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I love the new SP4 pen, but I've noticed the pen pressure is not consistent. The biggest problem is that paint brush strokes in Photoshop don't taper smoothly when drawing. I tired using the SP4 pen on my Surface Pro 3 and it doesn't have any problem. Here is a screen capture of what I'm talking about.
Since the pen isn't the problem I'm assuming it's a calibration issue with the Surface Pro 4. I downloaded new Wintab drivers to see if that would solve the problem (got the idea from this thread about pen problems).
It's not just Photoshop. The actual Surface pen pressure app has the same problem. It's harder to see because the brush strokes are thinner, but there is a much faster tapering happening than there is on the Surface Pro 3. Here is a screen cap:
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Hey Everyone!
Thanks for all the feedback!
As some of you have already noticed, on July 14th, 2016, we released an update to the Surface Touch Driver that should significantly improve the pen tapering and pressure experience that this thread talks about.
For more information on the 7/14 update, you can go here.
If you experience any difficulty downloading or installing updates, please check the Troubles installing Surface and Windows updates article for assistance.
Thanks!
Zachary
Came here to say the same thing! :)
I'm also seeing this issue and in my case, it's on Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 7 witch I'm trialling for 15 days (haven't tested Photoshop yet). It´s less severe than what Brad showed in Photoshop but it's there. The Surface App shows similar symptoms.
It seems to happen only on pressure release. By this I mean that the beginning of the stroke is fine but at the end of it, when you soften the pen pressure, the size of the brush decreases jumping over several levels, appearing to only have registered a handful of key pressure levels, having ignored hundreds of levels in between.
I don't experience this at all with Clip Studio Paint/Manga Studio 5 or Mischief (the later having another problem, probably software specific, or wintab specific I still don't know) and Sketchbook seems to apply a bit more anti-aliasing so it's a bit harder to see than what was shown in Photoshop.
(sketchbook screenshot follows)
(clip studio paint/manga studio screenshot follows)
I don't plan on returning the Surface Pro 4, far from it, but this is still problematic because I don't know if this is an issue with the pen, the software or the combination of both, so I can´t really decide to buy the software I'm using in trial right now. And also not being able to use Photoshop to draw is... not alright, to say the least.
So I'm hoping Microsoft solves this in some way. The Surface Pro is awesome on it's own, but it's the pen that makes it perfect for me.
(sorry for the typo on "beginning", english isn't my native language :p)
I totally agree with you.
To make another test: I just tried my wacom pen.
If I hold the pen on the intuos tablet, without adding any pressure but moving the pen around, I still get a continuos stroke.
If you try the same with the Surface Pen, nothing will happen.
It is a serious issue and I hope to get an answer asap as well.
This is really a problem which I hope is not hardware related. Otherwise I need return my product too. So if the microsoft staff could answer this question it would be nice.
I know you probably don't want your users to return their hardware but if it can't be fixed we should know. Thank you.
