Problem with the Edit Shapes Tool utilizing drawing tablet's pen's hover functionality

Support and Advice General Questions
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Hi,

I like to use both vector and paint layers in the same Krita file. I prefer to draw and edit vectors with my drawing tablet, since it’s more ergonomic than using a mouse.

My problem is that the Edit Shapes Tool utilizes drawing tablet’s pen’s hover functionality even though it makes no sense (at least to me). Pen hovering is the cause of the problem, since
if I use my mouse to move nodes, segments or side handles, Krita moves them just as intended. If I move them with my pen, at least half of the time I can’t lift the pen high enough in direct 90 degrees angle. That activates hover functionality, which means that the node/segment/handle will keep moving along with my pen to a new, unwanted location until I lift the pen even higher. Sometimes Krita pops up a notification box saying “waiting for image operation to complete…” when it calculates the new location, which slows down my work flow even further.

I have tried turning Windows Ink on and off in my Wacom settings, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect for this problem. I can’t turn off the pen’s hover functionality from my Wacom settings. The only thing that works is changing the tablet input API from WinTab to “Windows 8+ Pointer Input (Windows Ink)” in Krita’s Tablet Settings. Then Krita treats my pen as a mouse and there is no problems with hovering.

That solution isn’t ideal, since if I want to draw something on a paint layer and take advantage of, for example pen’s pressure sensitivity, I have to switch the tablet input API back to WinTab and restart Krita. And if I want to edit vectors again, I have to switch settings and restart Krita again.

Does anyone else have this problem? Is this, for some reason, the intended behavior for the Edit Shapes Tool or a bug?

SUMMARY
Problem with the Edit Shapes Tool using drawing tablet’s pen’s hover functionality

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

  1. Open Krita and create a new document.
  2. Add vector layer.
  3. Move the nodes, segments or side handles with a pen. Don’t lift the pen up in a direct 90-degree angle, but rather slowly drag it higher in an approximately 45-degree angle.

OBSERVED RESULT
Node/segment/handle will keep moving along with the pen even though the pen is not touching the tablet anymore. Krita might even pop up a notification box saying “waiting for image operation to complete…”

EXPECTED RESULT
Pen should not use the hover functionality when moving nodes/segments/handles so they should stop moving the instance pen is no longer touching the tablet.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Krita: 5.3.0.-beta1 (but this same problem has been in previous versions too)
Windows 11 Pro, 64-bit operating system
One by Wacom (CTL-672)

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Hello @Kitty and welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

I don’t have that problem and it’s not the intended behaviour.

I’ve used Edit Shapes many times on a Linux Mint system and a Windows 10 system.
Maybe someone here can try it on a Windows 11 system. (I can but my situation is complicated and would take me a long time.)

In Windows 10 (now out of support) and Windows 11, the Wacom tablet is detected by Windows and the drivers and their configuration utilities are automatically installed and maintained so there is no simple option to update or reinstall drivers for your tablet.

Can you upload screenshots of the config utilities related to tablet and stylus behaviour?
Someone might notice something about them that needs changing.

When painting on a paint layer, does the painted stroke keep on going when you manipulate the stylus in a similar way to that with the edit shapes problem?

If you select an object with Select Shapes and drag a bounding box node, does the drag action keep on going in a similar way?

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Hi @AhabGreybeard, and thanks for the quick reply :slightly_smiling_face:

The same pen hovering problem occurs when I’m:

  • using the Select Shapes tool and dragging selected shape’s nodes and rotating or moving the shape
  • moving the shape/text made with the Text Tool

I don’t have problems with the hovering with:

  • moving or transforming the selected part of the paint layer with the Move Tool or Transform Tool
  • dragging to select multiple nodes while the Edit Shapes Tool is active (the blue or green rectangle)
  • dragging to select multiple shapes while the Select Shapes Tool is active (the blue or green rectangle)
  • drawing vectors (or on a paint layer) with Line Tool, Rectangle Tool, Ellipse Tool, Polygon Tool, Polyline Tool or Freehand Path Tool
  • Comic Panel Editing Tool / Knife Tool
  • Crop Tool
  • Measure Tool
  • Assistant Tool
  • Color Sample Tool
  • Freehand Brush Tool
  • Multibrush Tool
  • Contiguous Selection Tool, Rectangle Selection Tool, Elliptical Selection Tool and Freehand Selection Tool

I have used my mouse with the Select Shapes Tool and Text Tool before, so I didn’t realize until now that they also have the same hovering problem. Anyway, the problem seems to occur only when I’m moving or transforming vector shapes.

My Windows Update History doesn’t show any Wacom driver updates. I have always updated my Wacom drivers myself either through the Wacom Desktop Center software or by downloading them from Wacom’s website. I just downloaded the latest driver from Wacom’s website (6.4.12-3), but it didn’t solve the problem.

Windows Device Manager says that my current Wacom Tablet Driver Version is 3.8.10.74 and refuses to update it. I’m a bit confused about the contradicting driver numbers. So I have only managed to update the Wacom Desktop Center and not the driver itself? I control the pen button functions through the Wacom Desktop Center, so at least it’s doing something.

windows settings
windows settings881×1070 105 KB

wacom desktop center settings
wacom desktop center settings938×713 47.3 KB

krita settings
krita settings752×780 62.3 KB

I have also tried different settings in Windows, but nothing has fixed this issue. The hover click in the Wacom Desktop Center only affects the behavior of the pen buttons. The problem occurs with both with the hocer click and click & tap. “Use mouse events for right- and middle-clicks” is selected in Krita’s settings since it allows me to use the Pan Mode with my pen as I want to. Deselecting it does not help with the hovering issue.

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4

There is a bug report already - but it is reported for Krita 6.0 and 6.1
I confirmed it (Win 10 with huion pen tablet, Krita 6.1 - happens with WinTab and Windows Ink).

2 Likes
5

Good to know that there is already a bug report for this. I added a comment to it with additional information. Let’s hope that the developers have time to fix it at some point.

I tried again to update my tablet driver in the Device Manager, but it’s still refusing to update it no matter what I do.

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@Kitty: Maybe this helps with your driver:

Download the most recent driver from Wacom, also download the manual for your tablet if you got no printed one with your tablet, or, if you can not download it, make screenshots¹ from the pages where they describe how to install and to uninstall your driver! It is important to obey if you must or must not have your tablet connected to your PC while these two operations, so installation and uninstallation!

At next, you have to disconnect your internet connection (LAN & WLAN!).
Then you can uninstall your tablet driver according to the manual instructions (if existing), if these do not exist, you should try to locate it under Start > Settings > Apps and there it may be found under Apps and Features and uninstall it from there, and if it isn’t listed there either, your last option is the Device Manager of Windows which (also) offers the option to uninstall drivers, so, do not select to update your driver from there but wipe it out.

Now, you have to make a full power-off reboot of your PC, so that you have to boot it via its mains-switch, after you have disabled hibernation² and also the so-called sleep mode of your PC, because both functions can hold back remains available in your computers’ memory, that you want to get rid of via this power-off reboot of your PC. ³

Then you can install the downloaded driver according to the manual, do not forget to check if your tablet must be connected or disconnected.

Again, make a full power-off reboot of your PC, so that you have to boot it via its mains-switch.
Do not forget to hope, beg and pray that Windows will not immediately overwrite your fresh installed driver with what it believes being better for you, when you enable your internet access again.⁴ :upside_down_face:

Michelist

¹ For creating those screenshots, there are two excellent plugins available for some browsers.
The first one is FireShot and you can get it for Firefox, Edge, Opera, Iron, Chrome, LibreWolf, r3dfox, and probably more browsers if these use the (plugin-) engines from Firefox or Chrome. It allows creating full page screenshots as picture or PDF, and it is the best PDF screenshot tool you can get, even in its free version it is a mighty tool.
Because it is so good, I even bought it as one of the not even ten programs I bought the last 30 years (if you do not count security software, so the yearly to buy antivirus software).

The second program I want to recommend is called SingleFile, and it too can be installed to all the browsers I named above.
It creates a screenshot of the currently visited website in HTML format and puts it in a single HTML file, so you can view it in every browser. Usually it copies anything you can see on the websites, there are only a few exceptions where elements can’t be copied, but it is not only a good solution for screenshots, sometimes it allows you accessing content from a website that you can not download from the website directly because it is protected via scripting tricks and other gimmicks. Simply load it in your browser and try to copy protected content from that copy. :wink:

² Hibernation and sleep mode are said to be shortening the life span of SSDs enormously, that is because to make these functions work they have to write your complete memory to disk. This was a measure that back in the days of HDDs gave a good amount of startup acceleration, but nowadays, in the time of SSDs this advantage has shrunken a lot, and it is said to be often only in the range of a measurable advantage but hard to feel if it may have been second faster than reloading anything from disk, because of the speed of SSDs.

³ This full power-off reboot is something that, according to Microsoft and some computer specialists, is no longer needed with Windows from Vista on. And not a few call it computer-voodoo.
On the other hand, have we already had some issues here in the forum where this was funnily the only way to get a driver working. And I even had this with my own PC.
So, as said, some call it computer-voodoo, but in my eyes it is better to perform this little extra step that doesn’t hurt anyone and at best costs you a few seconds of your lifetime. Furthermore, if you don’t do it and your PC is refusing to do what you expect it doing, and then you maybe spend hours or even days searching for the culprit, a solution, I guess you would be very upset, when you then, as a last measure, try it with this old computer-voodoo magic trick and it suddenly will work.
So, the decision to do it is up to you, it doesn’t harm you nor your PC, and in most cases it will work flawlessly without applying it.

⁴ You might recite a few incantations or perform a magical dance to protect your PC from the ominous forced updates from the Redmond giant for as long as possible. :grimacing:

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Thank you @Michelist very much for your very detailed instructions. I’ll try it later. Luckily, his problem only affects vector manipulation with a pen and doesn’t stop me from drawing altogether. Others also have this problem, so updating my driver might not fix it. I think I’ll focus on drawing for a while (and not fighting with my computer :laughing: ).

1 Like