Pen Support

Pen Support

PhotoCraft reads everything your pen reports: works with Wacom EMR pens (Samsung S Pen, Wacom Movink and other Wacom displays) and USI pens.

Pressure, tilt and the eraser end

• Pressure drives brush size, opacity and flow through the brush's Pen Pressure settings, as on the desktop. Preferences › Tools › Use Tablet Pressure and the pressure curve apply.
• Tilt drives the brush's Pen Tilt settings.
• The built-in brushes are set up for a pen: pressure sets the size of every one except the stamp-style effects (Spatter, Stipple, Confetti, Sparkle, Foliage, Halftone Dots and the texture brushes). Pencils, chalk, charcoal, pastel, crayon, calligraphy and bristle brushes lean with the pen (Brush Projection): tilt it to shade with the side of the tip (new in 0.16.0-6).
• The eraser end: turn the pen over and it switches to the Eraser tool; turn it back and your previous tool returns. (You can change what the eraser end does, below.)

Brush cursor while hovering

Hold the pen just above the screen and the brush outline follows it, showing where the brush will land and how big it is. Menus and buttons highlight under a hovering pen, as they do under a mouse (new in 0.16.0-6).

Low latency ink (experimental)

Window › Touch Input Settings… › Pen › Low latency ink, off by default (Android 10 or later). While you draw with the Brush or Pencil, a plain line in the brush colour is drawn straight to the screen from each pen sample, ahead of the app's own frame, so the line keeps up with the pen tip. When you lift the pen the real stroke replaces it. For now a soft brush shows a hard line until you lift, and the line doesn't apply smoothing (new in 0.16.0-6).

Smooth curves

Your pen reports its position 200 or more times a second. PhotoCraft draws through every one of those positions, each with its own pressure and tilt, so large or quick curves come out round rather than made of short straight pieces.

Pen buttons

Set up in Window › Touch Input › Touch Input Settings…, under Pen buttons. Each row has a choice and a light:

Control	Default
Pen button 1 (the side button nearest the tip; an S Pen's only button)	Right-click
Pen button 2	Erase while held
Pen button 3 (pens with three side buttons, such as the Wacom Pro Pen 3)	Nothing
Eraser end	Erase while held

Each can be set to:

• Erase while held: while held (or while the eraser end is in use) the pen erases; it switches to the Eraser tool and back, like the eraser end.
• Switch to Eraser and back: one press switches to the Eraser, the next press back to the tool you had. Handy for the S Pen, which can't draw with its button held down.
• Right-click: press the button while the pen hovers to right-click under the tip, or hold it while touching down. See Right-Click.
• Run a shortcut: a press runs any shortcut (pick a preset or type one, such as Ctrl+Z or B). For the eraser end, the shortcut runs when you turn the pen over.
• Nothing: the button is ignored (the eraser end draws like the tip).

The lights turn green while that button is pressed, or while the eraser end is near the screen, so you can see which button is which on your pen. Underneath, a small line shows the raw button code Android reports, which helps if your pen numbers its buttons unusually.

Palm rejection

While the pen is touching or near the screen, fingers and palms are ignored. See Touch Input.

Tips

• Samsung S Pen: if pressing the button while hovering opens Samsung's Air Command menu instead of right-clicking, Samsung is catching the press before PhotoCraft. Turn Air command off in your phone or tablet's S Pen settings.
• Testing your buttons: open Touch Input Settings and press each button. If a light doesn't come on, the pen isn't reporting that button to Android.

Not supported yet

• Barrel rotation (Wacom Art Pen): Android has no standard way to report it.