Does Anyone Use A Wacom Tablet?

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

My daughter is a graphic artist and uses a tablet all the time and swears by them. I have tried to use one of hers and only swear at it. We were discussing it today when she got home from work and she said I might like the Cintiq Pro better. There are only two problems with it. One is that it costs $1,000 and up depending on which one you get. The second problem is it I get one my daughter said I would never see it again.

 

[Samo]

My daughter is a graphic artist and uses a tablet all the time and swears by them. I have tried to use one of hers and only swear at it. We were discussing it today when she got home from work and she said I might like the Cintiq Pro better. There are only two problems with it. One is that it costs $1,000 and up depending on which one you get. The second problem is it I get one my daughter said I would never see it again.

I was going to say I seem to recall back in the early days of PS you weren't worth your salt if you did not have a tablet and pen to go along with the software. Of course I don't think digicams were so prevalent back then and things were more geared towards manipulation and graphic arts. I have often looked at them over the years and still would like to have one but then it would be starting over on something new again and quite like you I think I would be doing more swearing at it than swearing by it. Still I think a tablet and pen would be very useful once you had it down pat. Funny but I think I remember doing a lot of cursing for the first few months I had PS but now I could not do without it.

 

[Fortkentdad]

Glad you said "use" not "have" because I have one - tried it, I suck at digital drawing, tried if for a while just could not get it to work for me. Still have it and maybe someday when "I get around to it" I might give it another go. I have the "Bamboo" version.

 

[sonicbuffalo_RIP]

Well.....I got my wish....the small Pro version arrived and I installed the software and new driver from the web. It works fine, but I see what you mean by a learning curve. The one thing I have certainly discovered right off the bat is there is no 'right' way to set up the buttons and wheel. Your way is the right way. The hardest part so far is getting used to the pen hovering over the tablet. I like it though and and am excited to keep on using it. Now to take some pictures to use with it. Not gonna pay Adobe for their 'stock' photos. Stay tuned. I have watched a ton of videos on Wacom tablets.

 

[53rdcard]

They have many models of them, some that are small 4x6 size, and is just a blank slate style tablet, and then they have the real size 1:1 touch screen models. I learned on the cheaper 4x6 model and while i think the ones with the touchscreen would be nice to have, never felt a need to invest in one.

Biggest thing is, at leas to me, based on what i saw when i was in school for graphics design, the people who could draw tended to adapt to the wacom's much faster then those who could not draw, we had 4 people, myself included, who could draw, and we jumped ahead pretty fast over the ones that had to both learn to draw and learn to use the tablet.

It does take some getting used to though, cause you no longer are looking at your hand while you draw. A tip our instructor gave us was, she made a series of images and scaled them for print to fit the tablet size we had, so you could see the image on the screen and on the tablet, and told everyone to trace them onto a new layer in photoshop, it was a muscle memory building exercise.