Pen pressure and tapering problems

Anonymous
2015-11-08T20:03:41+00:00

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:

Surface | Surface Pro | Performance and maintenance

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Anonymous
2016-07-15T19:53:13+00:00

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

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-04-06T01:44:29+00:00

    See, this is the thing that really bothers me. It hate that I feel like I can never buy another Microsoft product again.

    I'm going to be honest here and say that I've been an Apple person since my very first computer. Even my elementary school was stocked with iMacs. I used an iPad as my main tablet because it was all I could afford at the time. I'm just a college student and I make my meager earnings from work study. The iPad, while it was expensive for me (emphasis again on poor college student) was not cutting it because I really needed something that was a functional portable laptop companion, not a glorified iPhone. So for the first time ever, I left my Apple roots to take a risk with the Surface Pro 4, which everyone, especially Microsoft themselves, was saying is the next best thing since sliced bread.

    So I worked my butt off to gather up the sums to get what would be an okay model of the Surface Pro 4, because I really thought that it would pay off. Not only would I get to do REAL work with REAL programs, I'd get to use this as my dominant tablet for art commissions, the money from which I could start putting away for graduate school. But what does all my hard work get me? A PC with poor battery, a loud fan, a fatal no-wake-from-sleep issue, and a pen that often works worse than a THIRD-PARTY IPAD STYLUS. Then, when I contact them to figure out what needs to be done, they're not sending me to the right people, they're not listening to my issue, it seems like they don't even know that such an issue even exists, and over time I'm just seeing my hard-earned money go down the toilet.

    I, more than anything, don't want to say that I regret my purchase. But as time goes by with these problems and Microsoft seems to care less and less (I mean, they aren't even replying to this thread. It's an unanswered thread, and we have not seen a Microsoft agent on here since DECEMBER) I can't help but feel this way. I mean, I feel like it's sad that I'm thinking about selling something that clearly has more potential than any tablet Apple has ever had to offer in order for me to get an iPad Air 9.7. And it might seem that I'm being a bit dramatic, but this is the first "big" item I've ever purchased with my own money that I earned myself, and I feel like I've lost a huge investment. And this new "Wacom-Microsoft Pen Deal" is the final kick in the teeth I needed to knock me down. I get it, Microsoft is a business. But I was really hoping that the Microsoft values could be a little bit stronger than that of Apple's; they seemed like they really cared about innovation, but the SP4 is looking more and more like just a rush job to compete with the iPad Pro. I sort of feel cheated to be completely honest. I should have known better when I saw that the Microsoft Store in the mall was completely empty.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-01T00:40:13+00:00

    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)

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-11-21T22:08:43+00:00

    I found this witch fix the problem

    http://lazynezumi.com/

    But it is just the time they make an update because it is a pretty anoying fix and it sin't normal

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-11-15T16:35:49+00:00

    I have the same problem on my sp4(france)

    strange thing in paint tool sai by setting minimum pressure to 30%

    the problem is gone but then I have to press harder

    so this is not a realy good fix

    on photoshop tough I didn't found any solution

    And microsoft after fixing it please make an update for touch gesture in systemax's paint tool sai

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