Disabling Windows Ink while retaining pressure sensitivity in photoshop when drawing with a stylus.

Wow. I wish I'd read that when I first started out. This is a great resource; thank you! It took me well over a year to independently figure out all that technical info on tablets. I had no idea something like Lazy Nezumi even existed until now. I'm definitely going to give the trial a shot, as it may remedy my issues without needing to futz with killing Windows Ink.

Interestingly enough, I did some further stylus/Windows Ink troubleshooting on my work laptop today (On another cheap Wacom tablet, also Windows 22H2, Photoshop 2024) and found that the problem is indeed with my home machine; the "PSUserConfig.txt in the Photoshop settings folder" tweak works fine on the laptop, and I'm able to get pressure sensitivity without Windows Ink. Another reason to reimage my home machine and upgrade to 11, I guess; who knows what I screwed up. The page you linked me to did point out something I hadn't thought of though - I might just try copying the WinTab DLL to System32 and/or the PS folder to see if that forces my home system to recognize it.

The biggest annoyance I had with Windows Ink was not rectified by switching over to WinTab on my work laptop though; I don't really have input lag like a lot of people who complain about Windows Ink, for me it's the line behavior when holding down shift; it used to create a straight line between two points at the maximum thickness of my brush, but now it creates a uselessly thin, spindly line that I assume is the result of Photoshop interpreting my taps between the points as me making an impossibly fast stroke, and as a result giving me a line that is proportionally thin. I was hoping that switching the underlying pressure-reading system would allieviate that problem, and it still might on my home machine, but further troubleshooting is required.  

I took for granted that my old, effortless setup/configuration behaved the way I wanted it to, and I'm not sure what I'll need to do in order to get back to that. Lazy Nezumi has so many features that I think it might be my panacea (including fixing that "shoelacing" at the end of lines which has always driven me mad), but as with my sysadmin day job, it seems like just another case of Microsoft forcing their users to buy a 3rd party product to do what the operating system should already be capable of by itself. I prefer to be barebones and simple in my workflows if I can manage, but what can ya do?

I will mess with this stuff more in the coming days and update this thread later. Much appreciated!