The other issue here is that this thread, which has been going for over a year, is 12 pages long with over one hundred replies and not one person from Microsoft has addressed or even acknowledged it. It is like the sad Island of lost toys. I for one will not be looking to purchase future Microsoft product to end up here without so much as an acknowledgement. Thanks Microsoft!
Surface Pro 3 Pen Button Customization
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Anonymous
I am a previous owner of a Surface Pro 2, and loved the capability it provided of customizing the button commands per program through the Wacom drivers. As a new owner of the surface Pro 3, I a very disappointed to discover that the same functionality is not available in the N-trig driver options. As an artist, the primary use of my surface is for drawing inside of programs like Adobe Photoshop. Not being able to customize the button functions on the new pen is detrimental to my efficiency as a digital artist. Without the ease of having quick access to specific commands through the pen buttons, I am forced to either dig through the menus and submenus of the program to execute a simple command, or connect a keyboard to use hotkeys. One of the greatest features of the surface is the ability to draw inside of photoshop as if it were a paper notebook, freeing me from my desktop work space and removing the requirement of the mouse and keyboard. Without the customization of these pen buttons, I lose that freedom.
I spoke to a Microsoft support tech this morning who informed me that "hopefully" in the next month or two, this feature will be added to the pen drivers. While this is a new product, and I understand that some features are still in development, this feature is crucial in the workflow of any artist using this device. I already own a desktop computer and a laptop; so again, the primary function of the Surface Pro 3 for me is drawing inside of programs like Photoshop without the need for a mouse and keyboard.
I don't know if any Microsoft representatives read these discussions, but if there is a way I could be included in any sort of pre-release developmental versions of drivers that introduce this capability, I would love to be a part of it and am happy to provide feedback from an artist's perspective.
Thanks for reading.
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.
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Anonymous
2015-06-05T09:44:40+00:00 -
Anonymous
2015-06-05T09:30:44+00:00 It's hard to believe this hasn't been added yet. It doesn't even seem like it'd be a costly feature...
What's up Microsoft? Are you gonna add pen button customization to the Surface 4, while every customer who bought the Surface 3 is thrown to the wolves?
As has been written in other comments, this is ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONALITY for ANY 2D or 3D digital artist.
Very disappointing...
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Anonymous
2015-06-05T09:22:26+00:00 As a fellow professional artist and designer, I agree. It has been a major setback and a huge disappointment. The pen buttons, a major asset in any creative workflow, are rendered useless. It only reflects how Microsoft puts absolutely no time or effort into ensuring that what was great for the creative community is preserved. There is no real support here at all. It is merely pushing a product. This is why Apple has beaten Microsoft, they actually design the product to work and have an agenda with creatives in mind. Sad to say, as I am not a huge fan of Apple and iTunes in particular but I was much more productive on my old iPad. The Surface 2 was a glimmer of hope and now it is a struggle with the Surface 3. I am disappointed in my product and my hope in Microsoft is now diminished. I was really hoping it would get better.
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Anonymous
2015-06-05T08:39:43+00:00 Nearly a year later and no news on this essential missing feature...
Unbelievable really. I feel like I'm using a device that has one hand tied behind its back.
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Anonymous
2015-06-05T05:09:04+00:00 I don't know about you you but radial menu crashes on me all the time
The same happens to me too. I downloaded radial menu with the intention of remapping a middle click. It constantly crashes and proves to be pretty useless if you wanted the remapped buttons to be working reliably. Surface 3 has been a huge disappointment and a step backwards. I only bought surface 3 since 3d art friends were raving about Surface. Little did i know that in Surface 3 they took out the feature of pen customizability that seemed to be in previous versions. This ruined any chance of working with 3d software on the Surface 3.