shows the issue clearly, so again thanks for that.

Although we haven't been able to repro this in-house, we hope to have an update soon which you all can test out and let us know.

Thanks for your patience.

[brobbeh]

If you need to see firsthand I live 5 minutes from the SF office and used to get lunch with adobe Premiere friends at the new building, so feel free to ask me to bring my laptop if reproducing the bug is an issue, heh. n_n
Good luck.

[W4tsup]

I'd really like a toggle for this tool. I actually really liked it when it debuted for the rotate tool but when they added it to the brush and eraser tools that's when the issues started. I'd wager the reason you can't reproduce it in house is because you probably don't have a lot of painters that rapidly swap between their brushes and erased between each stroke. To my understanding, the bug everyone is having an issue with isn't a bug, it's the intended functionality of the feature, but it's designer for people who work don't work at extremely high tool swapping speeds while painting.

You need some people with very quick workflows while sketching and painting to start seeing where the issues come up. The biggest issue is that it just really interrupts me when I've gotten into the flow, I'm really focusing on the art and I turn my brain off and I'm swapping tools very quickly and then the program interrupts me by switching back to a tool I was switching out of. It's just a bit infuriating when it happens and you have to undo a bunch of steps, then you just do the exact same mistake again and then you have to just stop completely, undo, and then deliberately press a tool once and then not press another key.

I can reliably reproduce the issue every single time I draw if I just do more normal workflow within about a minute, honestly, this happens to me hundreds of times a session - and has since they enabled spring-loaded tools for brush and eraser.

I really really liked it for rotation, but it's not worth the hassle it has on my regular workflow, I'd prefer a toggle per tool - but I could settle for just toggling it off entirely if that was the only option. 

[rajneeshc68428823]

[EDIT: Please see the updated resolution here]

Capability to have a more fine-grained control over the spring-loaded feature is now available in the latest Ps Beta build (which can be accessed via Creative Cloud).

Steps:

• Use the following optional extension (see this kb article for info on optional extensions) in PSUserConfig.txt:
  • sprk <time in milliseconds>
• The time value above reflects the time for which a key needs to be pressed to enable the spring-loaded feature
• Keep the time value above to a large value (e.g. 20000 which means that a key needs to be pressed for 20 seconds for spring-loading to activate for it)

Please let us know the behaviour after performing aforementioned changes. Thanks.

[leosn56185363]

Hi how can we get the Photoshop Beta?

[rajneeshc68428823]

@leosn56185363 please look in the "Beta apps" section (in the left pane) of Creative Cloud Desktop.

[leosn56185363]

Cool, just tested it a little. Felt fine even on the initial test even without using the optional extension, I will need to try to do more testing with my usual work settings to see

[W4tsup]

Thank you so much for setting.

I set it to 2 seconds (sprk 2000) and it seems to have solved all of my drawing problems. I may fine tune it to be even lower so that it doesn't interfere with drawing but still lets me use it for rotating the canvas. Tapping the button quickly is no longer swapping tools unexpectedly though. I'm guessing the sweet spot will be between 500 and 1200 for myself.

The important thing is that it now feels extremely fluid to use and I'm not constantly undoing once I get into the zone while drawing. No more fighting with my tools. Everything just feels like it's doing what it's supposed to be.

Side note: my photoshop normally takes upwards of 30+ seconds to load and this beta takes 2 seconds, that's an insane load time difference. I'm not sure if this is because of loading improvements or because the beta strips a bunch of stuff that's normally in the base photoshop though.

[leosn56185363]

Cool cool. So I spent some actual working time with the Beta, even without the PSconfig script as of now, the springloaded bug tripping had reduced significantly, probably to ard 5%, it's no longer within the irriatation treshold as of now. So not too sure what had you guys done, but it's good. Next I will probably be testing the PSconfig script and see if it can completely remove the issue 

[Mohit Goyal]

Hi all,  

We're happy to announce the release of Photoshop 23.1. This update includes the fix for this issue. To see the list of all fixed issues, click here. 

To update Photoshop to 23.1, click "Update" in the Creative Cloud desktop app next to Photoshop. More detailed instructions for updating  

Let us know if the update resolves the problem for those affected and share your feedback with us.

Thanks,

Mohit

[brobbeh]

I updated Photoshop and it seemsto work! SO happy, thank you! 😄
This will reduce my blood pressure by 50% easy.

[leosn56185363]

Yes, I updated to 23.1 And everything seem to working fine for now. Thank you for lowering our blood pressure!

[TheCraigist81]

I'm still having an issue or something similar to it. I will tap Z to zoom (it's always the zoom tool I have an issue with) and then a second or two later it will revert back to the previous tool without having pressed another key, or clicked anywhere. I cannot figure out why it is doing this. It does not always do it - but it happens quite often.

[Michèle22310063x1ha]

Yes, i have the same problem as well and after the newest update. For me its the eyedropper tool and the quick change to the brush tool. Will it be solved? I can bridge the problem with another key, but ive been used to "I" since 2 years of muscle memory. 

[rajneeshc68428823]

[EDIT: Please see the updated resolution here]

@TheCraigist81 @Michèle22310063x1ha can you please let me know if you are seeing this issue even after trying out the optional extension that I mentioned about in an earlier post? Pasting it here for easy reference (please note that this optional extension is now available in Photoshop 23.1 as well):

Capability to have a more fine-grained control over the spring-loaded feature is now available in the latest Ps Beta build (which can be accessed via Creative Cloud).

Steps:

• Use the following optional extension (see this kb article for info on optional extensions) in PSUserConfig.txt:
  • sprk <time in milliseconds>
• The time value above reflects the time for which a key needs to be pressed to enable the spring-loaded feature
• Keep the time value above to a large value (e.g. 20000 which means that a key needs to be pressed for 20 seconds for spring-loading to activate for it)

Please let us know the behaviour after performing aforementioned changes. Thanks.