Hubby bought me a Wacom

[DougB]

Drawing Tablets

I look in on the DPReview forum http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=23535681
from time to time, and find there are many questions and answers regarding the Wacom drawing tablets, which will be of interest to the OPR forum members who have a tablet and are unsure how to get the best out of it, or others who may be considering buying one in the future.
I got one earlier this year, and find that for restoration work like this its invaluable (I'm still at the learning stage!) mainly because of the different levels of sensitivity you have with the pen.

I have a Wacom Intuos3 4x5, which gives 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity on the tablet when using the pen; the mouse will give you one!
Translated, this means the if you picked a brush size of 50, depending on the pressure you applied to the tablet when stroking with the brush, you would get a maximum brush size of 50 if you pressed down hard, or you could get a very fine line with a light stroke.

I am still trying to get used to it, and understand when people say they cant get it to respond correctly, so for what it is worth, the following are the settings I use.

You set it up in 'Wacom Tablet Properties'

Select grip pen in the 'Tool' line
Select the 'Pen' tab
'Tilt Sensitivity' set centre between Normal and High
'Tip Feel' set centre between Soft and Firm
The rocker switch nearest the tip of the pen 'Right Click'
The other side of the rocker 'Double Click'
'Tip Double Click Distance' set centre between Off and Large
Press the 'Options' button and I select 'Hover Click'

Select the 'Eraser tab
'Eraser Feel' set centre between Soft and Firm
In the drop down box select 'Erase'

Select the 'Mapping' tab
Orientation 'Landscape'
Mode 'Pen'
Screen Area 'Full'
Tick the 'Force Proportions' box
Tablet Area 'Portion'
Click on 'Portion' and the 'Portion of Tablet' dialog box should appear.
In section 3 'Enter Coordinates (In Counts) enter the following.
Top=0
Bottom=12894
Left=4785
Right=20613
Click OK.
This should set the working area of the tablet, to about half the surface area of the tablet.  Which means that when you move the pen to the top of the tablet, the curser will be at the top of your monitor screen, and when you move the pen to about a quarter of the way in from the left of the tablet, the curser will be at the far left of your monitor screen. The same applies to the right side.
When you move the pen to just over halfway down the tablet, the curser will be at the bottom of the monitor screen.

The reason for setting up only a part of the tablet, means you don't have you move your hand and arm very far to cover the whole of your monitor screen, which should be fine for Photo Restoration, but not for Graphic Artists who I believe like to use the whole tablet area to get a more realistic 'flowing' action when using the pen as a brush.

There are many variables to the settings on the tablet, so you may have to persevere to get it 'just right'

Good luck
Doug.

[Hannie]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the link, looks like an interesting site!

Hannie

[hoodman3]

I've had a Wacom Intuos 2 for about 5 yrs and yes there is a learning curve.  I didn't really go into the set up too much and it works great! As Ausimax said there's no going back. It's much more precise and faster than a mouse. The mouse that came with it seems useless. I would highly recommend that anyone that does photo chopping should use one. Just my 2 cents.
Pete

[Tess (Tassie D)]

I got an answer back from Wacom on the problem with the pen.

On very rare cases, the pen tip can turn to be on a constant pen tip pressed state.


The phenomena:

--When you put the pen about 5mm above the tablet surface, the pen acts like it is being pressed even though the pen is not in contact with the tablet surface. Thus items on desktop can be selected automatically. In drawing programs this results in an "ink trail" as the pen is moved to a different position. The LED on the tablet showed green during this time.

--This can happen on the beginning or after a period of use. The eraser side can be normal even if the pen tip has this problem. Adjusting the pen tip feel to firmest usually does not fix the problem.

I can take the pen back to the store to get a replacement under warranty.

[Hannie]

Tess, it's very good you can return the tablet.  When Wacom says that it is a rare occurrence, I wonder!  We already have several people with this problem and I wonder how many folk's tablet are just sitting gathering dust because of the same thing. 
They seem to have a good returning policy though.

Hannie