Solutions for common wacom/Photoshop issues

There exist a few common issues when using a Wacom tablet with Adobe Photoshop. In this article I'll describe some of them with some possible solutions. These solutions are from information that I've gathered over the years for problems i've personally experienced. I can sadly give no garantee that they will work in all cases for all combinations of OS and tablet.

1. Delay when drawing
2. Lack of pressure sensitivity 
    2.1 Photoshop startup
    2.2 Driver issue
    2.3 Photoshop setting configuration

1. Delay when drawing

One of the problems sometimes experienced when drawing in Photoshop is the feeling of lag or delay to your stroked. A cause for this can de Windows Ink. It used to be pretty well hidden if you wanted to turn this off. With the newer drivers Wacom however has added a checkbox for this in their settings.
You can get to it by opening you Wacom Settings and going into the mapping options of your device.
Here at the bottom is a checkbox saying "Use Windows ink". Disabling this can sometimes solve the delay issue.



One of the negatives of this however is that it can cause a loss of pressure sensitivity in Photoshop. The fix for this is talked about in 2.3 Photoshop settings configuration.

2. Lack of pressure sensitivity

An extremely common issue with photoshop is it will refuse to use your pressure sensitivity, eventhough you have the setting enabled and control sett to Pen Pressure. The frustrating part about this issue (if it wasn't bad enough yet), is that it can originate from a umber of different sources.

Below are a few solutions for different problems that I've personally experienced.

[Fuck this shit!]

2.1 Photoshop startup 

The easiest fix for your pressure sensitivity is to restart photoshop, but starting it by using your pen to click the icon. I have no idea why this works, but it does.

 2.2 Driver issue

The most common source for this is a driver issue. When you try to access your Wacon settings you will get the following message:

[Babypunching intensifies]

One solution for this is to reinstall the Wacom driver, although this is no garantee and is pretty tedious to do every time this happens. An alternative that can sometimes fix this problem is to restart the Wacom tablert service in the Windows Service Manager.


You can get to this window in multiple ways, I've listed two incase your windows search doesn't provide any results.

• Using startmenu's searchfield:

type "Services" in your startmenu's search bar. It will give you a result of the same name, clicking this will open the Service Manager.

  

•  Using The Run prompt to start it.

Press the windowskey+R to open the Run prompt. here you can type "services.mcs". Clicking Ok will run the Service Manager. 

Whichever way you use, it will open the following window. In it will be a list of all services on your Windows device. Scroll though this one to find the one called "Wacom Professional Service". This is the one that controls the driver for your tablet.

Restarting it will usually solve your driver issue. You can do this by clicking on blue, underlined link saying "Restart the service" in the Service Manager. Alternatively, incase this doesn't restart it, you can also stop it and start it again. 

 2.3 Photoshop setting configuration

Sometimes your pressure sensitivity will break after changing ANY settings in your Wacom settings, this includes turning of your Windows Ink.

To solve this you can restore the factory defaults, but this kind of beats the points of changing the settings in the first place. A fix for this is to force photoshop to stop using the system settings for your tablet control.

You can do this by making a custom user configuration file.
Start by opening a File Explorer window by pressing or Windows+E, or using any other window.

In it type the following "%appdata%" and press enter, or copy/paste the following directorylink, but the first way is pretty failsafe.

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming

In this directory you need to navigate to Adobe > Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 > Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 Settings

The exact names can differ based on your version of Photoshop. The directory link you end up with is as follows:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2015\Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 Settings

 Here create a new text file and call it  PSUserConfig.txt. your extension might not be visible, depending on your windows settings.

in it, write or paste the following lines:

# Use WinTab
UseSystemStylus 0

Save it and restart photoshop. It should now use the proper Wacom settings rahter than default to your systems stylus settings.