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? 

[TheCraigist81]

I've been testing that for a couple of days and I am optimistic that it works. I noticed that when the tool does the revert behavior there is a sort of pause just before the revert where a click doesn't do anything. Now with sprk set to 20000 there is still a pause (need to click again a moment later) but no revert. Much less annoying!

I don't know if it matters but I've seen this across multiple systems, including brand new ones with plenty of ram and performance specs. The one thing they all have though is a logitech wireless keyboard/mouse and a wired wacom tablet.

[marid56237416]

THANK YOU SO MUCH for this, I've been waiting forever! This is quite the holiday gift in my book! One very happy camper over here 😄

[JonnaTraff]

Hi!
I only started encountering this issue today so I'm assuming it has something to do with this most recent update — I hope it's okay if I ask a question about it here (despite not experiencing any of the issues this thread was originally started to discuss).

I usually use the spring-loaded tool feature to switch from the brush to the eyedropper and then back again, but as of today I get "stuck" at the eyedropper (ie. I have to manually click the tool (or press B) to go back to the brush tool). If I'm right about this happening due to the December 15 fix, is there a way for me to turn things back to the way it used to be?
Thanks!

[Michèle22310063x1ha]

Not yet, but you can bridge the error by using the alt key for the eyedropper tool. At least until the error is fixed. Let me know if it works.

[personal information removed by moderator]

[Michèle22310063x1ha]

Hello,

ive tried to accomplish that, like you suggested, but couldnt find the folder where i had to save the file - "Settings". I have AMT, Configuration, Illustrator, Locals, Mona, Presets, Required, Resources, System and the System Folder is empty. Where do i save the txt?

[Rajneesh Chavli]

@JonnaTraff  is this happening for different tools or only for the Eyedropper and Brush tools? Is this "stuck" behaviour always reproducible? Did this behaviour start to occur after enabling the sprk optional extension?

@Michèle22310063x1ha can you please let me know the complete path in which you're trying to search the Adobe Photoshop 2022 Settings folder? Following is the location of the path:

Windows: 

• [Installation Drive]:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\[Photoshop_version]\[Photoshop_version]Settings\

macOS:

• //Users/[User Name]/Library/Preferences/[Photoshop_version]Settings/

[Michèle22310063x1ha]

Ok, now ive tried to search for the AppData Folder in the searching window: %appdata%, because when i click on User and follow the path, there is no App Data Folder showing. I googled this error and it seems to be a Windows 10 thing...
Anyway with the AppData Folder searched and found the Path is the Following: Lokaler Datenträger (German sry i dont know the translation but its C) -> Users -> User Name -> AppData -> Roaming -> Adobe -> Adobe Photoshop 2022 -> and then i have 3 Settings Options:
Adobe Photoshop 2022 Settings
Optimized Settings
Optimized Output Settings
However...i tried to save the txt file in all three of them and it doesnt worked. 
What do i do now?

[Ven The Artist]

I am having the same issue with the rotate tool. when i am quickly, hand drawing / sketching over a piece I often find myself needing to rotate the page so that I dont have to break my wrist to make decent line then bounce right back to my brush or pencil or eraser tool. So my work flow should look like this: draw a line with the brush tool, Hold "R" to rotate canvas, release "R" to draw the next line w/ brush tool, (((Reapet this until the peice is completed))). I like to rotate with my stylus tip because this allows me to just turn off the touch features on all of my Tablets that have it. 
But the interruption in the work flow happens when I hold R then release it. instead of photoshop bouncing back to the brush tool it full on switches to the Rotate tool. because this seems to happen at random my brain cannot track when it will/ is supposed to work and whether or not i need to hit the B key. Thus, the disconenct of what my fingers are doing and what is supposed to happen often causes me to make a lot of errand lines in my piece or I loose that perfect canvas angle becuse Ive double rotated myself out of it. 
Fix Suggestion: 
   - Somewhere in the preferences make a toggle check box for commonly used "spring loaded" key. This will give the user control of EACH spring loaded key's behavior. The program cant be unsure of what that user is trying to accomplish it cant mistake an accidental double press or a premature release of the button to mean "select this tool". It also cant mistake a prolonged accidental press of a key as a spring-loaded hold.  

        For Example: 

                           Spring loaded keys         "Always On"   -    "Always Off"   -   Standard (or Mixed or Both)

                                            Rotate                    :white_heavy_check_mark:                          :cross_mark_button:                            :cross_mark_button:

                                            Brush                     :cross_mark_button:                          :white_heavy_check_mark:                            :cross_mark_button:

                                            Zoom                     :white_heavy_check_mark:                          :cross_mark_button:                            :cross_mark_button:

                                            Eraser                    :cross_mark_button:                          :cross_mark_button:                            :white_heavy_check_mark:

[Lil Miss Jay]

12 years. It took 12 years for Adobe to finally fix Spring Loaded Tools.

Credit where credit's due, thank you very much for the fix.

But y'all?

12 years.

As probably the most vitriol-filled complainer of this flow-breaking issue that's frustrated me immensely for years now, I can say with certainty, actually TRYING to replicate the issue seems to be coming up negative. On a quick tap of a tool button, it simply does not, even with my computer running a Benchmark to overload the GPU, switch back to the previous tool.

It seems, as far as this angry person here is concerned, that the issue is fixed, the evil is defeated, and we artists can finally quickly switch tools in the middle of many small strokes without Spring-Loaded Tools swapping us back to the previous tool and giving us a singular major stroke.

[frafilipo]

Since Photoshop 23.1.0 update spring-loaded tools are broken. It is huge drawback to the workflow. Previous version 22.5.4 works normaly. Please address this issue!!!

[Alexander21856392zhj9]

With the update to 23.1.0 the behaviour immediately changed and became very inconsistent, and persists between reboots. For example, holding 'Z' and then scrubzooming and then letting go off 'Z' previously returned me to the previous tool used with reliability - but that is no longer the case. Sometimes it returns it to the previous tool used, especially if I do it very slowly.

Booting up PS 2021 and there are no problems with the quick tool change. Come on Adobe!! So many bugs being introduced in new versions lately 🙄 I am running Windows 10.

[Alexander21856392zhj9]

I don't know how to edit posts so please bear with me, but with some googling I found that this is an intentional change. 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/p-spring-loaded-tool-feature-is-misbehaving/...

This post from an Adobe employee describes how to customise the behaviour with an optional extension - hopefully this will be helpful for anyone else who experiences problems with this change.

[Alexander21856392zhj9]

I had the same reaction of severe annoyance, but fortunately there is a pretty easy fix:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/p-spring-loaded-tool-feature-is-misbehaving/...

Turns out this is an intentional behaviour change, but the default setting I think has far too high of a numerical value. I've got mine set to 200ms now and that works fine for me.

[frafilipo]

I am having very annoying problem with the spring-loaded tool, it used to work perfectly with Photoshop 2021 and 22.5.5 and now with the newest update 23.1.1 and Photoshop 2022 it is a nightmare. It is working very randomly, when I use the brush tool and I want to spring to different tool like rotate or eraser or whatever tool, sometimes it let you use the eraser and goes back to brush as the spring-loaded shortcuts are supposed to work but sometimes it just stays with the eraser. It is behaving like this with any shortcut, be it eraser, zoom, rotate...I have Windows 10 and everything is up to date. My PC is very powerful machine.

I repeat, Photoshop 22.5.5 is working normaly.

Please help

[frafilipo]

Thanks man!!!! It works!

[J453]

Please try the solution here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/p-spring-loaded-tool-feature-is-misbehaving/...

[frafilipo]

I tested the solution with psuserconfig file. It works in I would say 85% of the cases, Still random unfortunately. Still hoping for the more serious fix.

[frafilipo]

I tested the solution with psuserconfig file. It works in I would say 85% of the cases, still randomly unfortunately. Still hoping for the more serious fix.

[Michèle22310063x1ha]

Yeah, this "fix" still doesnt work for me. 

[brobbeh]

Yeah I still got it a couple times after all, but it seems quite better than before though. Going to try increasing the delay on the config and test some more.

[suanbao]

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV18m4y1S7Mx/ 

[J453]

Please try the solution here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/p-spring-loaded-tool-feature-is-misbehaving/...

[frafilipo]

The fix is super inconsistant, I tested it a few days, and today it is super annoyingly inconsistant. I will revert to 2021, 2022 is unusable.

[leosn56185363]

Alright, I do not know what happened, but the PSuserConfig.txt method suddenly stopped working for me, and now this problem is back, even when I set the sprk to over 10000

[W4tsup]

Also seeing this issue return, is it ignoring the manual config values now? It somehow feels much worse than before as it's popping back to the previous tool after I've drawn multiple lines, like there's a delay before it switches back now - maybe the config is increasing the wrong timer or something?