Affinity Photo Not working with Huion Kamvas 16 Pro

[supermundane]

I really want to migrate to Affinity Photo but I swear the issues particularly with how it responds to pen tablet or pen display inputs prevents me from making that transition. Just when one level of frustration is overcome with AP, another arises and I have to resort to firing up my copy of Photoshop CS4.

I formerly owned a Wacom Cintiq 13HD but have wanted something with a little more screen real-estate. The Wacom competition appear to be coming of age and after much research and no indication of compatibility issues in the reviews and tests of the new Huion Kamvas 16 Pro, I decided to buy one. A lovely piece of kit except for one thing. I cannot get Affinity Photo or Designer to work with it.

There was lag and bizarre pressure sensitivity issues (same level of pressure resulting in wildly different responses) with the Wacom with AP and AD, but at least it worked to a degree. With the Huion when I attempt to draw a line, there is no pressure sensitivity whatsoever and it appears that all it recognises is the start and end of the line as can be seen from this screen-grab.

I've uninstalled the drivers, installed the latest. enable force pressure in AP but to no avail.

And yet, the tablet works with my ancient copy of Photoshop CS4 and with Krita on Windows 10.

What is going on? Why the issues with Tablets and the issues don't appear to plague any other similar software, eve something as old as CS4?

 

 

 

[firstdefence]

Hi Grant, you have some sublime art on your website...

Anyway, in your tablet driver settings try unticking the Support TabletPC option and then starting Affinity, this has worked for some people. 

[supermundane]

Hi firstdefence,

Thanks so much for your kind words, and your response!

In the latest drivers, the option is known as 'Enable Windows Ink'. I have enabled and disabled it, but to no avail.

[supermundane]

And to add, it works perfectly with the trial version of Clip Studio Pro that I have installed.

Affinity Suite? No dice.

[firstdefence]

I know it doesn't make a lot of sense and I don't know if this is relevant but there seems to be a lot of people having issues because of the Microsoft ink in a variety of apps including PS, this link was from Escape Motions Forum when a user was using one of there apps called Rebelle 3, the link goes to a registry tweak, thought it was worth mentioning as an option: 

 

[supermundane]

Thanks firstdefence. I've been scouring the web for a solution but I'll take a look at the link you've provided. Much appreciated.

Ultimately, Serif do need to address the issues with tablet input, particularly with the Wacom competitors which, like Serif's own suite, are rapidly growing in popularity.

I'll see if the link you've provided will address the issue, otherwise Affinity Photo and Designer will go back to occupying space on my hard-drive until the day it's addressed.

 

[supermundane]

That registry entry doesn't appear to exist in my computer's registry. The pen appears to be behaving normally with Photoshop, Krita and Clip Studio Pro.

Affinity Photo? No luck. I'm going to try uninstalling and re-installing my Affinity applications and see if that helps.

The steps I'll follow -

Uninstall the tablet drivers.
Uninstall Affinity Photo and Designer
Restart
Install the tablet drivers
Restart
Install AP and AD.

Cross fingers.

 

[firstdefence]

Fingers crossed. 

[Scungio]

I had been a long time Wacom user and then the past 3 years or so, I started to look for alternatives. Yes, I understand Wacom is the gold standard but I didn't feel like paying for the premium any longer and I felt that the competitors were closing the gap in the low to mid range.

I really like to have a smaller display tablet, for portability reasons and just my preference. I find a larger display or even a larger tablet makes my arm, hand and eyes become fatigued faster. That may sound silly but for me it is true. For years I had used a Wacom Cintiq 12WX and always had a medium sized Wacom Intuos tablet in addition to that.

When it came time to replace the small Cintiq, I really did not care for the features or pricing of what Wacom was offering so I went with XP Pen. My current display tablet is the XP Pen 15.6 Pro and it fits my needs perfectly. I do think that whether it is XP Pen or Huion, the drivers are always going to be annoying from time to time.

XP Pen for example tells us to make sure to remove other companies drivers like Wacom as it will cause issues. I thought that was sort of crazy but then when I used my 15.6 Pro with my laptop I was having issues. Hooked up to the desktop things ran perfectly, but when I used it with my laptop it was ugly. I forgot that I had installed Wacom drivers on the laptop as I had been testing out some old Wacom tablets that I was going to sell. 

I don't mean to be so long winded, but does Huion recommend to uninstall other tablet drivers like XP Pen?? I often wonder if other devices could cause problems too. Like I have a Shuttle Pro that I use too. From time to time I often find that other devices can be the culprit of glitches.

It does suck though that we spend money on these competing products and then get frustrated when they don't work perfectly right out of the box. To me I have come to expect more bumpiness in the beginning, I mean after all Wacom has decades of experience, probably employs way more employees than Huion or XP Pen. If we want to have a seamless, perfect experience with as little trouble as possible then paying the premium for Wacom products is the solution. I don't want to pay that premium so I am patient and put up with a little aggravation! I do know that often times it may not be the fault of the software makers like Serif but actually with Huion or XP Pen. Many people will go to XP Pen and ask why things are not working right and sometimes there were updates pushed out that did fix some issues with certain software.

It does seem like that when there are major revisions to the OS or an app, like maybe the 1.7 updates to the Affinity range, that the drivers may take a while to catch up. Don't know if this helps at all. 

I will say this too, the competitors are catching up. That Huion Kamvas 16 Pro, wow, some Cintiq like features and build quality starting to creep in. Huion and XP Pen are now starting to have fully laminated displays, reducing parallax, they are introducing 60 degree tilt with their pens, they are improving the color, 120% sRGB, 85-90% Adobe RGB. I can't help but feel that the etched, textured glass is coming any year now and them upping the resolution from 1920 x 1080 to something more is in the cards too. 

I feel like those of us supporting Huion and XP Pen and the others are going to help Wacom become more accessible to all. Sort of like how AMD Ryzen is forcing Intel to lower some pricing on their CPUs. Of course maybe Wacom will just concede the low, mid range and just concentrate on the high end, 24-32 inch displays?? Who knows??

-Mark

[supermundane]

Went through the steps I've outlined but no luck of uninstalling and reinstalling. The problem persists and I'm out of ideas.

Affinity Photo and Designer will have to collect dust a while longer sadly.

Serif - it's great that you're adding all these amazing features but really the fundamentals do need to work first and I'd suggest that getting brush and eraser tools to work properly (or at all) with pen displays (when 10 year old applications work with the same pen displays flawlessly) is one of those fundamentals.

Scungio - The Wacom drivers were uninstalled prior to installing the Huion drivers so that isn't the problem. Agree with you on the improving quality of these competitors to Wacom. The drivers still seem a little unresolved however.

 

[supermundane]

Weirdly the brush tools work with the Photo Persona in Publisher.

Go figure.

[firstdefence]

Asked on facebook for you and they replied with this.

Hi, does your driver panel show "device connected"? Can the pen work in the pressure test and other drawing programs?

To be more specific, please send the following information to service@huion.com and describe your tablet issue specifically so that we can help you further.
1) Product serial number (on the back of the tablet);
2) The version of Huion driver;
3) The version of your Affinity;
4) Your computer's operating system;

Thank you!

[supermundane]

3 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Asked on facebook for you and they replied with this.

Hi, does your driver panel show "device connected"? Can the pen work in the pressure test and other drawing programs?

To be more specific, please send the following information to service@huion.com and describe your tablet issue specifically so that we can help you further.
1) Product serial number (on the back of the tablet);
2) The version of Huion driver;
3) The version of your Affinity;
4) Your computer's operating system;

Thank you!

Hi firstdefence,

Thanks for your efforts and for enquiring on Facebook.  I had to go out and so I've only just managed to get around to looking at the problem again.

I have emailed Huion with the details and I await their response.

However, I have something to add, which may provide a workaround for some, if others experience these issues.

Within the Tablet's Driver settings panel and alongside the Enable Windows Ink checkbox, there is a Game Mode checkbox. I've previously toggled that option on and off to no effect.

How after the reinstall, if I have both 'Enable Windows Ink' and 'Game Mode' enabled, the brush tools with work in Affinity Photo and Designer.

Well sort of as the Mouse Pointer remains visible at all times, effectively obstructing the view of the brush itself.

And...with the Game Mode checkbox enabled the tablet ceases to work in Photoshop CS4 - no response at all in PS. It does continue to work in Krita (it appears that the free, open-source program provides the best support for tablets and pen displays).

 

 

 

 

[supermundane]

But if then you use the mouse and click within another program, and then attempt to return to Affinity Photo, it ceases to be responsive at all and you'll need to task manager to kill it outright.

 

[firstdefence]

That's just whack, I dare bet Huion will buy affinity and test their drivers on a win 10 system. 

[supermundane]

I hope they will and I also hope that Serif will purchase a few Huion and XP-Pen tablets and pen displays to test with their applications. Huion and XP-Pen, like Serif, are rapidly emerging as the dominant competitors to the established giant.

[supermundane]

An update to this thread. Incidentally, it would be nice to know if anyone at Serif is aware of these issues.

Huion responded very promptly. They asked me to video capture what's taking place in Affinity Photo and upload it to them, which I have.

Hopefully, that will aid them in addressing this at least from the driver side of things with the next driver update. Of course I'll keep everyone posted.

 

 

[casterle]

19 hours ago, supermundane said:

An update to this thread. Incidentally, it would be nice to know if anyone at Serif is aware of these issues.

Huion responded very promptly. They asked me to video capture what's taking place in Affinity Photo and upload it to them, which I have.

Hopefully, that will aid them in addressing this at least from the driver side of things with the next driver update. Of course I'll keep everyone posted.

If you haven't been able to disable Windows Ink at the OS level you should pursue this; my Deco 03 problems (across several apps) vanished once I'd done this. The problem is that in Windows 10 they've changed the way to disable the 'feature' more than once, so the solution you find may no longer exist in the Win 10 release your're running. I'd suggest searching until you find a solution that works on your version of Win 10.

[Wumpus]

19 hours ago, supermundane said:

...Huion responded very promptly...

I've been very impressed with Huion support and build so far, but their driver UI and docs could be a bit more intuitive (sort of like some AP functionality).

One of my easiest resolved issues was that there were two nearly identical Huion tablet model names and I had grabbed the wrong driver: they spotted that immediately, and that fixed 75% of my problems. The models had identical words and numbers in the names, but one name had two transposed items compared to the other, and I picked the one that looked more logical in English, thinking the other might have been an early version translation typo. Turns out they were completely different items. After that, I had a few remaining issues that pertained only to AP (all other graphics programs worked as intended), and spent hours toggling Windows settings and registry entries, to the point I stopped being systematic, and now I have no idea what I finally did that made it work. I did get them working properly together, though I never got 'tilt-angle' to register.  I hope your experience works out successfully too!

[supermundane]

5 hours ago, casterle said:

If you haven't been able to disable Windows Ink at the OS level you should pursue this; my Deco 03 problems (across several apps) vanished once I'd done this. The problem is that in Windows 10 they've changed the way to disable the 'feature' more than once, so the solution you find may no longer exist in the Win 10 release your're running. I'd suggest searching until you find a solution that works on your version of Win 10.

I'll certainly look into this. Thanks. At the moment, I somehow managed to get it to run - not perfectly - but the the point where it's usable with AP and AD by simply enabling or disabling the 'Game Mode' checkbox. Strangely, this made no different with the first install attempt.

When I use AP and AD I enable Game Mode, and I mostly have a trouble-free experience, while I disable Game-Mode for absolutely everything else. 

I believe the hardware has finally caught up to Wacom's but the drivers and the settings that are letting Huion and I believe XP-Pen down at the moment. To be fair, Wacom like Adobe, have had a serious head-start in that respect and my understanding is that the drivers have improved immensely in a very short space of time, which bodes well.

Of course, the onus is also on Serif to ensure that its applications work as flawlessly as possible at least with the main competitors to Wacom, that being Huion and XP=Pen. Much like the transition to the Affinity suite, we're witnessing a transition away from Wacom especially as the consumer, freelancer and student level, which is where the Affinity suite itself is making the greatest inroads. 

I'm a freelancer and teacher myself, and I feel that both Affinity and Huion/XP-Pen are rapidly catching up on their larger, more established rivals.

[boku]

On 7/6/2019 at 2:22 AM, Wumpus said:

I've been very impressed with Huion support and build so far, but their driver UI and docs could be a bit more intuitive (sort of like some AP functionality).

One of my easiest resolved issues was that there were two nearly identical Huion tablet model names and I had grabbed the wrong driver: they spotted that immediately, and that fixed 75% of my problems. The models had identical words and numbers in the names, but one name had two transposed items compared to the other, and I picked the one that looked more logical in English, thinking the other might have been an early version translation typo. Turns out they were completely different items. After that, I had a few remaining issues that pertained only to AP (all other graphics programs worked as intended), and spent hours toggling Windows settings and registry entries, to the point I stopped being systematic, and now I have no idea what I finally did that made it work. I did get them working properly together, though I never got 'tilt-angle' to register.  I hope your experience works out successfully too!

Sorry, could you please specify which two models that you mentioned above? 

I'm having the same problem, although on different OS (macOS Mojave). My model is Huion New 1060 Plus (8192), on Affinity Photo and Design both 1.7.

Transition is abrupt (not graceful) and I'm having hard time working with brushes (was okay using wacom intuos 3 from 10 years ago 1024 pressure levels).

This kind of problem kind of defeats 8192 pressure levels' purpose. Made me thinking to get 2048 on an equally-priced wacom one instead. 

Thank you.

[Wumpus]

Offsite so can't check until later, but found a prior post where I mentioned my model ( Huion 610 Pro v2 ).

March 2019 Designer Beta forum

It seems my model is different from yours, but i think the 1060 Plus was around the same timeframe as mine, so there's bound to be overlaps or similarities. I think our models both had 8192 levels of pressure, higher per second flow rate, and batteryless (if I recall: I'm pretty sure I had been looking at both models before I made my purchase).

If I understand correctly, your question is about pressure 'transition' (curve?): it sounds to me like its' not exactly linear, but more like a formula one gas throttle? I will check mine out, but I don't recall any kind of concern once I got mine settled, but I think that might have been an issue for me when I started out using the wrong driver, and it was always jumping from zero to max pressure, and also my flow rate had been really slow and laggy. Make sure you have got the correct driver, and you might need to play with Windows Ink or Pen & Ink settings.

I will try to verify but might not have a chance for a day or two.

[Gradient_Phil]

I'd love to help as well if I could. I also have the Huion 610 Pro v2 model but I don't really know how to drive it. (hell I don't even know where the steering wheel is yet!)

I can also attest to the fact that Huion has a good support service. I'm currently having issues with my system that is caused by the Huion driver - we are still trying to get to the bottom if it.

 

[Wumpus]

I found the drivers much more linear by setting them to a positive # for the curve, as shown in the screenshot. The responsiveness was really nice, actually.

Notice I actually have Windows Ink enabled (I had thought it was disabled).