I am loving my Wacom Intuos2 tablet. I have not been able to find a bad review on this product yet. Everyone seems to love them.
I went with the 6×8 for budget and anything bigger probably wouldn’t fit on my desktop. Also I find I prefer smaller to medium sized strokes. Anything larger would require larger arm motions then I would find comfortable with for constant use.
I must say that within an hour or so I was completely comfortable with this tablet. The majority of this time was spent configuring my desk space then it was confuguring the multitude of settings of this wacom tablet. All customizable by program you are using it in. This is a great feature.
I am a big fan of using keyboard shortcuts. I kept finding myself wanting a “Shift”, “ALT”, “CTRL”, and “SPACE BAR” keys in the bottom left hand side of the tablet.
The two buttons on the side of the stylus are easily programable and even removable (comes with a alternate grip) if you find they get in your way. I find I tend to twist the stylus in my hand as I work. Too many years of tring to keep my pencil sharp I guess. So it always seemed that the buttons weren’t where I thought they were. This has gotten better as I have used the stylus more and am sure given a little more time it will not be an issure at all.
The Wacom tablet comes with some software: Photoshop Elements 2.0, Corel Painter Classic,Corel Painter 8, Nik multimidia’s PenPallet, and Wacom Brushes 1.0. I myself was little disappointed to find out that PenPallet and Corel Painter 8 were only demo versions. Overall I would not buy the Wacom tablet based just on the software unless you don’t have any graphics software at all.
For anyone thinking of getting a tablet here are a few of the things I have run into.
The biggest challenge for me with the tablet was remembering that it is not a mouse. With a mouse you become quite accustomed to picking the mouse up and starting a new motion in order to keep your hand in generally the same spot. Every time I did this with my tablet I found the cursor back in the middle of the screen. My brain needed a little bit of re-programming to remember that every point on the tablet corresponds to a point on the screen. Thankfully I believe the re-programming is done but I am still in the debugging phase…
So far I have used the tablet only with PhotoShop. The difficulties I have had all involve Photoshop 7 itself. Adjusting the brush settings in PhotoShop to correspond with the tablet seems to be a little rough. I think I will just have to keep playing with them till I get them to how I like them and completely understand what they do.
I don’t like how PhotoShop does not give you a visual idea of what is happening with the tablet. For example, using the tablet to dynamically control the brush size by how hard you press. PhotoShop shows you only the largest size the brush will get, but if you are pressing lightly you kind of have to guess where the center of the brush is.
Another issue I had is when using the lasso tool, if you have a point made on you selection you want to delete or reselect you need to hold the stylus relatively still while with your free hand pressing ALT-Backspace. It works on your flexibility. I would suggest reprogramming one of the stylus buttons if you plan on doing a lot of lasso selections.
Overall I love my Wacom tablet and would suggest one to anyone who is serious about the graphics they put out. I think the biggest learning curve comes with the software you thought you knew before you got your tablet. It opens up a whole new world.
Neil LaHaise is a full time graphic designer and webmaster for
www.freshfire.ca.
