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

[DennisD]

Hoping someone has some insight here. First off: I'm on a Mac M1, with a Cintiq 27 Pro (new) and ArtRage Vitae or 6. All the software is up to date and has been restarted multiple times.

I've painted in ArtRage for years on various Wacom tablets with zero issue, but I just upgraded to the Cintiq 27 Pro (from a 24) and suddenly:

Everywhere my stylus travels on screen (but doesn't touch) leaves a "highlight" of slightly off-colored boxes (the colour seems to change, but it always transparent, and sometimes, this "track" vanishes, especially when I change zoom). These are not "drawn" on the canvas, but only track wherever the pen goes. I've attached a painting I'm working on; the transparent blue snake-like track on the face of the subject is the effect. It occurs anywhere I slide my pen (even when I am not touching the screen).

This happens ONLY in ArtRage products. It does not happen in Pixelmator Pro, Photoshop, or other programs like Painter.

Help! I dearly love my workflow in ArtRage, and would hate to have to go somewhere else; because frankly, this discolouration on top of the pen position makes colour mixing all but impossible for me.

Cheers!
-D
103339

[markw]

Hello DennisD and welcome to the ArtRage forums :) Just a shame it could not be under better circumstances:(
Well, this is certainly out of the usual!
As I’m still on an older Mac and an Intuos4, I’m probably not going to be able to offer much direct help here:(
You say you have restarted the App several times,(is it seen in both ARV and AR6?) did that include shutting down the computer and restarting it?
Have you tried starting up the system in Safe Mode?
If ArtRage works correctly while the system is in Safe Mode, then that might indicate some interference from another app on your system is the cause.
And right now my gut feeling is that this is something specific to your system as I don’t recall hearing of it before from other users.
Others on these forums though, on a similar setup to you, might be able to chip in here with ideas…
But even so I would contact Ambient Design directly and see if they can shed more light on what might be happening and hopefully find both the cause and a solution.
Via eMail: [email protected]
I really hope you get a quick solution but keep us posted with how it turns out as it might be of help to others in the future.

[DennisD]

I've been in chats with the ArtRage team (thanks, guys) and I appreciate your response MarkW, but so far, no joy.

Just in case someone else sees this, here's the stuff I've done to try and troubleshoot on my Macs with a Wacom 27 (with no success):

-Zeroed my Mac mini M1 and started with a fresh install.
-Zeroed my Mac Studio M2 and started fresh.
-Launched both in safe mode.
-Deleted and reinstalled Artrage Vitae and Artrage 6.
-Turned off all buttons and touch controls on the Wacom 27.
-Removed all Login Items on the Mac.
-Switched off all extras on Artrage (Retina and DPI Support/Force Pixel Placement/Command+Mousewheel Zoom).
-Turned off Canvas Lighting.
-Switched to Precies Cursor.
-Tried the Wacom Cintiq 27 with Pixelmator, ToonBoom, Corel Painter, Krista, and Photoshop — none of these applications show the bug. They all work fine.
-Hooked up the 27 to my ancient Intel iMac (which is no shape to be a painting machine), and Artrage works there, fine without the effect, but is incredibly slow.

The effect is: wherever the pen is tracked (without touching or making a mark), it "draws" transparent blocks showing where the pen has "been". These are not marks, but since they colour the painting, they make it all but impossible to mix colours (see below; the looping off coloured blocks in the sky are where my pen tracked — but did not "draw").

103343

If anyone has any theories, I'm open to anything. I make a living using Artrage and have done so for years, and would be loathe to leave it behind.

Cheers,
-Dennis

[markw]

So sorry to hear Ambient were unable to find the problem:(:(:(:(
But as we are possibly in the area of “long shots” now…
Assuming you are on the latest Wacom driver for your Cintiq, have you tried regressing back one driver at a time to see if an earlier one resolves the issue?
Some years back, when my Intuos4 was still current, Wacom released a driver for it that stopped zoom & rotation with the Touch Wheel working in ArtRage. All my other apps were fine though.
Never acknowledged as a bug by Wacom two driver releases later and the problem was gone.
And even now currently for me the last stable Intuos driver for my tablet, that works in all my apps, is 6.3.39-1. The more recent ones after that and the final one they made, not so good.
Really wish I could help you more here:(

[DennisD]

Thanks MarkW!

I just tried (uninstalled my 6-4-5-3) and installed 6-4-4-5 and then restarted. Same result.

I appreciate the suggestion though!

-D

[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 :D

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/community/topics/4407627560087-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.

[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]

"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.

[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!:cool::cool::cool:
Time to get back to painting!:D
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

[nekomata]

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.

that's so simple. I'm glad everything works fine now.

thanks for sharing the solution with the board in case anyone else runs into a similar mac issue, and I hope you won't be having any other troubles with the code until a new, fully native artrage version comes out.