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Participating Frequently
July 26, 2012
Question

Mouse pointer disappear on second monitor

  • July 26, 2012
  • 9 replies
  • 33768 views

Anybody has this problem with Photoshop CS6? :

Working with Wacom Intuos 3 graphic tablet and two screen, my mouse cursor disappears when I go to my second screen. This is just temporary since I only have to switch out of Photoshop and in again and the pointer is back, but since it happens  often, it becomes really anoying...

MacOSX 10.7.4, with graphic card ATI Radeon HD 5870

This topic has been closed for replies.

9 replies

Participant
October 27, 2015

I'm having the same exact problem in windows 10 but it's only with photoshop; I can draw in paint tool sai perfectly but when I open photoshop it jumps my mouse to my other monitor and sometimes does a weird thing where if I click it jumps between monitors but when I move my mouse it always favors the wrong monitor.

dgibbphoto
Participant
December 9, 2012

A clean install of Mountain Lion and a backup from time machine did the trick for me.  Been running one week without a disappearing cursor.

iMac 27" 10.8.2 ML.

bzimo
Participating Frequently
January 5, 2013

I am not using two monitors together but I do have a MacBookPro with MacOS 10.8.2 and just purchased a Wacom Intuos 5 touch. I can't even get the Wacom drivers to load onto the laptop. I've contacted both Apple and Wacom support. For a while they were just pointing fingers at each other and both claiming everything should work fine and other guy needs to help me.  Finally an Apple tech says all he could find in the Wacom literature was compatibility with version OS 10.7, and that it is probably not compatible with 10.8.2 even though Wacom insists it is.  The compromise suggested by Apple guy is to partition 20% of the internal HD and load the earlier OS onto it and run the tablet from there. It appears that other software, Adobe or otherwise, may not really have anything to do with the various disappearing mouse problems. It is a Mac + Wacom compatibility problem, I'd say.  David Gibb do you mean you were running 10.8.2 but you reloaded it and magically the cursor works properly?  I am not keen on partitioning and loading another OS, I am already running at 75% capacity on the internal drive. Neither am I keen on going through the process of reloading 10.8.2 since so far everything else about this computer works fine.

Participant
December 5, 2012

This is happening to our retouchers.

1. Three of them are running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4, and one is still on Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

2. All four have Photoshop CS6 13.0.1 x64.

3. Two are using  Intuos 5, and two are using Intuos 3 tablets.

4. Two are using Wacom Tablet software 6.3.2w4. The other two are using 6.3.1w2, and 6.3.3-3 respectively.

5. All four machines are Mac Pro 5,1

Two of the retouchers said that it was also occurring (though not as often), with Photoshop CS5.5 and CS5. The only common thread is Photoshop. However, it can be the way Mac OS draws Photoshop's UI on the screen.

I'm having them try CrazyDave88's workaround from Post #36.

Message was edited by: Mario Cajina

Participant
December 9, 2012

We are having the same problem, with the same parameters:  CS6 on Lion or Mt. Lion.  It happens across a variety of Wacom tablets.

Some things I haven't seen mentioned to date in this thread:

At our studio everyone has 2 monitors, so the disappearance happens as the cursor crosses over onto the second monitor (and occasionally upon moving from the second to the first.)

At home I have one monitor, and here my cursor just vanishes.

One observation that might help the programmers:  If my cursor vanishes when I am on a 400 pixel brush (as it just did moment ago) I can get it to come back on any brush size larger than 400.  It is invisible below that.  If I switch to a different brush (from paint to clone, for instance) the disappearance remains consistent across brush sizes.  400 remains the threshold.  Above, it is there, below it vanishes.  Other tools (move, marquee, lasso, pen, etc.) remain invisible. 

For those experiencing this for the first time the easiest workaround is quickly command tabbing out of PS and then command tabbing back in.  Annoying as hell, but it's the fastest way I've found to bring the cursor back.

December 9, 2012

Crazy Dave's workaround helps me, and I have also found that, if I lose the cursor in the middle of a job, all I need to do is slide over and poke the Photoshop

dock icon and it comes back. But, you're right, it slows things down & is a pain in butt.

Inspiring
November 27, 2012

I am also having this annoying problem. The same with all of my co-workers at the office — except for one who is still running OSX 10.6.8. I use dual monitors on Mac Pro OSX 10.7.5, both at work and home. I use the Intuos 4 at home and the Intuos 3 at work, latest drivers — same problem. Thing is that this happens in other apps also, like Cinema 4D and Zbrush — as often. Cmd+Tab twice and the cursor is back, but as everyone says — it's annoying.

The disappearing-cursor-problem started when OSX Lion was released and it is still there in Mountain Lion. I don't understand why Apple won't address the problem and contact Wacom if it is "their" problem. Anyways, hope they will fix this stupid bug. Seems like such a simple thing...

Participating Frequently
November 20, 2012

As with every other problem, uninstalling Adobe Flash plugin from the system (or better yet, never installing it in the first place) resolves this problem.

Participant
November 3, 2012

Same problem for most Photoshop pros -I finally had to use Lion / CS6 and my pen cursor keeps disappearing  on my second screen

The problem seems to be with the Finder and it strangley losing the cursor

After months of waiting for a fix from Apple---I think I have found a workaround

I put the dock on the left hand side of the second screen and turned hiding off

Seems to fix the problem so far---I think it helps photoshop and the finder to work better

Hope this works for you!

Cheers

Participant
September 13, 2012

I too have the disappearing mouse issue. I think I had the bug all of a sudden during the last days of Lion (I could be wrong) and definitely happens since upgrading to Mountain Lion. I also have a wacom intuos 4 (which I rarely ever use) with the latest driver. Single monitor iMac and the pointer almost always dissappears when I roll over any pallets in CS 5 and will eventually dissappear anywhere in Photoshop or Illustrator and sometimes when using brushes in Lightroom too. If I move the pointer down to the dock and come back to a pallet the pointer stays visable briefly.

Who can work likt this?

Noel Carboni
Legend
September 13, 2012

It's no real surprise.  Lions love mice.

http://im.glogster.com/media/1/0/8/41/84131.jpg

Wait, I think I may know where it's gone...  Your cursor has defected over to have a meeting with other cursors on the nearest PC!   Recall the PC problem where there is not one cursor but three!

-Noel

Participating Frequently
September 13, 2012

Thanks for the laugh Noel... and quick! Someone get Owdgit a tranquilizer! We have to help him step away from the edge...    Man I've gone beyond the deep end and back myself!  As there's not solution in sight and nobody is taking accountability and or claim they have even heard of the problem... Because of that, I've been learning to work with a "crutch".  As Michael put it... as soon as I notice my pointer disappear, my hand automatically zooms the cursor left to the end of my screen where my dock sits and I zoom back and usually brings back my cursor.  It's not acceptable by any means, but keeps me from throwing the mouse into the wall. haha...

JJMack
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 26, 2012

I don't use a Mac but on a PC you can Map the pen for applications. For Photoshop I map the Pen to my primary display only and force proportion to the whole tablet so when Photoshop is the active program on my PC the pen only works on that display. Like you pen seems to be working when Photoshop has focus on your Mac.

JJMack
Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 26, 2012

On the four, the button imediatly above the Touch ring is 'Display Toggle' and that toggles between both, left, right and back to both screens.  It would be all too easy to hit that button by accident, (although I can'r say I've ever done so.

Participating Frequently
July 26, 2012

Thank you for your answers.

On a Mac also you can set the pen and the tablet differently by Applications depending on the needs, but I don't think that my problem is related to that...

In Photoshop, I use a second monitor only to see many palettes fully open (like Layers, Channels, Info, History, etc) and leaving my main monitor to work the images. But when I go to the second monitor with my pen (say to select a layer) sometimes the black arrow just disapears... and I can't select anything. So when happening, I quickly switch application and come back to Photoshop again (to do a kind of "refresh"...). Really frustrating.

I searched for other discussions about that on the web earlier and it looks it's happening to other people simply working with a regular mouse and in other softwares (for me it's just in PS but for others it's in MS Word or else...) and also with different types of screens.

So my guess is this is a Mac OSX Lion system problem.

July 26, 2012

More likely a wacom driver or mouse drive problem than PS.  Check there first.  Latest updates?

Participating Frequently
July 26, 2012

Thanks for your answer.

Yep, everythings up to date...

But I just heard from a friend that he has the same problem (with PS CS5 and now with PS CS6) since he updated to MacOSX Lion, so maybe a conflict there with the wacom and Lion(?)... but still, it only happens with Photoshop and not with InDesign or other softwares.