Improve Your Digital Pictures and Movies with a Wacom Tablet and Pen

If you do any (and I mean any) work in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, Gimp (Linux, you know we love Linux at Buzzdroid), iPhoto, Picture Editor, or you use Adobe Flash, Apple Final Cut Pro, Premire, iMovie - basically any program where you need to make accurate selections - you should be using a tablet and pen.

When I’m teaching photography computer workshops, nothing is more painful than watching a participant try to select some pixels using a mouse. It’s like watching a three year old try to tie his shoes while wearing mittens. If you want to immediately increase your proficiency and enjoyment at digital photography, with very little investment of time and money, then buy yourself a Wacom Tablet. You don’t need to spend a lot of money, the learning curve is minimal, and the results are significant.

I would suggest the Wacom line for several reasons. My experience with their line of products has been good. I’ve been using an older Wacom Graphire for years. They are an industry leader and they offer various levels of products (price and feature-wise). Wacom supports their products well, with drivers and software being released appropriately (for example, they already have drivers for Vista), and you don’t need to buy a different Wacom tablet for different hardware configurations. You can use a Wacom Tablet on Mac OSX, Microsoft 2000, Vista, and XP. And there is even open source support for Wacom products via the Linux Wacom Project. I actually have my Graphire on a KVM switch that goes between my G5 and Linux Server.

Another thing that I really enjoy about my Wacom Tablet Graphire is that, in addition to the pen, I have an optical mouse for it (this is an option on some models). This means that another person, who might not want to use the pen, can sit down at the computer and work it as if a “normal mouse” was connected. This keeps the family, office, and studio harmony in balance.

Lastly, using a pen and tablet give you another dimension to your work.  Most programs, and some operating systems, allow you to set the tablet so that you can adjust the pressure sensitivity of the pen.  For example, when painting with a brush in Photoshop CS2 (or CS3 or CS), you can press the pen to paint just a thin “coat” or push harder and you’ll get a “thicker coat” of digital paint.  Once you know what your doing in Photoshop, this feature will become your favorite friend.

The Wacom Graphire Series - Graphire4, Graphire3, Graphire2

The average user starting out with a tablet and pen is probably going to want to chose one of these. If you want a 4×5 drawing area the CTE-440 would be a great choice. The CTE-640 has a 6×8 drawing area. For most non-professional users, either of these smaller tablet may actually be preferred to a larger one. When moving a pen across the drawing area, having a smaller area means you can easily get from one side of the screen to another just by moving your wrists and extending your fingers, not by having to move your arm (at the elbow). The trade-off is that you have a smaller resolution and somewhat less sensitivity when making selections (verses a larger tablet, NOT vs a mouse!). Either of these models will make you feel like a pro.

The Wacom Intuos Series - Intuos3, Intuos2,

Speaking of pros, this series is really for professional users - Graphic Designers, Architects, CAD professionals, Illustrators etc. The PTZ-430, PTZ-630 and PTZ-930 are the big brother of the Graphire Series. They are significantly more expensive. The PTZ-1230, PTZ1231W, and PT-631W have features for HDTV, widescreen, all that. If you need them, reading this review probably won’t be of much help to you. The intuos series also has upgraded pens.

The Learning Curve -

It takes the average user about one week of use to get completely comfortable with using the pen. It might feel weird at first, but keep using it. If your like most users, once you see how amazing it is, you’ll never want to go back to a standard mouse again. If we had a buzzdroid guarantee, we’d give it to you!