Hi there, I am not very tech-savvy, but I have been trying my hand at some digital drawing recently. When I started out, I used a trial version of Clip Studio Paint. After the trial expired, I realized I wanted to keep using a program like this, but I didn’t have the budget for it. Therefore, I decided to install GIMP (version 2.10.34, I don’t know whether I installed 64-bit or 32-bit, how do I check this?). I am really happy to have found an alternative option. However, I am having quite a lot of issues working out how exactly to configure GIMP in a way that works with my tablet (or perhaps they’re simply not compatible and I’m just not aware of this).
The tablet I am using is the Wacom Intuos PT S. This tablet worked exactly the way I wanted it to (without any of the problems listed below) with Clip Studio Paint, so I doubt there’s something wrong with the tablet itself.
One thing I want to note is when I started out with Clip Studio Paint, I was using it on my laptop (a Lenovo Gaming Pad, I don’t know the model exactly by heart, but it’s only 1,5 years old I believe) whereas I am using a mini-PC from BMAX at the moment since I am in a different location for the time being and I do not have my laptop here. I have wondered whether this might be what’s causing my issues, since it isn’t as good of a computer as my laptop is, by far. However, I don’t experience any other problems with it, it also isn’t slow or anything. Both my laptop and the mini-PC use Windows 10.
Anyway, here are the four problems I keep encountering (and can’t figure out how to solve, I have really tried):
A very basic function, but I can’t seem to enable horizontal scrolling. In Clip Studio Paint, I was able to scroll in all directions by dragging two fingers. I don’t know if this is simply not possible in GIMP, but if it is, I would like to find out how I can fix this.
Whenever I press too hard or hold too long with my pen (which isn’t very hard or long), the program assumes I’m clicking or right-clicking, which at best creates a lag, which really disturbs the drawing process, and at worst a little menu will pop up that completely halts my pen. This happens every 5 strokes or so. I have looked into my tablet settings (via the Wacom driver) and I have changed all the possible things that might be causing this (changing my pointer sensitivity to the maximum or minimum setting, changing the click settings so that it doesn’t automatically click when I touch the tablet, disabling all other click settings), but nothing is solving it. Is it a certain setting I have overlooked?
When I turn my pen over to use my eraser, it doesn’t work. I know you’re supposed to fix this in ‘edit’ and then ‘input devices’, however, when I change the mode to ‘screen’ for both my stylus and eraser and then press ‘save’, it doesn’t fix the issue (plus, my stylus and eraser show up grey under my normal mouse pointer as if they’re not available). When I try to adjust the axes (from ‘none’ to ‘3’ for example), GIMP shuts down and gives an error message (“fatal error: unhandled exception”).
Overall, the pointer reacts extremely slowly to the pen and thus gives a very jagged result when I try to draw something.
I really hope someone can help me. I tried my best to describe everything to the best of my ability, but please let me know if any information is missing.
What are your machine specs? need to know processors types and clock speed or what makes and models and how much ram they have?
are you running anything else on them when using GIMP?
clock speed on the laptop is about half of your b-max system you might notice it being a lil sluggish, depending on the size of the image you are working with, plus how large the undo buffers are.
answer to question #1
in the lower right of the image window where the sliders for moving the image around would intersect , is the option you are looking for. on my version of gimp, it is an up arrow icon, it maybe a cross with arrows on each end of the stroke. select it and hold a small version of your image will appear. slide the pointer around on this popup image to navigate. How usful this will be for you might depend on several factors. https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-navigation-dialog.html
#2 check from the main menu edit/preferences/input devices a window will open and and will list devices on the left with options to alter on the right. I think what you are looking for is here.
#3 that may be an issue that needs to be resolved by the development team. If anyone else has a solution please chime in as I dont use a tablet.
#4 check the brush spacing option, it is available when you select a brush type. this might resolve that issue. If not it may be a driver issue. Make sure you have the latest and greatest from wacom.
Thank you very much for your reply, I really appreciate the help. I will try out these fixes as soon as I’m able and reply with whether it worked.
Quick side note; it is definitely the mini PC from BMAX that I was having the issue with, not my laptop afaik, tho I have still yet to try GIMP on there. Perhaps the specs I found were off (the laptop should technically be way better than the mini PC in all regards).
Solution 1 definitely already helped a lot, as for solution 2; that menu is the one that gives me the error message if I alter something, so for that I guess maybe someone else knows (like you said in solution 3). As for solution 4, this also helped somewhat, so thank you for that!
I may or may not be addressing your question, but with all of my computers I end up loading so many programs that they just become bloatware and slow down the the computer. You may feel nothing is happening in the background but lots can be. I recently installed Avast security software (I am not promoting it here. Just giving context) It deleted so many broken links, bloatware and general crap that my 6 year old computer got a new lease of life. I have never had issues with GIMPs performance.
