Strange Stylus Highlighting Behaviour on My Cintiq 27 Pro (Mac M1)

[Perendale]

Some other “long shots”.

If you haven’t already, try getting support from Wacom. I have found their support “less than optimal” but you never know!

I don’t know the Cintiq at all but my Intuos Pro has small slider on the side which turns “touch” on and off. Using it seems to cause unpredictable results, one of which in my experience, is causing the pen to make marks without the pen touching the tablet. If you have such a slider try giving it a slide. There is also on my tablet in the pen settings (from the Wacom desktop) an option called ‘hover”, turning this on and off also can cause weirdness.

As last resort there an app called “connect my tablet’. It costs $NZ 20. It’s very good for failed or misbehaving Wacom installs. It has helped me but YMMV

Kia kaha

Brett

[nekomata]

are those ghost traces staying permanently during a single session? do they go away with a quick zoom in/out swipe or keyboard shortcut hit once the viewport is refreshed? if you create a small new document while painting in either artrage 6 or AR vitae, and switch between both, do those trace lines preserve between the two?

I really can't think of a technical explanation, and I suppose that wacom will eventually send you to report this to apple, but def. do get in touch with wacom.
artrage is a relatively minor app, cintiq 27" is a new device, the driver and firmware might be not really up to par for use with the latest mac os, and I see a lot of negative feedback on the wacom M1/M2/M3 performance in the recent months again.

https://support.wacom.com/hc/en-us/c...7-Pen-Displays - this is the directory for cintiq-related issues on the wacom support portal.

there should be a major new release for artrage natively supporting new apple chips coming in at some point (no set date, but somewhere this year, I guess?), so the worst worst case scenario is you'll have to wait for a moment.

[DennisD]

Hey Kia, I tried the Connect My Tablet app, and followed its instructions with no luck. But thanks for the suggestion — as I said, I'm open to anything. Touch has always been off, and hover off as well. No joy. Cheers, though!

Nekomata: The ghost traces appear and vanish when the document is quit and returned to. They vanish when the Zoom is changed. They sometimes vanish when the pen goes over them again. They are nowhere near "permanent".

I've been escalated at Wacom from the standard "have you tried restarting" to a tech, we'll see what they say!

Thanks for the assistance,
-Dennis

[nekomata]

Nekomata: The ghost traces appear and vanish when the document is quit and returned to. They vanish when the Zoom is changed. They sometimes vanish when the pen goes over them again. They are nowhere near "permanent".

I'm mostly afraid this is happening due to some under the hood updates in the mac os code itself no longer working with the artrage 6/vitae interface framework on a particular device, but just in case, since you haven't mentioned this step, does toggling between classic mode and docking mode under view -> interface mode make any difference while painting?

and does this issue happen with a certain file alone, or is it universal regardless of every file you're creating inside of artrage/copying and pasting or importing an image from an external app? (I see painter blender marks in the background, so, I imagine, this is an imported .psd file?)


however if wacom have escalated this to their engineering already, this might indeed have something to do with stylus input code -- there's an internal wacom driver option for improving pen precision in the pro pen 2 generation of devices which I imagine has been carried over onto cintiq 27" tech which hypothetically might trace stylus movement throughout painting process, but I'm not sure what exactly would be leaving the ghost overlay because the tip-up assist tool has no visual clues for the user.

they have a relatively fast turnaround of recent mac driver builds, so if this is indeed something on their side it will come out faster than a native apple silicon artrage release.

[DennisD]

"and does this issue happen with a certain file alone, or is it universal regardless of every file you're creating inside of artrage/copying and pasting or importing an image from an external app? (I see painter blender marks in the background, so, I imagine, this is an imported .psd file?)"

It happens on all of the above. New files. Imported files. Old files. Art Rage 6 files. Vitae files. Jpegs. PNGs. Etc.

I agree with your assessment, it is likely a Mac Chip issue (I managed to get this working without issue on an ancient Intel iMac).

So far the escalated Wacom response has been underwhelming (switch to 60hz instead of 120hz) which, of course, had no effect.

Some strange interaction is going on.

Cheers!
-D

[nekomata]

"and does this issue happen with a certain file alone, or is it universal regardless of every file you're creating inside of artrage/copying and pasting or importing an image from an external app? (I see painter blender marks in the background, so, I imagine, this is an imported .psd file?)"

It happens on all of the above. New files. Imported files. Old files. Art Rage 6 files. Vitae files. Jpegs. PNGs. Etc.

I agree with your assessment, it is likely a Mac Chip issue (I managed to get this working without issue on an ancient Intel iMac).

So far the escalated Wacom response has been underwhelming (switch to 60hz instead of 120hz) which, of course, had no effect.

Some strange interaction is going on.

Cheers!
-D

there's a very long alternative solution I can think of which isn't guaranteed to support your cintiq model too (is the current wacom driver, or one before that, still supported by your intel mac?) but you can install parallels virtual machine on the old imac, make a copy of the OS X it has running over there, transfer that copy on your new mac, and run that from inside parallels on your current apple silicon workstation.

it's a bit monstrous installation-wise, but it should at the very least work as it did on the old machine - artrage does not rely on GPU acceleration or advanced realtime GPU filters or anything like that.
I used parallels windows VM on mac about a decade ago to extend painter IX lifespan after the code support got discontinued on mac, and those new versions were not exactly improving things.

this will require you to spend some time navigating the software (it's pretty barebones itself, but the set-up process might get a bit overwhelming), and you'll have to trust russian software currently owned by corel, but if anything else fails, this might work out:

kb.parallels.com/125561/ - the support article outlining the process.

[Perendale]

Hey Kia, I tried the Connect My Tablet app, and followed its instructions with no luck. But thanks for the suggestion — as I said, I'm open to anything. Touch has always been off, and hover off as well. No joy. Cheers, though!

You're not by any chance also using Rebelle 7 are you? It's a buggy mess at the moment. But it seems it *may* be interacting with other apps, including ARV.

Brett

[DennisD]

"You're not by any chance also using Rebelle 7 are you? It's a buggy mess at the moment. But it seems it *may* be interacting with other apps, including ARV."

Nope. ArtRage Vitae and ArtRage 6.

In any case, I found an incredibly stupid fix which I don't understand, but which works.

In Mac OS, under Displays, under color profile, selecting Cintiq 22HD instead of the default Cintiq Pro 27 fixes it.

As to why, I have NO idea.

Cheers, and thanks for the help!
-D

[markw]

...I found an incredibly stupid fix which I don't understand, but which works.
In Mac OS, under Displays, under color profile, selecting Cintiq 22HD instead of the default Cintiq Pro 27 fixes it.
As to why, I have NO idea.

So good to hear you finally found the cause and a simple solution!
Time to get back to painting!
One last thing; where might we find some examples of your finished works?

[DennisD]

My work is all over the place. Did my early years in comics. Probably my most famous is for Magic:The Gathering (way back when). Later, 15 years in video games.

Today, I illustrate my game Delta Green (itÂ’s available on Amazon.)

Thanks again for the help!
Dennis