Photoshop CS6 Brush pressure sensitivity not working on the Microsoft Surface Pro.

[rv824]

I have just purchased a Microsoft Surface Pro in anticipation of running Photoshop on it.  I installed Photoshop and tried to do some sketches.  I created a new file and started sketching.  I Immediately felt like something was wrong.  I checked my brush settings and saw the pressure sensitivity was not available.  Everytine I tried to turn it on it was marked with an exclamation point. 

Does anybody know if Adobe is supporting the new pressure sensitive pen from microsoft, or if there is some sort of setting that I am missing?  I have tried sketchbook pro 2011, and that works amazingly well with the pen.  I hope someone can help me along here, because if this tablet can truely run photoshop, it would be a Game Changer.

[shmeil1]

I was also really hoping to use Photoshop on my Surface Pro, but I'm having the same problem. Illustrator doesn't recognize the pen pressure either. I really hope there is a way to make this work!

[lillieww]

I'm having the same problem too and would like to find a solution. Some people (using different tablets) were able to fix this by running the 32 bit version instead of the 64 bit version of Photoshop, but that doesn't seem to work for the Surface. Sorry I can't be of any help.

[chatid00]

Just curious.... has any of you tried the shape dynamics in photoshop and turning on pen pressure?

and in illustrator to modify the size to pressure and variation to maximum? (and of course select that brush preset that you just modified and draw with it using SHIFT+B for blob brush or B for regular brush)

I am also interested in purchasing a Surface pro so please report if this helps.

what I recently discovered in other forums is that Sketchbook Pro works flawlessly in desktop mode. Sketchbook Express in the APP mode doesn't support pressure yet.

there is no official confirmation that the surface pro uses a wacom digitizer, however a few artist friends of mine have gone to the microsoft store... brought their own wacom pens (cintiq 15x pen - older models that works with general tabletpcs) and the pro recognized it. which means that it is a wacom digitizer. it wouldn't make sense if a wacom pen works with a different digitizer board like N-trig.

also read in another forum about adobe using wintab and windows 8 wintab drivers are not there yet.

anyway... I'd be glad to know if this works or not

thanks!

[shmeil1]

Yeah, I tried that. I use a Wacom Bamboo with my desktop computer and do not have this problem, but with the Surface in Photoshop the Pen Pressure control has the exclamation point so it's not recognizing the pen, and in Illustrator, the Pressure option is grayed out. The only options I can select there are Fixed and Random, all others are grayed out.

[KokoBlue]

same problem I'm having. 

[KokoBlue]

All the variation settings are grayed out!  This won't help me!

[Dragonskin]

You just fixed my issue. PS CS6; Regular Pen Tablet (Not MS Surface).  Before, PS Pressure sensitivity was always enabled by default... Really not sure why it had to be enabled this time, but glad it works!!

Thank you!

[mohamedg29682758]

Had the same issue, pressure sensitivity not working in photoshop cs6, but is doing fine in sketchbook, fresh paint and onenote.

Side note : had a little lag in cs6 with stylus, fixed it by disabling hardware acceleration in ps preferences.

[adsrao]

pressure sensitivity is not working on CS6 ... it will help my design team ... hope there a fix for this soon

[rv824]

My question is why does it work so well with Sketchbook Pro, but not at all with Photoshop.  Is the fix going to have to come from Microsoft, with a hardware patch, or Adobe with a software patch.  The stylus for my Samsung Note 2 works on the Surface Pro also, so there has to be shared technology with the pens.  I just hope a fix comes soon.

[Jorjxmckie]

Sketchbook and ArtRage recognize the MS Ink API (or whatever it is called) and PS/Illustrator require the WinTab drivers that I believed Adobe collaborated with MS on. N-Trig users have been victimized by the split and circular firing squad blame game between various companies for years, and I'm really surprised that it wasn't resolved before the release of the Surface Pro. What the heck are these executives paid for, to play golf?

[KokoBlue]

I have a MAC and I'm having the same problem..... is there a fix???

[Jorjxmckie]

This is getting completely ridiculous. I have the new Sony Duo 11 and I came very close to waiting for the release of the Surf Pro in order to get pressure sensitivity for PS/Illustrator/SAI/Painter. I would be soooo pissed right now. I hope that this new cohort of badly served customers gets somebody off of their arrogant butts to do something about it. I know they don't care about the small arts community that don't actually use Wacom tablets or Cintiqs, but at some point, the bad feelings generated starts affecting the 'brand' and opens doors for the competition. If Microsoft doesn't mobilize *somebody* at a reasonably high level of the companies involved, then they deserve a virtual and financial tar & feathering.

[marianwhitcomb]

Having same problem with Dell Inspiron 13 totally frustrated, their ads even show a highly technical drawing, spent 4 hours on customer support the other day to figure it out.  How can a major manufacturer of computers and the #1 garphics software company not talk to each other.  The stylus works fine on several other art/design programs.

This is the last straw for Adobe for me after my last problem took them two MONTHS to resolve (the answer on that was "no you can't have CS6 on a Mac and a Windows machine, even though we tell you you can run it on two devices...that will be another 699.00 please).  I am phasing it out anyway because I can't afford to pay all my software companies by the month.  Adobe's prices are NOT in line with other software giants.  I am partially disabled and the internet/computing is virtually my only hope at working.  I opted to buy the Dell so I could use it in the field for plan revisions and quick sketches, instead of my Mac ($2,500).  Since I will lose so much selling the Mac 2nd hand, I will keep it use the Mac and an Intuos (another $300.00) in my studio on (ARTRAGE) which is 10 times easier to learn than Photoshop....check it out!  Adobe, I faithfully paid you for years (from the very first Photoshop on)...you have cost me a lot of money, and even more time.  Now I have to add the cost of retraining to this equation!  Your terrible customer service means I will tell this story to anyone who will listen.

[aurelm]

This is absurd. In all those years Adobe has not been able to recognize Ms Ink , having the same trouble in Samsung Slate (on Windows 8, on windows 7 I eventualy got it to work with multiple wacom driver retries and tweaks). Sketchbook has no problems, ArtRage has no trouble and pressure works just fine, is just the damn Adobe products that have these issues. The future is now, mobile workflow with mobile devices is now and Adobe is behind. And then, like all companies like were at top of the world (like rim) will one day wonder what happened, when did the future pass them by and were left down there ?

[Chris Cox · Accepted solution]

Microsoft is aware of the problem with their driver software.

Many other applications (not just Adobe's) are also affected.

[Digital_Yard_Sale]

I'm having this issue on a MacBook Pro with an Intuos 3. This is annoying that there is no fix for something so simple. Why do we pay a fortune for these software packages only to have the simplest tools not work?

[Chris Cox]

So you have a completely different issue on a different platform?

Contact Wacom for updated driver software.

If you continue to have problems, Wacom support is really good at isolating problems with their tablets and driver software.

[Digital_Yard_Sale]

Oops. Sorry, I simply googled my problem and it led me to a reply in this thread talking about illustrator pen pressure. Didn't look at the thread title. My bad.

[marianwhitcomb]

Could you please share exactly what you did?  I have a new Dell that I love and don't want to have to return it because I can't paint with a stylus in CS6 and can't afford Expensive Control Freak Cloud

[mariusbeck]

today i bought a surface pro 4  and the pen pressure in PS6 didn't worked at all.

i just reinstalled the win10 and i installed the surface pack software and everithing for surface4 and after that i reinstalled PS6 and i was surprised when i've seen the pressure pen working like a charm.

i do recommend to install the surface 4 service pack before install ps6

[Charlie.D]

This particular forum serves photoshop.com, and online portal site (not a forum for Photoshop CS).  I'll move this for you to help escalate visibility of the thread.

[AdamZ1977]

It's working now!  And it's working beautifully I might add!

Here's a video: http://pocketnow.com/2013/05/13/surface-pro-digital-artists-dream

Here's the download for the new Wacom drivers: http://www.wacom.com/feeldriver

[mercurydime]

I'm having the same problem with my Genius tablet. It used to work just fine, but now all of my pressure sensitivity options are grayed out and won't work. The "always use pressure for size" icon is grayed out, and I can't change the "size jitter" in my brush shape dynamics. I used to have zero problems, but now it has stopped working.