"I finally bought myself a graphics tablet..." Topic

I finally decided to buy myself a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet for my computer-based artwork:

link

I paid $129 USD at Fry's yesterday, and chose the larger size and the increased sensitivity over the smaller Wacom Bamboo tablet. One thing that also appealed to me was the macro buttons. You just tap them on the edge of the tablet and they do the function I programmed it to do (as long as that function has an equivalent keyboard shortcut or can link to a specific application.exe file). Another nice thing about the Macro Manager is that it has different macros for different applications. So the generic functions are different from the ones I use inside Photoshop (in other words, when I open PS it switches to a profile I customized for that application). Also, as is standard, it has a translucent plastic sheet so I can put a drawing or photo under it to use for tracing, or just as a mousepad illustration. Oh yeah, it switches back and forth between pen and mouse very easily. One downside is that the pen runs on a AAA battery (Wacom has the patent on the battery-free stylus).

So far, so good. I've been told I need to use the pen a bit to get it to "loosen up" a bit. Right now the pressure sensitivity is a bit heavy-handed (I've really got push hard to make it work). And the biggest change is the fact that I'll have to get used to moving my arm more when I work the computer. You see, there is a 1:1 relationship between the tablet and the screen. The upper left of the tablet is related to the upper left of my screen. Ditto for the "Start" button in windows: when I want to click it I tap the lower left of the screen. Now, one cool thing is, to move the pointer on the screen, you just move the pen over the tablet without touching it. Touching it to the tablet is equivalent to clicking the left mouse button. It's sensitive to about 10mm-13mm range (meaning that's how far over the tablet I can hover the pen and still track it). And the pen does have left and right mouse buttons on it, so that's useful.

I think I will like this for working with graphics, although I cannot see it replacing my work habbits for general computing. Anyway, this weekend I'm going to try "inking" some images, so I'll keep you posted.

I've got a Wacom for my animation work… it's great.
I've got my pen set up so I can use the back end as the eraser… and the slide bar on the tablet lets me thicken/thin the line width.

You shouldn't have to press hard at all to get it to work, maybe you need to check the sensitivity setting?

vb3: Could be. I only got to play with it last night for about an hour. I'll check that setting tonight and see how much control I have over the sensitivity.

When I first saw these in the 1970s, I wanted one! Beats the heck out of light pens. (I'm dating myself.)