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

[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").



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

Kia kaha

Brett