Lightroom Touchpad Scrollbar Fix

Lightroom and Synaptics touchpads (trackpads) don’t seem to play well together but climbbike1 at the Adobe forums posted a registry fix that worked for me.

I’m not sure what it does, but as stated the little scrollbar graphic that was popping up wherever my mouse was positioned no longer appears after applying this fix (a good thing as it seems to be related to the problem). I was having a similar problem with a few other apps I rarely use under Windows 8.1 and didn’t have the problem when using a proper mouse. Note the Control Panel –> Mouse applet/Synaptics tab reports that I’m running Synaptics Touchpad V7.2 on PS/2 and Device Manager states the Driver Version as 15.0.24.0 (I just installed the latest driver when building the Windows 8.1 machine).

Here’s how to implement climbbike1’s fix.

Option 1 – edit the registry directly:

1. With administrative rights on your Windows computer, run regedit.exe (either via Start –> Run or the search charm in Windows 8)
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTPEnh
3. Right-click the SynTPEnh key and select New –> DWORD
4. Name your new DWORD UseScrollCursor
5. It’s value should be set to 0
6. If the key already exists when you complete step 2, modify the value instead
7. Restart the Synaptics processes (see below)

Option 2 – create and run a .reg file:

1. Open notepad and save the blank file to your desktop as fixscroll.reg (or whatever you want to call it)
2. Copy the italicised text below and paste it into your .reg file
3. Double-click the file to run it (with administrative rights)
4. Note I’m not sure if this will create the key if it doesn’t exist—follow the steps in option 1 to confirm it exists and is set correctly

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTPEnh]
"UseScrollCursor?"=dword:00000000

Restarting

You’ll need to restart a couple of Synaptics processes and can do this by either restarting your computer or following these steps:

1. Open Task Manager
2. Locate and end the Synaptics TouchPad Enhancements (SynTPEnh.exe) and Synaptics Pointing Device Helper (SynTPHelper.exe) processes
3. Restart those same processes by running them from your startup folder or locating the executables and double-clicking them

Lightroom was running while I made these changes and the fix had instant results—no need to restart Lightroom or Windows.

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High-Key Black and White Process

After reading about how to do spectacular black and white conversions in Australian Photography (June 2013), I thought I’d give it a spin. I chose the photo as a sacrificial test snap because the focus was off and the two subjects (my wife and little girl) were looking away from the camera. Despite these ‘defects’ the response from friends and family has been strong and I’ve come to love this photo, appreciating the focus as a private, shared moment between wifey and baby. Here’s how I did the conversion in Lightroom (v5.3).

In the Develop module:

1. Adjusted white balance of the original colour photo
2. Changed the Treatment from Colour to Black & White (first option above white balance in the Basic panel)
3. Increased the Exposure (+1.79)
4. Increased the Contrast (+100)
5. Decreased Highlights (-7)
6. Decreased Shadows (-38)
7. Decreased Whites (-10)
8. Decreased Blacks (-100)
9. Increased Clarity (+29)
10. I should have modified the colour channels (HSL/Color/B&W sliders but did not during my first edit—what you see below)
11. Added a graduated filter to the top 75% of the image to further reduce exposure and highlights and increase shadows
12. Sharpened
13. Added a not-so-subtle vignette which works well with the black and white
14. Cropped square