Adobe Community: Pen and Touch with the new Surface Pro?

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1. Chris Cox,

Feb 10, 2013 2:04 PM in reply to GiffRansom

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If the tablet driver works correctly, Photoshop would support it.

Is your tablet device made by Wacom, or one of the knockoff brands?

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2. GiffRansom,

Feb 10, 2013 2:07 PM in reply to Chris Cox

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It's hard to get a straight answer from Microsoft on this. Wacom pens work on the Surface Pro, and the Surface Pro pen works on my old Fujitsu penabled tablet. However, the reports are that attempts to install various wacom drivers fail, saying they can't detect the device. Microsoft did say they added some technology - better auto callibration and such.

Anyway, any information on this issue would be most welcome.

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3. Silkrooster,

Feb 10, 2013 9:06 PM in reply to GiffRansom

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To my knowledge(which isn't much on this subject) Touch screen on the Surface Pro does not require wacom drivers or any drivers. As of Windows 7 and higher touch screen is suppose to be part of the .net library. As it is required for their phones.

But I have not worked with that technology and therefore could easily be wrong.

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4. im.thatoneguy,

Feb 10, 2013 10:47 PM in reply to Chris Cox

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If the tablet driver works correctly, Photoshop would support it.

Well through some dark magic ArtRage and Sketbook Pro and every other sketching app support pressure perfectly. Being the odd duck out it would appear Photoshop is broken. Fix your own house before pointing fingers. You're going to get a lot of Photoshop license returns in the next couple weeks if you don't fix Photoshop's tablet support.

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5. Chris Cox,

Feb 11, 2013 12:25 AM in reply to im.thatoneguy

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Not all other apps that use pressure are working.

There is something missing or broken in the driver.

The variables that changed are the OS and the drivers, and those are the most likely suspects for problems.

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6. GiffRansom,

Feb 12, 2013 7:26 AM in reply to Chris Cox

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So would it be fair to say that it's Adobe's position that Microsoft licensing WinTab for the Surface Pro is the only solution to this? Adobe is not considering supporting Microsoft's Ink API at this time?

I fear that we artists are being caught in the crossfire of a standards war between Adobe and Microsoft. It's a real shame, because Photoshop is fantastic for digital art, and the surface tablet is an artist's dream come true. The hardware is glorious. The software is wonderful. But it seems that there's a game of chicken going on as to who needs to adobt the other one's standard.

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7. Chris Cox,

Feb 12, 2013 12:13 PM in reply to GiffRansom

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The Ink API still has serious problems that we have not been able to work around.

Microsoft is aware of the problems in their driver software.

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8. TkIMO,

Feb 28, 2013 1:06 PM in reply to Chris Cox

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Is there any chance of getting detailed information on what's not working?

If it's not proprietary corporate secrets, then knowing exactly what's wrong with the Ink API would allow us to complain to Microsoft.

If enough consumers know about a problem, they can start voting with their dollars and their complaints. So please, can you share any knowledge Adobe has on the issue?

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9. Chris Cox,

Feb 28, 2013 1:27 PM in reply to TkIMO

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No, we can't share much. The problems are pretty low level with the event handling (and I don't even understand all the issues). But we have logged the issues with Microsoft, and are trying to work with Microsoft to get the issues addressed (fixed or a solid workaround).

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10. jasonheniz10,

Mar 4, 2013 11:10 AM in reply to Chris Cox

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do you have anything news for us about this issues.. i am so dissapointed about surface right now.

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11. AdamZ1977,

Mar 4, 2013 11:36 AM in reply to jasonheniz10

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Jason, try Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 6 on your Surface Pro (free trial available to download). It supports pressure sensitive drawing beautifully on both older Wacom graphics tablets and the Surface Pro (meaning it recognizes both API sets, I guess). It also opens and saves layered PSD files so that you can transfer drawings between the two programs.

You can also Tweet to @Surface and @panos_panay to tell them that you want the Surface Pro to support Wintab APIs so that the stylus will have pressure sensitivity in all other graphics programs. They've already announced that they're working on it, but expressing your interest wouldn't hurt.

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12. jasonheniz10,

Mar 4, 2013 12:05 PM in reply to AdamZ1977

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i do ask them by twitter but they never answer my question..some of my friend also tweet them and it's happen sam with me. i may return that and buy the samsung ativ 700t

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13. GiffRansom,

May 10, 2013 5:14 PM in reply to jasonheniz10

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Ok, pressure sensitive pen input is working now, thanks to new Wacom driver support for the Surface Pro. However, I still don't get multi touch pan and zoom like I see in the ads for the Cintiq touch. I'm tempted to keep using ArtRage, even with its terrible performance and lack of features, because of this simple feature support. Any light on why this is lacking?

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14. im.thatoneguy,

May 10, 2013 8:20 PM in reply to GiffRansom

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I imagine touch is exclusively through the windows API. Adobe would need to add windows multi-touch. Even the normal abstraction of "Scroll wheel" doesn't register in PS as zoom. If I had to guess I would guess that Windows is saying "Mouse Scroll up" "Mouse Scroll Down" and Photoshop is just ignoring it since that hotkey isn't tied to anything.

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15. Adamz197777,

May 10, 2013 8:26 PM in reply to GiffRansom

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Yeah Adobe has to add multitouch support. By the way, Corel Painter 12 now works beautifully on the Surface Pro (with the Wacom drivers) AND it supports multitouch pan/zooming with your fingers. It's really great!

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16. AdamZ1977,

May 13, 2013 2:57 PM in reply to Adamz197777

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OH WAIT! Multi-touch zooming does work!! You have to go to Preferences > General and turn on "Zoom with Scroll Wheel". Then multi-touch pinch zooming will work. Don't try to pan the image though, that will make it disappear.

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17. GiffRansom,

May 15, 2013 8:00 AM in reply to AdamZ1977

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Wow, Adam, that was very helpful indeed. The addition of a very clunky rudimentary pinch-to-zoom basically pushes photoshop into the range of "usable" for my workflow. I'm moving to it instead of ArtRage because of performance and featureset.

I wonder if there's any way to change the rate of "scroll wheel" zooming. It's pretty slow right now. The windows "number of lines" setting for the scroll wheel doesn't seem to be doing anything. I'd like the multitouch zoom to be faster.

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Pen and Touch with the new Surface Pro?

Feb 10, 2013 1:56 PM

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