Wacom Intuos4 and Photoshop CS4

[keenox]

I can't get pen tilt working in Photoshop CS4. If I choose pen tilt option in brush shape for shape dynamics it works as if the control would be set to pen pressure sensitivity. Diagnostics in driver options show tilt is detected. Tilt only works for angle control in CS4. And I'm using the latest update for CS4. In spite of this, i tried my intuos4 in corel sketchpad and it works great, just as expected. It detects pressure, tilt angle and tilt direction. I don't know what could be the problem. Can someone confirm having tilt working in CS4?

I'd like to use tilt for roundness control.

[Mama Shan]

And you're right. I set the size jitter to Tilt and it performed as if I had chosen Pen Pressure. This was true in both CS2 and CS4! I'm just glad Pen Pressure works all around...that's my basic setting anyway. However, I can understand how the idiosyncracies and inconsistencies  of Tilt could bug those of you who have been used to it working a certain way in previous versions of Photoshop and are experiencing a more crippled effect in newer versions of Photoshop. That is a curious phenomenon.

I however, have only recently gotten Painter and because the brush engine in that program is soooo different from Photoshop, I would not even attempt to compare Photoshop brushes or performance to it. The only analogy I can come up with is a cup of water in a hot pan will boil but in a freezer it turns to ice. So, I'm more comfortable troubleshooting the differences of the Wacom Pen Tilt performance in different versions of Photoshop.

[Philippe90]

Hi everbody,

I'm just fund this forum because I have he same problem the tilt function of the pen of my intuos II doesn't work on Photoshop CS4. It works very well on illustrator.

Concequently, The problem comes with Photoshop. I don't read every post but I think It could be linked with the operating systeme.

I work with Windows Vista Basic Familial edition and the tilt of my pen doesn't work.

what is the operating systeme of whose it work well against.

A few days ago, I ask the Adobe support for this question but I have no answer.

(Sorry for my english I suppose is very bad. I hope you understand)

[keenox]

Philippe90 It's not an OS related problem. It's only Photoshop and only Photoshop CS4. I've tested this feature on both 32 and 64 bit OSs, in XP, Windows 7 and Vista. It's all the same: CS3 and previous OK, CS4 NOT OK.

[Guest]

I'm not seeing a tilt value, I'm seeing a random rotation value. In MamaShan's video using the oblong brush does not show tilt at all, it shows rotation of the brush shape. If tilt worked properly, then a round brush would become oblong as the pen is tilted, but does not.

Cool Chris: In the time you took to post here you that you don't have the time you could have easily set up the requested image. Ooooooooooooooo, I trust you now!

OK: I thought of a good analogy: Think of a flashlight where you have masked off the lense with an elipse shape. When you point the light down, you get the elipse shape, when you rotate the light the elipse points in a different direction. When you tilt the light, the elipse shape is well defined at the point closet to you but spreads out the farther away the shape is from you and decreases in intensity. Hope this clears up how I am seeing this.

[Mama Shan]

{Bart} In the 1st vid I set the control for "Angle" to Tilt, The variance of angle did not show up using the mouse but did when using the pen, however as someone stated it's hard to know if that was due to pressure or Tilt. In the 2nd vid I used an airbrush and it did it worked like the "flashlight" in CS2 but not CS4. And yes there seems to be many who ARE experiencing this same phenomenon in CS4. I think my second video at least shows that the same brush is NOT performing the same way as it did in CS2...therefore there has been some modification in the brush engine code or wherever, that is causing the same phenomenon for so many. I think those of us that have posted descriptions, screen captures or videos, have certainly done all we could to document this or "repeat the problem." While there may be 2 issues going on here, one for a "feature" request and a 'bug" I think the issue of reporting the brush as malfunctioning is valid, especially because it seems to function better and more Tilt-like in older version CS2  I have a Mac, too...I'll have to test Tilt on that, too...but I have a feeling it will function the same as on my CS4 in Vista.

[Chris Cox]

Bart - I know very well how Painter implements brush tilt, and how real airbrushes work (having used them since the early 80s, still have 3 working iwatas (illustration and retouching) and 2 badgers (for shirts)).  That's just not how Photoshop's brushes work at this time.  That's not a bug, that's just the way things are. If you want brushes to elongate with pen tilt, file a feature request (j it's already on our request list, but more people and more details might help the priority).

[Philippe90]

Keenex, you are right I use it on Illustrator CS4 and it work very well too. In the laps I have got the answer of the customer service They wrote :

You intermittently lose pressure sensitivity when you use your Wacom
tablet and stylus, after turning on pressure in the Brushes panel under
Shape Dynamics in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Details
This functionality works fine in Photoshop CS3 with the same Wacom
graphics tablet.

Solution

Wacom is working on new drivers for full compatibility with Adobe
Photoshop CS4.

Please check the Wacom website at www.wacom.com for updated drivers

Nous vous conseillons donc d'installer le dernier pilote pour votre
tablette Wacom intuos II.

Cordialement,
Assistance Technique Adobe

It's wrong I have the last version of the driver : pro611-3 (March 28, 2009). I will tell them this element and I will write you if I have some news.

[keenox]

That's the spirit! ' It's not us. It's Wacom! ' That's what I've been hearing(reading) since I started this thread.

[SG...]

Philippe90 wrote:

Keenex, you are right I use it on Illustrator CS4 and it work very well too. In the laps I have got the answer of the customer service They wrote :

You intermittently lose pressure sensitivity when you use your Wacom
tablet and stylus, after turning on pressure in the Brushes panel under
Shape Dynamics in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

It appears to me that tech support understood your problem to be one of 'intermittent pressure sensitivity loss' and not one of Control: Pen Tilt does not work as it used to. Why that occurred I have no idea. In the end, they offered a solution and missed the mark. Replying back that you have the latest driver (giving version details) and more details on your problem is the right thing to do.

To extrapolate from this that Adobe is trying to push some notion of culpability is just cliché, IMO. All Chris has been try to get is precise, repeatable data points, such as post #72 (save the opening remark). Many of you appear to be 'tilting as windmills' saying Chris is deflecting. He has said that some users report Tilt to be working to their satisfaction; that it is working as he expects it; that some want to change the way it is currently implemented. And that those still having issues should provide data and steps of what they are doing (with system specs) so we can investigate this further.

It seems to be distilling down to an issue that CS4 on Windows has a problem with the effect of Tilt being inconsistent compared to CS3; The Tilt control affects the brush stroke in a too subtle and non-useful way, even when using the latest Wacom driver.

regards,

steve

[Chris Cox]

"Chris tries to convince all the people in this thread that tilt works and they must take his word for it."

Please read again: that is not what I said at all.  I said it works FOR ME ON MY SYSTEMS (and every other system I've tried it on).

Which means it is not broken everywhere for everyone - as some people have claimed.

What I can conclude from your example:  pen tilt has an effect for you, but WAY less than it did in CS3.  So far we have an example on Windows, we still need to see if that happens on Macintosh (this would help narrow down the point of failure.

And thank you for staying on topic 🙂

[Ricky-T]

I have a question. If the difference in preformance between older versions and CS4 is resolved (one day), will CS4 be patched up, or will it have to wait until CS5 now? Or does that entirely depend on where the problem lies in Photoshop's coding?

[Chris Cox]

"difference in preformance " - I assume you're referring to the pen tilt and not something else?

It depends a lot on what the problem is.  Right now I just don't know.

Bugs that require a lot of changes are risky to fix in dot releases (they may introduce more bugs, or take a long time to review and test).

Dot releases are usually reserved for critical bugs - things that cause people to lose work (crashers, file corruption, etc.) and major workflow blockers (slow redraws, keyboard shortcuts don't work, etc.).

[Ricky-T]

Yes i was reffering to pen tilt.

So it would be unlikely that it would be fixed for this version as there are other ways to do what pen-tilt does, and so is not seen as a major problem to be patched up?

EDIT:

Could the program be updated via an Adobe Update? instead of releasing a patch to make it version 11.0.2? Or is that not possible for such a case? Or am i just jumping too far ahead entirely here, and only when the area that needs to be chaged is found, anyone will know?

[Chris Cox]

"Could the program be updated via an Adobe Update? instead of releasing a patch to make it version 11.0.2?"

Those are one and the same.  The Adobe Updater is just a way to distribute dot releases.  Sometimes we can isolate a fix to a plugin or a single DLL (makes it much easier and faster), and sometimes we can't.

"only when the area that needs to be chaged is found, anyone will know?"

That, too.  We don't know where the cause is yet.  It could be in Photoshop, or the OS, or the Wacom driver, or some weird memory corrupting bug in an apparently unrelated printer driver for all we know (it's happened before).

[keenox]

Chris Letting aside the sweet talk, I can only see that your (or Adobe's) strategy is to drive people off so they don't bug you with their problems. I've repeated myself a lot of times that I feel that I'm getting sick. I don't understand what's so hard to understand and reproduce this problem. Here is a step-by-step guide.

1. START PHOTOSHOP CS4 (32/64 BIT V. -> IT'S YOUR CALL)

2. SELECT THE BRUSH TOOL

3. PRESS F5

4. DISABLE ALL THE FEATURES FROM THE LEFT BUT "SHAPE DYNAMICS"

5. DISABLE ALL CONTROLS FROM "SHAPE DYNAMICS" EXCEPT FOR "ROUNDNESS"

6. SET "ROUNDNESS" CONTROL TO "PEN TILT"

7. SET A BRUSH DIAMETER BIG ENOUGH TO NOTICE THE STROKE(MARK) VARIATION

8. SET A LARGE ENOUGH SPACING SO THAT THE BRUSH MARKS ARE INDEPENDENT

9. TEST TILT

DO THE SAME THING IN CS3 OR THE EQUIVALENT IN ILLUSTRATOR CS4. AND REMEMBER: WE WANT SCREENSHOTS!

P.S. I don't buy that thing with " sorry, but I'm not going to spend my time showing you that it works correctly.  I've got enough to do here."

P.P.S. Please stop treating everyone who has this problem as isolated cases. We are many!

P.P.P.S. Sorry for being rude, using caps and assertive tone, but you let me no other choice.

[Chris Cox]

keenox - I'm not trying to drive anyone off, I'm trying to get enough information to reproduce the problem so we can find the cause (and then hopefully fix it).  But many of the people posting here aren't helping, and some are making the situation worse.

Yes, many people may be seeing the tilt problem - but not all.  I'm among the ones not seeing the problem (I've already tried your steps, several times - all works the same as CS, CS2, CS3), so I don't know what is different about your systems that might be triggering it.

Stop repeating yourself and think about this.  I'm not seeing the problem, other users aren't seeing the problem, but you are.  What might be different, what other clues can you offer to help us figure out why this only happens to some people?

[Guest]

keenox - I'm not trying to drive anyone off, I'm trying to get enough information to reproduce the problem so we can find the cause (and then hopefully fix it).  But many of the people posting here aren't helping, and some are making the situation worse.

Stop repeating yourself and think about this.  I'm not seeing the problem, other users aren't seeing the problem, but you are.  What might be different, what other clues can you offer to help us figure out why this only happens to some people?

Chris, I'm not suggesting that you're part of some conspiracy trying to cover up any problem or anything like that.  But honestly, you're the one repeating yourself, while we are giving all of the information we possibly can.  You say "Many of the people posting here aren't helping", but the majority of us have contributed information about the problem, yet you respond to none of it (except the test cases that you say behave the same as CS, CS2, and CS3).  Also, you take the time to defend Adobe's past history, but won't take the time to open up Photoshop yourself and take a screenshot of how "it works just as it should".

So far, here is what we, the community of paying customers have done about this problem:

1.  Two videos about testing the feature.

2.  Two screenshots of us testing the feature.

3.  Analysis of Painter's brush behavior and comparison with Photoshop's.

4.  Analysis of data handled by Photoshop, namely the difference between Pen Tilt Direction and Pen Tilt Angle.

5.  Have had multiple people confirm that Pen Tilt does nothing when mapped to anything besides Roundess and Angle Jitter, and acts the same as setting Pen Pressure to Brush Diameter.

6.  Provided OSes of some of the users experiencing the problem (I'm running Vista)

7.  Found evidence that it is not a problem with Wacom's drivers.

8.  (UPDATE JUST NOW) I spoke with a Mac user and he is NOT experiencing the same problems.  He can map tilt to other things like Opacity and they work correctly.  Also, when he set the pen tilt to Roundness and Angle jitter, it worked pretty much as he expected (although the ellipse flattened out perpendicular to the pen direction, whereas I would prefer the have it flatten parallel to the direction, but that's another matter).

I don't see how that is repeating.

On the other hand, you have:

1.  Told us to stop repeating a number of times in various ways.  I don't understand it, this is a forum, are we wearing out your ears?  How else can we show that this is not an isolated case without repeating what other users have said?

2.  Said that nobody else has complained about it, but failed to turn up anyone else who does not have the same problems we do (except yourself).  This is a pretty hot discussion lately, I am surprised that someone from the vast majority has not said a word yet.

3.  Said that "Tilt works perfectly in CS4" when we have demonstrated that it does not.

4.  Not told us how you would like our information - a diagnostic report, screenshots (given), video (given), OS, etc. ?

Chris, are you saying that you can map Tilt to ANY brush setting and it has an effect?  If it does not, then I don't see how it "works perfectly".

Also, you say "I'm not trying to drive anyone off, I'm trying to get enough information to reproduce the problem so we can find the cause (and then hopefully fix it)", but you have only asked for information ONCE before (post 68), and you did not give us what kind of information you require.  We gave you the information we thought would be helpful, but instead you respond to people talking about updates and Adobe's history.

Thanks for your time Chris, but are you sure there isn't some other avenue through Adobe that would be more helpful in dealing with this problem?

Ian

[Chris Cox]

Ian - when the same person keeps repeating the same non-useful thing - that isn't helping.  When people post off-topic items, or worse, confused the current topic with something completely different - that isn't helping.  I'm asking people to stay on topic and stop repeating themselves to TRY and keep the signal above the noise here.

"Said that "Tilt works perfectly in CS4" when we have demonstrated that it does not."

No, you have only demonstrated that it does not work on your system.  You have not demonstrated that it never works (that's a much higher standard).

Again, tilt works for me. It works for other users.  But it doesn't work for some of you.  Why?  If I had a system where it didn't work, I could possibly figure that out, but I don't have such a system.  You have a system where it doesn't work.  To solve this, you're going to have to help us work out what the difference is that might trigger this.

At the rate this is going, all other avenues of support would have given up long ago.  We can't reproduce the problem, and useful information has been very, very slow in coming from the people affected.  Most people would have chalked it up to user error or isolated cases of users failing to update their drivers correctly.  That is why I have repeatedly been asking for more information, and giving you feedback to try and narrow down the cause.  Unfortunately, I don't know what to ask for -- I keep asking you to think about what might be different.  What makes your system different from a stock system?  What makes your system different from another artists?

We could use more Macintosh user feedback - is it also sporadically failing for Macintosh (and working for some), or always working?  I suspect always working, I suspect the bug is in, or affecting, our Windows tablet interface code - but need help to get a reproduceable case so we can debug it.

[keenox]

Chris You just repeated yourself posting the same vague answer and giving the same vague information. You still didn't post the screenshots we've asked for. Please, at least just say "It doesn't work and we're not in the mood to solve it. We don't care about your problems. We appreciate your valuable time you took to post!"

[Chris Cox]

keenox - that's not what I'm saying at all.  I want to solve this --- but that isn't getting through to some of you.

And why would I waste my time showing an example that it works exactly like the manual says it is supposed to work?  That serves absolutely no useful purpose.  Showing cases where it does not work and exactly how it does not work - those are useful. Someone saying that it works correctly for them - that is useful.   But showing that it works exactly as documented is a waste of time.

[keenox]

It's not unuseful. Not posting those screenshots makes me feel treated like an idiot and I suspect the other people who have requested the screenshot (Bart from what I remember) might be feeling the same. Let's just say we want to see how it should work and we will not bother you anymore. As we have seen people have mistaken the two components of the tilt sensitivity. So if one will only test it for angle he/she will say it works perfectly, as we've previously seen in this thread.

[Mama Shan]

I think showing how it DOES work in CS4 would be useful since there is a disparity in  how it works in CS2 compared to CS4, at least on my system. Also it would show those of us who are questioning  or unsure of how it is suppossed to work in CS4. A video tutorial from either Chris Cox or some user out there who knows for sure it's working in CS4 would be awesome. There are so many variables that could be affecting this issue and to at least show us would be helpful, especially the Airbrush (Roundness and Angle) application for Tilt. Doing this would probably provide some closure for many. If I see that your Airbrush in CS4 performs as mine did, then I'll accept the fact that that's just how it is in CS4 and know that I'll have to use CS2 if I want it to work the way it used to.

[Mama Shan]

This may be a dumb question but since I have both CS2 and CS4 on the same system, and wondering if others do too--could this somehow be conflicting with the Wacom, in that is the allocation of the correct result is just being directed to my CS2 version? or is it because CS2 is in the 32-bit realm? Just curious.

[keenox]

from what i've tested, previous versions don't affect the cs4 installation. i've installed those after i've noticed the problem with cs4 and nothing changed. the conflict could only be happening if both versions were started at the same time, which is not possible. what's more, photoshop reads (gets) data from the tablet driver, it doesn't wait for it to be received. hope i made myself understood, because i didn't use developer jargon.

[Chris Cox]

No, there shouldn't be any interference -  each version is independent.

The only time there might be interference is if both versions are running at the same time AND there is an OS or driver bug in relaying information to 2 apps at once.