Penny Arcade's Gabe bails on the Surface Pro 3; UPDATE: Maybe just Photoshop

Penny Arcade artist Mike Krahulik (Gabe) has been an important early adopter of the Surface Pro and has publicly sung its praises. But earlier today, he posted a very distressing note. He's not going to draw any more comics on the Surface Pro 3 and is going back to the Surface Pro 2.

Quoting Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes, he writes (presumably to Microsoft):  “You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

The post claims that today's comic took Krahulik three times longer to draw in Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 and "I'm not happy with the results at all."

Check it out for yourself here: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/07/07/surface-pro-31

I wrote Gabe via the Penny Arcade submission form to suggest that perhaps his blame is misplaced.

I don't doubt that he's seeing the issue. Every Adobe CC 2014 product I've tested misses occasional pen strokes or is otherwise buggy on the Surface Pro 3.

But there are other tools available that work perfectly well on the device. I sound like a broken record, but cartoonists like Krahulik should do themselves a big favor and try Manga Studio 5 / Clip Studio Paint. The software's tools are specifically designed for comics, its brush engine is unrivaled and it offers fine pen curve and stabilization settings that can overcome current N-Trig limitations.

Gabe and Penny Arcade have a big audience and I expect his frustrated article will find its way into the hands of other tech pundits who will parrot it ad nauseum. More anti-Microsoft fodder.

Every artist should be free to work with the tool they know best. But it's unreasonable to dismiss a new device only a month after its release because one specific application is being buggy.

What's your take?

UPDATE I heard from Gabe and he wrote, "yeah I draw in MS5. It doesn't work very well at all for me on the Surface Pro 3. It was so bad that I decided to try PS."

Now I'm stumped. Defective hardware?

UPDATE 2: I was right. Gabe was using an older version of Manga Studio.  He'll be drawing another strip on the SP3 next week. I can't wait to read his verdict. http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/07/07/update-to-my-surface-post

The Panda City: In Praise of Great Customer Service

Anyone who’s ever made an online purchase from a vendor without a physical store has likely faced this doubt: how to trust the entity on the other side of the transaction? Add to that the risk of purchasing relatively expensive but little-known hardware imported directly from China by an internet reseller. Are your Spider senses tingling yet?

That was certainly how I felt last year, as I plunked down a cool $1K to purchase the Yiynova MVP22U (v2) tablet monitor from their U.S. distributor The Panda City.

At the very least, I was able to take comfort in the fact that The Panda City has an Amazon storefront so worst case I could get a refund from Jeff Bezos if the product failed to show up or work as advertised.

My fears were certainly justified when the first unit I received started acting up within days of the unboxing.

But only a couple of hours after submitting an RMA request, The Panda City’s customer service person Vicki (I wonder if that’s her real name or a catch-all Americanized name for their support team?) arranged to send out a replacement. When it arrived at my door a week later, I just boxed up the defective unit and attached the pre-paid return label.

Fast forward seven months and the second Yiynova monitor developed a similar problem (image flashing on and off).

I gritted my teeth as I completed the RMA request form found on The Panda City website. Surely this time I’d have to send the monitor in for them to diagnose the issue and either fix or replace it.

But within an hour of pressing send on my email, there was a response back from Vicki. She apologized profusely for the problem and told me a new monitor would be shipped via Fedex the following morning.

And a week later, the new unit (sporting updated firmware) arrived at my doorstep. To top it off, inside were a pair of Yiynova artist’s gloves and a new pen as an apology for the down time.

I guess I could be upset that two monitors have failed on me, but that’s an issue with Yiynova. Have any of you experienced similar issues with their products? Let us know in the comments section below.

In the meantime, I choose to focus on the laudatory customer service I received from The Panda City. They and Vicki could have given me a hard time or expected me to send my monitor in first. Instead, they just took my word for it, expedited delivery and sent me a valuable bonus as well. 

(Cynics among you may wonder whether they merely offered me special treatment because of my blog’s reach. I don’t think that’s the case. I didn’t identify myself as SurfaceProArtist when I submitted the RMA request and this site’s reach was a tenth of its current size during the first incident late last year).

Needless to say, The Panda City has earned a happy customer who looks forward to shopping from them again. Just imagine how much better our tech lives would be if most major vendors took such proactive care of their clientele?

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Lenovo ThinkVision LT1423p: The poor man's Cintiq?

Manufacturers don't consciously make products intending to bury them, do they? It sounds crazy, given the intense competition, relentless pace of innovation and the cost of bringing a product to market. 

Yet time and again, we've all stumbled across a brilliant product few have heard mentioned, barely listed on the manufacturer's website, and seemingly preordained to lapse into tech obscurity. 

Such appears to be the case with USB 3.0-powered Lenovo ThinkVision LT1423p, a product originally unveiled at CES 2013 that didn't make it to market until late last year: a product I'd never heard of or had forgotten until last week when a Twitter follower shared a video of it in action.

But who could blame me for this oversight? Visiting the Lenovo online store as I write this review, I can't even find a link to any monitor products on their home page. Only by typing in the model number can I find a couple of pages on the product.

And it's a pity, too. Because the LT1423p is an amazing product that anyone in the market for a tablet monitor should consider.

For $449 for the wired model direct from Lenovo, the 13.3-inch IPS LED monitor features 10 point touch input and a Wacom digitizer, 1600 x 900 resolution, Gorilla glass panel, a cover stand for landscape and portrait usage, a built-in typing stand and USB 3.0 interface for both power and signal.  

The ThinkVision USB monitor comes with the cover stand (top), USB 3.0 micro-B to USB 3.0 cable (right), a USB 3.0 Y cable (left)  and the Lenovo pen, which can be siloed in the upper right corner of the monitor.

I set it up yesterday afternoon and it was love at first sight. The monitor is roomy, thin and light and extremely well built as you might expect from Lenovo. 

The monitor is incredibly thin (.26 inches on the right), but it won't lay flat because of the built-in stand.

Although it's USB powered, a drawback of the monitor is that it requires two USB outputs from your laptop or desktop, so it's impossible to hook this up to the Surface Pro unless it's docked. UPDATE: This is not true, as I discovered below. See update for 6/13/14.

Your Windows pc won't immediately recognize the monitor. You'll need to install a setup program that's stored on the monitor's built-in U disk. This is an interesting way to install drivers, but since the product was released in 2013, the files are hopelessly dated.

Through no help from the flimsy instructions included with the device, I learned that the LT1423p requires the latest DisplayLink drivers and Wacom's Tablet PC feeldrivers.

It took some doing to get it all working correctly. I'm sure some of this is due to the fact that I only had touch enabled devices available to test the monitor. This naturally causes confusion with the pen driver.

The DisplayLink also doesn't seem to assume that you'll leave the monitor attached in a desktop configuration. This is obviously meant to be a portable device. As such, the monitor is often not recognized upon startup. Once the pc is powered on, plugging in the two USB cables initializes the driver.

A DisplayLink applet is available in the system tray to set resolution, orientation and power both the monitor and laptop display on and off.

Drawing on the LT1423p is silky smooth. The included Lenovo stylus is terrible as usual, but any Tablet PC pen is compatible. For the image drawn above, I used the Fujitsu T5000 pen. Unlike the Thinkpad Yoga, the ThinkVision doesn't have a screen coating, which I much prefer.

The LT1423p only has 256 levels of pressure, but I didn't notice much of a difference from my other Wacom equipped devices. The drawing experience is as good as any Tablet PC I've ever tested.

UPDATE: When I first posted this earlier today, I neglected to mention calibration and digitizer accuracy. Once the driver understood which pen display was which, default settings worked reasonably well. Like most Wacom devices, the digitizer's accuracy tends to drift toward the edges. Having used the N-Trig on the Surface Pro 3 so frequently for the past couple of weeks, I'm struck by the difference in accuracy. It's easy to get back into the rhythm of making sure to align the cursor and not necessarily the pen tip, but it definitely requires adjustment when you switch back and forth between the two technologies. 

Although I was worried by its relatively low resolution and 18-bit color depth, viewing angles are excellent and I think the image quality will satisfy all but the most demanding of users.

The monitor is only .26 inches thick, .5 with stand. This thing is light too, weighing 1.87 lbs with stand. It's the perfect companion to throw into a bag alongside your Ultrabook. (I of course tried to test this with a Macbook Pro, but while it works as a second monitor, the digitizer is hopelessly out of alignment and I couldn't find a Mac equivalent to Wacom's Tablet PC drivers to correct the issue).

The monitor features a built-in stand that extends to a 12-degree angle. Lenovo calls this typing mode. The ingenious cover stand offers nine other angles ranging from 28- to 70-degrees.

For its price, I simply can't recommend the Lenovo ThinkVision LT1423p highly enough. Unfortunately, the Lenovo site says the device has a five week shipping time. I hope this is due to high demand or ongoing hardware improvements and not a sign that they've given up on the concept.

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Below I've included a link to an Amazon vendor that has the model in stock. Their price is a bit higher than Lenovo's, but I got mine in a week. This Amazon vendor is a bit less expensive and offers free shipping. 

Lenovo also offers a wireless model, but reviews from users have been harsh. The wireless connection isn't well explained and is probably too laggy to be useful. Although the cables can be unseemly, buggy wireless connections are certainly not worth a premium.

UPDATE 6/12/14: When you test as many hardware/software configurations as I do, you can become accustomed to the extraordinary contortions one must sometimes perform to get something to work. Upon reflection, I am worried that my review may give the impression that the LT1423p is the perfect device for everyone. It isn't. It can be quite fidgety and the results may vary by hardware/software. For example, the pressure curve that feels fine on the Thinkpad Yoga is far from great on the docked Surface Pro 2. Before setting it up correctly, you can believe you're drawing on one screen and actually be moving icons or launching programs on the other. If you want a plug and play experience, look elsewhere. You've been warned!

UPDATE 6/13/14: Thanks to reader Arunkumar Mahadevan who rightly pointed out below that both of the cables on the LT1423p's USB Y cable are not equal. The thinner one only transmits power. So by attaching it to the Surface Pro 2's power adapter USB input and attaching the USB data cable to the SP2's USB 3 input, it is possible to use the tablet monitor without the docking station. It may be my imagination, but it also seems to work better too.

UPDATE 6/14/14: I've attached four images at the end of the post to illustrate the hookup to the Surface Pro 2 sans docking station.

The back of the monitor, with the built-in kickstand extended.

The kickstand "typing position" gives 12-degrees of incline.

For added flexibility and protection, Lenovo throws in the cover stand (right).

Here the cover stand is extended to 28 degrees.

The cover stand at 70 degrees. The monitor's USB cables can be a bit of a tangle and can only connect to devices with two free USB 3 inputs.

The DisplayLink Manager system tray menus.

By default, the LT1423p is set to Extend your desktop. You can also set it as the main monitor or mirror displays. Power for both the laptop and USB monitors can be controlled here.

The monitor normally extends to the right, but you reverse it or even set it to display above or below your desktop.

Although it's not the highest resolution display you'll ever use, the 1600x900 default is surprisingly crisp.

The LT1423p can also be rotated to work in portrait mode.

The USB 3.0 Micro B male connector attaches to the ThinkVision input.

The USB 3.0 male end attaches to the female end of the USB 3.0 Y cable (left). Notice that one of the cords on the Y cable is thinner.

The thin cable from the Y attaches to the USB input on the Surface Pro power adapter (left). This cord is only about 12 inches long and the SP's power plug cable is also very short. You'll probably need a power extension cord to use this set-up comfortably on your desktop.

The second cord from the USB 3.0 Y cable plugs into Surface Pro's USB input (right). You'll need to have the DisplayLink drivers loaded and the Surface Pro turned on before attaching this cable. Your DisplayLink driver will initialize and the monitor will turn on. You may also need to configure your monitors in the Wacom feel driver control panel. In my limited tests, this sometimes requires a couple of restarts and reinstalls of drivers to get working. This is definitely not recommended for the easily frustrated! 

UPDATE 7/5/14 A confused reader prompted me to re-read this review and conclude, as he did, that I didn't do a very good job describing the steps to getting the ThinkVision and Surface Pro 2 to play along nicely.

Here are the steps I follow to get the tablet monitor working:

1.  Boot Surface Pro to desktop.
2. Connect ThinkVision to power supply.
3. Connect to Surface Pro USB input.
4. If the DisplayLink driver is installed correctly, the monitor will turn on.
5. Open your Control Panel and open the Wacom feel driver.
6. Run the display configuration. (This is an essential step; otherwise you’ll be clicking and dragging objects on the Surface Pro while you think you’re drawing on the Lenovo).

You should be good to go until you disconnect the monitor or shut down the Surface Pro. Then you have to do it all over again.

Not difficult, but not exactly “set it and forget it.”

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Frenden pits Surface Pro 3 vs. Wacom's Cintiq Companion

There are few artist/bloggers whose opinion I value more than Ray Frenden.

I couldn't draw without his Manga Studio and Photoshop brushes and I love his distinctive biker art style. He's also a master calligrapher. So whether he's writing about pen tablets, display tablets or tablet pcs, the guy knows his stuff.

Ray recently got a review unit of the Surface Pro 3 and he's just posted his first impressions of the device, comparing it head to head with the Wacom Cintiq Companion. This is the one article I've been unable to write myself since I've only managed to spend a couple of minutes on a Companion at a trade show.

Generally speaking, Frenden gives the Surface Pro 3 high marks for its screen size, portability and battery life, while extolling the Companion's expresskeys and drawing surface.

It's a great, lengthy post: well worth your time. Here's a taste:

The Surface Pro 3 would be better with a Wacom digitizer, but, in practice, I didn’t find the Ntrig to be a terrible detriment. Its inclusion is not reason alone to dismiss the Surface.

The full article is found here: http://frenden.com/post/90779846937/microsofts-surface-pro-3-vs-wacoms-cintiq-companion

Monoprice Interactive Pen Display now worth a second look

The sub-$400 Monoprice Interactive Pen Display was probably one of the most anticipated releases of 2013 and the posts I wrote at the time continue to be among my most widely read ever. Everyone loves a bargain, especially starving artists.

In the event you haven’t read those posts, I concluded back in January that the budget 19-inch tablet monitor just wasn’t worth the investment due to terrible viewing angles and very inferior pen drivers.

A couple of months ago, Twitter follower @Drewvis let me know that Monoprice had posted new device drivers on its site. He also mentioned that attaching the pen display via DVI (rather than VGA) had yielded dramatically better viewing angles. Drewvis recently published his own review of the tablet monitor which you can find here: http://astrowagon.tumblr.com/post/89350457697/final-review-monoprice-19-interactive-pen-display.

MAKING THE RIGHT CONNECTION
Somewhat skeptically, I took the Monoprice out of mothballs and attached it to my desktop via DVI. At first I didn’t notice much improvement. In addition to its limited view angles, the pen display’s screen  is highly reflective, so I had to be careful to angle it so that it didn’t reflect too much of my white ceilings. Next, I cranked up the brightness of the monitor to cut down on reflections. Reflections are a real problem during the day in my brightly lit office, so I also switched to white user interfaces rather than my preferred dark settings. 

And lo and behold, the monitor is indeed more useable. Where once I could only find what seemed to be one angle to view the screen, I now had a wider field of view to work within.

This chart illustrating the viewing angles for the Monoprice Interactive Pen Display are far too generous, but with a DVI connection, the field of view is wider than I originally observed via VGA.

According to this graphic on the Monoprice site, the pen display has a 70-degree view horizontally and vertically. I think they’re being generous (perhaps it’s closer to 50), but anything is better than one degree!

Connected via DVI, it’s now possible to recline the monitor so that I can draw at a more comfortable angle. Previously, I had to stand it almost vertically (at its maximum 80-degrees) to be able to see my drawing clearly. The monitor will recline all the way to 10-degrees, but I’ve found that about a 60-degree incline is sufficient to rest my hand and preserve picture quality.

This is not a choice one should have to make, but you have to expect some sacrifices at this price point. And it certainly beats having to purchase a full-motion monitor desk mount.
 

SETTING UP THE PEN DRIVERS
I still am unhappy with the Windows drivers Monoprice has posted on its site (the most recent are dated April 29), so as I did the first time around, I checked whether Huion Tablet had published more recent drivers for its compatible GT-190 tablet monitor. Coincidentally, Huion just posted a new set on June 20 here: http://www.huiontablet.com/download/

Getting the drivers to work is not easy. I uninstalled the Monoprice driver and rebooted, also unplugging the USB cable that runs from the computer to the tablet monitor. 
I installed the GT-190 drivers and rebooted again. Once I was back on my desktop, I plugged in the USB cable. The tablet driver should have already started up, but in case it hasn’t, the installation leaves an icon on your desktop. Once the driver is running, you’ll need to double click on the tablet driver icon in the system tray to load the control panel. 

Beneath the pressure (tip) sensitivity slider in the pen control panel is a visual read-out that makes it much easier to determine how much pressure the pen is registering. I could slide the sensitivity all the way to the right to register my lightest strokes, but I opted to back off just a bit so I wouldn't have to press quite as hard to achieve maximum pressure. 

At the top of the control panel, you can map your two pen buttons and set tip sensitivity. There is a nice visual display that displays how much of an impression you are making as you tap with your pen. This makes it much easier to visualize how lightly you can tap before your pen will register a mark. I could have set my pen pressure all the way to the right, but I didn’t want to have to press so hard to achieve 100% pressure.

In order to access the pen-monitor calibration tool, you'll first have to grant the control panel Administrative access.

To calibrate your monitor, you’ll first need to select the Require Admin button. Even if your pen is recognized, you will always need to start the calibration process with your mouse. The calibration tool has five points, all located toward the center of the display. This is unfortunate because parallax tends to increase as you get toward the edges of your screen.

It's unfortunate that pen calibration targets are all clustered near the center of the screen. In earlier, broken versions of the driver, Huion offered many more higher-resolution calibration options. As of now, I'm seeing significant parallax around the edges of the display which sometimes makes selecting menus and icons located there difficult.

The pen targets go from red to black as you tap them. When you tap the fifth target in the center of the display, the control panel exits.

As I wrote when I first tested the Monoprice, it’s a delight to finally draw with the pen configured properly. I can achieve a range of line widths in a single stroke that I’m unable to reproduce on either the Wacom Surface Pros or the N-Trig Surface Pro 3. Pressure levels may be a marketing ploy, but there’s a tangible difference in drawing with the two 2048-level devices I’ve used vs. 1024 or 256.

EXTENDING THE DESKTOP
The last reservation I had against recommending the Monoprice was its inability to work in dual monitor mode in Windows.  This meant that you either had to connect it by itself or in mirror mode with your system monitor. Due to the pen display’s low resolution (1440x900 max), this probably meant you’d have to run your other monitor in a sub-optimal setting.

With the new driver, it’s now possible to run the pen display in extended mode at its own resolution. This is a huge improvement.

On my puny GeForce GT 630 display, the NVidia driver doesn’t offer 1440x900 as a display option, so I had to set the Monoprice to 1280x800. Not ideal, but this setting doesn’t distort text too badly.

To set up two monitors, I first disconnected my system monitor and ran all of the above set up with the pen display as my sole monitor. Once I was sure the display was calibrated and the pen was running well, I shut down the system and reattached the system monitor.

My NVidia graphics card doesn't recognize or support the Monoprice's 1440x900 resolution, so I'm forced to run it at 1280 x 800. The good news is that I can continue to run my system monitor at its full 1080p resolution.

Upon boot up, I ran the Screen Resolution control panel to extend the displays and set each monitor’s resolution.
 

CONCLUSION
So a little over six months after its release, the Monoprice Interactive Pen Display is now much more useable and I can recommend it to anyone willing to put up with its eccentricities in exchange for significant savings vs. competing products. If you’ve got just under $1000 to spend, I’d still recommend the Yiynova MVP22U(v2). Yiynova also sells the MSP19U+ for just over $600 (but I’ve never seen or tested it first hand). The latter’s display specs are very similar to the Monoprice (TFT, 1440x900), so it’s very difficult to justify an additional $200 investment.

The Monoprice certainly compares favorably to a large Intuos Pro Pen & Touch, which lists for $499. And for only $50 more than the Medium sized Intuos, the Interactive Pen Display is an excellent option.

As with all things tech, a better version is probably around the corner, but for the next few months at least, the Monoprice Interactive Pen Display has earned a spot on my crowded desktop.

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Your first day with the Surface Pro 3: What to expect

Like every new pc these days, the Surface Pro 3 won't let you just use it right out of the box. Before you can play with your technical marvel, you'll have to run the usual slew of Windows updates that have been released in the month or more since the device was sent to manufacturing.

But most importantly, you'll need to install the System Firmware Update that Microsoft released yesterday. The company was vague about the specific issues the update addresses, but we know the most critical power management issues early testers had experienced have been addressed along with other "performance enhancements."

Below is the Windows Update screen I saw when offered the Firmware. It's a small download, but be prepared for it to take a long time to install.

Once downloaded, the Surface Pro 3 will start the install, reboot and sit on the screen below for several minutes. Be patient!

Once your system has rebooted, return to Windows Update where you'll see that the machine has to be restarted again to complete the Firmware installation. Be prepared for another long wait (I really wish Microsoft would provide a little more feedback during this process so I wouldn't be so sorely tempted to interrupt the installation.)

Once your firmware installation is done, you can proceed to install some graphics applications. I recommend starting with Manga Studio 5/Clip Studio Paint 1.3.x or Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 so you can experience graphics applications running with Microsoft's native INK API.

We don't know how long it will take before Microsoft releases its pen control panel, but if you find it difficult to draw light marks, try editing your pen pressure curve if your software allows.

Before installing any software that requires Wintab drivers, you'll need to head over to N-Trig's site to download the latest version (R16). http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2014/6/20/n-trigs-wintab-driver-update-now-available-for-download

When you're all done installing your applications, it's a safe bet your desktop won't look as crowded as this!  

UPDATE: Here's a useful link to a 100-page Surface Pro 3 user guide PDF courtesy of Microsoft (kudos to Paul Thurrott for the link.) http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/8/9/E8966106-0FAE-40C1-9823-2EC483AC7CF3/Surface-Pro-3-User-Guide-EN.pdf

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N-Trig's Wintab driver update now available for download

UPDATE 6/7/15: Microsoft recently completed its purchase of N-Trig pen technology and is now hosting the Wintab driver. For more details, read the story here: http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2015/6/2/new-download-link-for-n-trig-wintab-driver

ORIGINAL POST

N-Trig has just posted R16 of its Wintab drivers for the Surface Pro 3 and other devices utilizing their digitizer technology.

You can find both 32-bit and 64-bit versions here: http://www.n-trig.com/Content.aspx?Page=wintab. (As of this writing, searching for drivers through the Downloads & Drivers tab yields the older R14 version.)

I haven't had a chance to download or install these drivers, but once I do, I'll begin updating the "What Runs, What Doesn't on the Surface Pro 3" feature.

According to N-Trig's Ronen Bartal, the company confirmed that the following software is compatible with these drivers:

Anime Studio Debut 9.5 Version 9.5 build 9768
Crayola PhotoFx studio 1 Version 1.5.0.42, 1.5.0.46
Flash Professional CC Version 13.1.0.226
Adobe Flash Professional CS6 Version CS6
Corel Painter Version 12.2.0.703
Sculptris
MyPaint Version 1.0.0
Mischief Version 1.12
Zbrush Version 4R6
Adobe DreamWeaverCS6 Version CS6
Adobe Photoshop element 12 Version 12.0.20130925
Krita Version 2.8.3
Substance Painter Version 0.5.0

Adobe Photoshop CC and earlier versions are noticeably absent from this list, but that may be because that software has functioned correctly with N-Trig's drivers for some time.

Bartal also notes that other software that correctly adheres to the Wintab 1.4 specification should also work, although apparently many applications do not. For more details on Wintab and its history, visit http://www.wacomeng.com/windows/index.html.

This release marks a major milestone for N-Trig and users of its products as the drivers significantly close the compatibility gap with competitor Wacom.

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Photoshop CC 2014 touch enhancements 'experimental'

As I first loaded up Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 on the Surface Pro 3, I was disappointed to see that the UI is still tiny by default.

No problem, I thought to myself, there must be a setting in interface preferences. Sure enough, under Text, you can change UI font size from Tiny, Small, Medium to Large.

I set it to Large. Shut down the software and restarted. No change.

Looking in Preferences again, I spotted a new category called Experimental Features.

This is the Edit>>Preferences>>Experimental features window after the changes have been applied. Note the bigger icons.

I ticked the Scale UI and Use Touch Gestures boxes, shut down and restarted the software and voila! the UI is now much better suited to tablet use.

The UI is scaled a little too big for my taste; rather than settle for one size, hopefully Adobe will offer a couple of options. Multitouch works ok, though also not as smoothly as in Manga Studio. I do like the new double finger double tap to reset the zoom and orientation.

On the Surface Pro 2, the new version complains about the Intel HD display driver I have installed (10.18.10.3496.). The display driver crashes and the software will also complain about a lack of VRAM.

Display driver issues hamper Photoshop CC 2014 on the Surface Pro 2.

Worse, with the system's default scaling set to 125%, a new drawing comes up with two parallel lines that don't disappear as I zoom in.  Resetting the Windows UI scaling to 100%, the lines disappear but reappear when I zoom in.

Multitouch is also not working properly on the Surface Pro 2.

These issues are likely all display driver related and should be fixed, but it's disappointing that SP2 users won't be able to benefit from the PS CC 2014 update right away.

UPDATE: The new features seem to be working on my Surface Pro 1, so it's definitely a display driver issue. My SP1's drivers are dated July, 2013 (10.18.10.3262).

UPDATE 2: As I reported with Mudbox a few weeks ago, updating my Surface Pro 2's display driver to the May 17 version (10.18.10.3621) located on the Intel download site corrects the issues cited above.

This is a very difficult driver to install on the Surface Pro 2 without tricking Windows and once it's installed, the operating system will continually prompt you to reinstall the March Windows update which overwrite them, so all we can hope is that Microsoft publishes a driver update soon.

UPDATE 3: Reader Mike Moreu is reporting that his Surface Pro 2 didn't have any of the issues mine did and he's running display driver 10.18.10.3496. Curiouser and curiouser. Please leave your experiences in the comments section below.

UPDATE 4: Interesting reaction from a mainstream tech blogger: Paul Thurrott reviews the Photoshop CC 2014 experience on the Surface Pro 3. http://winsupersite.com/mobile-devices/surface-pro-3-adobe-cs-2014

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Sound off on Adobe's new announcements

I'll be posting my thoughts on today's new Adobe announcements after the presentation, but as news has started to leak, it's obvious that Adobe is showing iOS users a lot of love while hoping Windows users will be satisfied with the new desktop offerings.

What do you think of this strategy?

Post your reactions below!

UPDATE: Photoshop touch features didn't get any love that I heard. Guess we'll have to see once the download is available later today. Here are some videos with some new features:

Check out the latest advancements in Photoshop CC for design and photography including Spin and Path Blurs in Blur Gallery, new typographic controls including Font Search and Typekit integration, enhancements to Smart Objects, Smart Guides, and Layer Comps, improved Content-Aware technologies, new Focus Mask, and workflow timesavers.

Check out some of the top features for designers in the 2014 Release of Photoshop CC. Get Photoshop CC: http://adobe.ly/10ekpOA Follow Photoshop: https://www.facebook.com/Photoshop https://twitter.com/photoshop https://plus.google.com/+Photoshop