Photo by Norbert Levajsics on Unsplash

During the last month, people have been having issues with their Wacom drawing pads in Photoshop. This is due to a “bug” in the latest version of Windows 10 (as of April 2018) that from what I can tell changes the model for pen interaction in Windows 10. This gives the following symptoms:

• Pen all over the place when drawing
• Limited to Windows 10
• Seems to only happen when zoomed in.
• Pen shaking while drawing

Luckily, there’s an easy fix, you can either uninstall the updates and hold of installing them until Microsoft fixes them. But the other option is to enable “Legacy Mode” for the Pen Interaction model through a registry setting, which I prefer since it’s a lot less work, a more clear fix, and it’s easy to reverse.

1. Open a Command Promt as Administrator, open the start menu, search for cmd, right-click and select Run as Administrator
2. Type the following command into the elevated Command Prompt

   reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Pen /v LegacyPenInteractionModel /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

That fixes the problem by forcing Windows to use the older Pen Interaction Model by adding the Registry DWORD LegacyPenInteractionModel with the value 1. To reverse the change, you just need to delete the DWORD using the Registry Editor

I’ll update this article if I find a patch at a later date that fixes the issue permanently.

Categories: Tech

Tags: fix, photoshop, photoshop cc, photoshop cc 2018, problem, registry, registry fix, tablet, wacom, wacom tablet, windows, windows 10