Paint Brush Tool works with mouse, not drawing tablet

[Nick B.]

When I got the trial version of AF2, my drawing tablet and pen worked perfectly. Once I paid for the full version, the tablet does not let me use the paint brush tool.

 

I can move things around with the pen, select images and move them with it, and pretty much everything else. When it comes to actually drawing with the tablet/pen, however, nothing happens. I've noted that when the pen is about a half-inch above the tablet, some faint drawing occurs.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I feel like I have watched every YouTube video and tried every setting. Nothing works. Definitely feels like a bug in the system.

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Affinity forums, Nick.

Please tell us more about your Mac system, including your OS, and about your tablet & pen.

[Nick B.]

Thanks for getting back to me.

 

I'm running a Mac Pro (late 2013) on Monterey (Version 12.7.5).

I'm using a Huion H1060P tablet with the included pen. The table works perfectly for everything except the brush (and eraser, actually). Any ability to "draw" is off limits.

[NathanC]

Welcome to the forums @Nick B.,

If it's only specific tools such as the brush based tools that fail to work it may be due to contextual options selected on these tools, can you provide a screen recording which demonstrates using the paint brush tool with the tablet input and then the mouse input for comparison? FAQ on screen recording below.

 

[Nick B.]

Please see attached.

Thank you!

[Hangman]

Hi @Nick B.,

Do you have the latest driver installed, i.e., the one from July 5th, 2024, Driver_15.6.6.55? If not it would be worth updating to see whether it makes any difference...

[Nick B.]

Yes, that is my driver.

The paint brush worked with the trial version of AF2. Once I bought it, it didn't work anymore.

[Hangman]

@Nick B., thanks for confirming...

I assume it's not working with any brush is that correct? If you also have Affinity Designer does it work with either Vector Brushes in the Designer Persona or Raster Brushes in the Pixel Persona?

[Nick B.]

No, it's not working with any brush.

I do not have Designer.

It's weird because it feels like a sensitivity setting (I can get it to sort'of work if the pen isn't touching the pad), but all of the settings seem fine.

[Hangman]

When setting the Digital Pen pressure sensitivity options in the Tablet Settings is that working as expected?

[Nick B.]

Yes, that works perfectly. I can adjust it and there are no issues.

[Hangman]

I'm sure this will all be set since everything was working before but worth double checking...

If you go to your Mac Preferences and select Security & Privacy followed by Accessibility from the list of options on the left and then select the Privacy tab on the right, are both HuionTablet and TabletDriverAgent checked?

If so, the only other thing I can suggest, even if it sounds unlikely to be the issue is to uninstall the driver, reboot your Mac and then reinstall it...

https://support.huion.com/en/support/solutions/articles/44002222326-how-to-uninstall-version-15-driver-macos-

[Nick B.]

Yes, Accessibility is checked.

I can't tell if it's an issue with Affinity or Huion.

[Hangman]

Just now, Nick B. said:

I can't tell if it's an issue with Affinity or Huion.

There have been numerous reports of issues with Huion tablets but the majority seem to be Windows-specific and relate to either a Driver issue or having Windows Ink enabled in the Tablet Settings (obviously this is not an option with the Mac Driver)...

Did you try uninstalling, rebooting and then reinstalling the Driver? I'm not confident it will make any difference but several people who have posted about issues seem to have resolved them by reinstalling the Driver so it has to be worth a go at least...

[carl123]

5 minutes ago, Nick B. said:

I can't tell if it's an issue with Affinity or Huion.

Check if the pen works in another (drawing) app.

I don't own a Mac so can't advise on what apps it comes with

[Nick B.]

I just downloaded Tayasui Sketches and the brush worked perfectly.

[Hangman]

Just now, Nick B. said:

I just downloaded Tayasui Sketches and the brush worked perfectly.

Clearly, some further feedback is required from the team at Serif on this...

[Nick B.]

13 minutes ago, Hangman said:

There have been numerous reports of issues with Huion tablets but the majority seem to be Windows-specific and relate to either a Driver issue or having Windows Ink enabled in the Tablet Settings (obviously this is not an option with the Mac Driver)...

Did you try uninstalling, rebooting and then reinstalling the Driver? I'm not confident it will make any difference but several people who have posted about issues seem to have resolved them by reinstalling the Driver so it has to be worth a go at least...

Yes, I tried uninstalling, rebooting, and reinstalling the driver. It works fine with other drawing apps (I just tried one).

[garrettm30]

As a guess, I would say it has to do with Affinity not reading the pressure values sent by the pen. I have an old Huion 610Pro, and I don’t have any luck getting pressure to properly work in Affinity. When I turn on pressure sensitivity in Affinity, the lines paint at a near-minimum size. Maybe in your case the minimum is so small it is effectively nothing at all.

Possibly when you tried it before, you were using it in a mode without pressure sensitivity. Try turning it off to see if you can at least use it without pressure.

[Nick B.]

3 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

As a guess, I would say it has to do with Affinity not reading the pressure values sent by the pen. I have an old Huion 610Pro, and I don’t have any luck getting pressure to properly work in Affinity. When I turn on pressure sensitivity in Affinity, the lines paint at a near-minimum size. Maybe in your case the minimum is so small it is effectively nothing at all.

Possibly when you tried it before, you were using it in a mode without pressure sensitivity. Try turning it off to see if you can at least use it without pressure.

PROBLEM: SOLVED! Thank you for steering me in the right direction!

Fix: with the paint brush selected, under "More," I had to update some of the dynamics from "Pressure" to "None." From there, I was able to tweak the sliders and other settings to draw with no issues.

[garrettm30]

Just out of curiosity, when you tried it with other apps, did you find that pressure sensitivity does work?

[Nick B.]

On 7/30/2024 at 10:22 AM, garrettm30 said:

Just out of curiosity, when you tried it with other apps, did you find that pressure sensitivity does work?

Sorry. I maxed out my replies yesterday and forgot until now. The other drawing app didn't have pressure sensitivity. Basically like using a mouse.

[garrettm30]

On 7/30/2024 at 9:07 AM, garrettm30 said:

As a guess, I would say it has to do with Affinity not reading the pressure values sent by the pen. I have an old Huion 610Pro, and I don’t have any luck getting pressure to properly work in Affinity.

I kept pursuing this, and now I can report back that I now have the tablet functioning with pressure sensitivity in Affinity. It had to do with getting the driver properly configured, so the problem had nothing to do with Affinity. Pressure also hadn’t been working even in the Huion-supplied “PenPressureTest” app.

@Nick B. I don’t know if what I did could work for you, since your tablet uses a newer driver than mine and your OS is older than mine (I am on macOS 14.5 Sonoma). I ended up uninstalling everything and then tried to follow as nearly as possible the installation instructions at the Huion support site. They didn’t match my OS, but they did point me in the right direction. For me, I think it was that I probably not have the macOS security settings configured to allow the necessary helper app. These are the places in the System Settings (for you, System Preferences) that need to be active.

• Login Items -> Shenzhen Huion Animation Technology
• Privacy & Security -> Input Monitoring -> TabletDriver
• Privacy & Security -> Accessibility -> TabletDriver

For me, I found it helpful to test pressure with the included PenPressureTest app inside the HuionDriver folder in the Applications folder, just to remove Affinity from the equation until I could be sure that the tablet itself is working properly with pressure. Once I did that, I had no trouble going back to Affinity and activating pressure.