Troubleshooting New Tablet Pen Pressure Not Working on Adobe Photoshop

Tablet pen is like the tools of the trade for digital artist nowadays. Every artist has their own tablet and brand preference. But if there’s one issue every artist at least encounter in their life, it is that their (probably new) tablet pen pressure is not working, especially on Adobe Photoshop. This can create a frustration, which was what happened to me. After some hair-pulling search, here are some steps to troubleshoot your digital tablet pen pressure.

1. Make sure the tablet pen register location at all.

This is the very basic of all. Tablet pen should be able to work right from the box when plugged in to your computer. When you use the pen to point and “click” at a location in the tablet, you should see the mouse cursor moving accordingly at your screen. If it isn’t, well, there’s some more serious, grave matter, might happen on your tablet. So, check out whether it has been plugged in correctly, make sure your computer’s USB port is not defect, make sure the tablet shows any sign of life (any light indicator turned on?).

2. Make sure you have installed the tablet’s driver.

This step is important. Computer usually can recognize tablet right from the bat as mouse replacement when plugged in without driver. But of course to recognize the pressure, it’s an entirely different story. This is why you need driver. Check whether your tablet came with driver CD, or search on the internet for downloadable driver for that tablet.

3. Make sure you have given the tablet’s driver a full access privilege.

Now, if you run the tablet driver app, it usually comes with a self-diagnose feature to detect the pen pressure. But, you need to give the driver full access privilege in order to detect pen tablet pressure. Because I troubleshoot mine in Mac, I only know the exact step in Mac. But I believe there’s Windows equivalent for this.

1. Open System Preferences
2. Open Security and Privacy
3. Open tab Privacy
4. Choose Accessibility from list on the left
5. Find your tablet driver app name from the list on the right. If you can find it, continue to step 11. Otherwise, continue to step 6.
6. Click on the lock button below to make changes. Enter your password.
7. Press “+” button.
8. Navigate to Application folder where you install the driver.
9. Select the tablet driver application. Press “Open”.
10. The tablet driver application will be listed.
11. Make sure the checkmark next to the tablet driver application is checked (you might need to click on the lock button below to allow changes).
12. After you have done, click the lock again to prevent more changes.

Now close and rerun the tablet driver app again to make sure everything works accordingly.

4. Make sure you have given Adobe Photoshop a full access privilege.

Eh? You need to give Photoshop full access privilege too?

Yes, it is. In fact, this is the step that has me looking up for hours trying to figure it out. Adobe Photoshop might not need full access to be able to work fine on its own, but in order to detect tablet pen pressure, you have to give it the same full access privilege, like what you’ve given to your tablet pen driver. If you’re troubleshooting other app than Photoshop, same basic thing applies. You have to give that app full access privilege in other for the app to receive the pen pressure information.

1. Open System Preferences
2. Open Security and Privacy
3. Open tab Privacy
4. Choose Accessibility from list on the left
5. Find Adobe Photoshop app name from the list on the right. If you can find it, continue to step 11. Otherwise, continue to step 6.
6. Click on the lock button below to make changes. Enter your password.
7. Press “+” button.
8. Navigate to Application folder where you install the Adobe Photoshop.
9. Select the Adobe Photoshop application. Press “Open”.
10. The Adobe Photoshop application will be listed.
11. Make sure the checkmark next to the Adobe Photoshop application is checked (you might need to click on the lock button below to allow changes).
12. After you have done, click the lock again to prevent more changes.

Now close and rerun the Adobe Photoshop app again to make sure everything works accordingly.

5. Try to install different tablet pen driver.

I didn’t need to do this in my case, but from what I’ve gathered, if you do still have any problem, you can try to install other tablet’s driver. Sometimes it can make up for the missing link. Don’t forget to give it a full access privilege after installing.

There it is, some troubleshooting step if your tablet pen pressure doesn’t work. I hope this post helps to solve your problem. If you still have some issue, ask away on the comment section, and I’ll try to help as much as I can. Thanks!

Troubleshooting to Setup Twitter Login for Flutter

I’m currently in the learning phase of Flutter. I decided to create simple app using Twitter’s API. I did a simple tweets retrieval based on Twitter public screenname using the app’s access token, but obviously I can’t retrieve Twitter protected screenname, which requires to use user’s access token that already followed the protected screenname. So the next project for me is to create user Twitter authentication in the app. I thought it would be straightforward process, just like the other Twitter API. But unfortunately (I hit a roadblock where all of authentication request immediately fail. After some hairpulling search around, I come with a set of troubleshooter steps of how to setup the Twitter authentication.

Note: these steps will be written from the Flutter platform point of view, but most of the parts are actually Twitter app configurations, so it might help you to overcome some of your situations.

1. Make sure you have created the app in the Twitter developer

This is an obvious step. You need to have something that your Flutter code can refer to when making that authentication request. Otherwise, Twitter API is bound to get wild authentication spam request from all over the world. Here’s the link to get started:

https://developer.twitter.com/en/apply-for-access

It’s a fairly straightforward process. If you just apply for the basic dev access without the bells and whistles, your sign up application should be approved immediately without the need for you to wait for approval process.

Once you have sign up and sign in, create the app on:

https://developer.twitter.com/en/apps

2. Make sure you have take note of the consumer key and consumer secret key

After you created your app, you will notice there’s a tab called “Keys and Tokens”. Open the tab, generate the keys, and copy paste the API key and API secret keys somewhere. You will need these for two purposes later.

3. Make sure you have added these URLs on the app callback

This is the most cryptic part of this troubleshooting. Long story short, you need to add these URLs on the app callback in order so that the three-legged authentication process is not rejected immediately by Twitter.

Open the “app details” tab. Tap on “Edit”. Scroll down, and find the callback field. Make sure you have these URLs listed:

twitterkit-<API key>://
twittersdk://

So for example, if the API key (do not confuse it with API secret key) I copied from step #2 is “asdfasdfasdf”, then I will have to add these two URLs on callback:

twitterkit-asdfasdfasdf://
twittersdk://

The first one is for iOS, and the second one is for Android. So add whichever one suits your needs.

Fail to do this step properly will resulted in Twitter reject your authentication request with message, wrapped in XML tags:

“Callback URL not approved for this client application. Approved callback URLs can be adjusted in your application settings” — this is if you have entered any URL except those two URLs.

4. Use third-party package to handle the three-legged authentication

Writing code for the three-legged authentication may involve some pretty cumbersome coding. So I advise to use a flutter package called flutter_twitter_login, which already handled the in app browser call for you. All you have to do is just implement the code to call authentication, which is also given nicely in the package pub.dev website.

https://pub.dev/packages/flutter_twitter_login

Add the dependency for the package on your .yaml file.

dependencies:
    flutter_twitter_login: ^1.1.0

(It was at version 1.1.0 at the time this post is written)

Call the pub get. If you’re using the Android Studio, you can usually find an instant button at the Flutter command bar on top of your edit area, below the document tab, when you’re opening the .yaml file.

Then add this code to do the authentication, which I took straight from the package example. Change it to suit your needs. You will need to supply the API key and API secret key to the TwitterLogin constructor here.

import 'package:flutter_twitter_login/flutter_twitter_login.dart';
...
// in your widget method
var twitterLogin = new TwitterLogin(
    consumerKey: '',
    consumerSecret: '', 
); 
final TwitterLoginResult result = await twitterLogin.authorize(); 
switch (result.status) {
    case TwitterLoginStatus.loggedIn:
      var session = result.session;
      _sendTokenAndSecretToServer(session.token, session.secret);
      break;
    case TwitterLoginStatus.cancelledByUser:
      _showCancelMessage();
      break;
    case TwitterLoginStatus.error:
      _showErrorMessage(result.error);
      break; 
 }

5. Make sure you already use the user’s token and secret on the app’s call

This is a common mistake. Devs usually try to make requests using the app’s API key and API secret key to get the app’s access token to make sure the request works using the app’s access token. And then they added the user authentication to get the user’s access token. But then, they forgot to switch into using the user’s access token instead of the app’s access token, which you will get from the session data from step #4.

There it is, troubleshooter for Twitter login using Flutter. Hope it helps to make your day! If you have some question, ask away. I hope I can help solve it. If I can’t, well, stackoverflow is your best friend. 😊

iOS Swift Troubleshooting: Cannot Load Underlying Module For

Symptom

You see an awesome cocoapod you want to include in your project. So you add a code to your podfile telling it to import the cocoapod, you run “pod install” on your terminal to begin the import process, and voila, the cocoapod now inserted to your project. But when you add the namespace “import framework” on top of your Swift file, Xcode said “Cannot Load Underlying Module For <Framework>”.

Bookmarks: How to Solve “Could Not Set Up iCloud Keychain” Issue

Link: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6985097

Apple was (is) notoriously eager to introduce yet another security layer for the iCloud. Yesterday, I was forced to change my iCloud password, which resulted in some login problem with all of my emails and built in social media accounts on my Mac, even though I have entered the correct password. So with the help of my friend, I decided to log my Mac out the iCloud, and then login back again. The log out process itself was a little bit complex in its own way, but finally I’m able to log out. Then I restart my Mac. After that, I log in my Mac again to the iCloud. The system then tried to activate iCloud features one by one. At the iCloud keychain section, iCloud sent an sms to a number that’s associated with my iCloud, which was a deactivated number. Crap. Trying to change the number itself gave me error “failed to change phone number”. I then tried to find some article to change that number, which I find it here: link.