One mistake caused me to avoid Clip Studio Paint for a YEAR

I love the brushes on Clip Studio Paint. I think a lot of artists do. I have fond memories of using the program exclusively on my Surface tablet years ago. As I have started taking my art more seriously, I have wanted to make the switch from Procreate as a main art program to Clip Studio Paint, but for the last year or so, one thing has always gotten in my way.

Seemingly no matter what I did, it opened like.. Well, like this:

And yes, that is my entire screen. It seemed to set the resolution of my monitor to the lowest setting, making the program unusable until I manually went into settings and reset my resolution.

For reference, this is how it’s supposed to look:

I looked high and low, and could not find solution to this issue anywhere. No YouTube tutorial, no ancient Reddit thread to save me. The only mention I could even find was one single Clip Studio Ask post from a year ago — closed without an answer.

Alas, resigned to my fate, I gave up my search. I tried feebly to work with the issue, but eventually got tired of having to manually adjust and readjust my resolution. When on my iPad, I used Procreate. When on my PC, I used Photoshop. That’s just the way it was.

Until today.

Today, I happened to dig through the settings one more time, and what did I find?
In the program settings, under the Compatibility tab, a setting had found itself checked.

Our tech-savvy readers have probably been screaming this the whole time, but right under the Settings section, there is a checkbox telling the program to run in 640 x 480 — the lowest resolution. Right there in black and white, I have been telling Windows to do exactly what it has been doing for a year. It has just been listening.

I do not know how this setting got toggled on, and frankly, I do not care. I am content being able to use one of my favorite art tools after so much frustration.