New Bamboo Fun drawing tablet!!

Wooo wooo!!! I did it.........got one today and trying to learn how to use it. It's not hard but boy is it different. I've experimented some with GIMP. The only thing that is somewhat bothersome is an occassional 2 to 3 second freeze.....but, searching the GIMP sites it's a GIMP thing with only limited workarounds. I'll live with it. I'm having fun with it and intend to make my first texture using it later today.

But, I have a few questions for all you real artists out there. My Bamboo came with a bundled software package on a separate CD. Abobe Photoshop Elements 5.0.2 (Win), Corel Painter Essentials 3.0 and Nik* Color Efex Pro 2GE. I've heard of Elements and Essentials but never used them and I've never heard of Nik* Color in my life. I'm wondering just how useful each of these software packages are for normal texture making for SL? Would they enhance or make clothing or building textures easier or more interesting for a user of GIMP? I imagine PS Elements would but not sure about Essentials. But, hey, I use Paint.NET with GIMP...........so maybe. And since I've never heard of Nik* Color Pro I want to know what that program is......what it does. Is it useful for textures or drawing?

I'm one of those who does not normally install bundled software on their computer just because it's "free". If I won't use it then I won't install it until I find a use for it.

Thanks.
Peggy

i dont know much about the others but PSE is pretty limited and has a lot of features either hidden or disabled

Color Efex Pro 2GE seems to be a collection of "photographic" filters and plugins

I got that same software package with my Bamboo last year, but I don't use any of it. From what I could see, they're pretty low-level programs. If you're getting a tablet to do some serious drawing, you don't want software that limits you.

PS Elements and Corel Painter Essentials are both OK for limited use, and better than nothing at all. Better than a lot of free stuff, but not as good as either Gimp or Photoshop CS3, in my opinion.

If you really want to get the best use out of your tablet, either take the time to master the intricacies of Gimp, or save up and buy the full version of Photoshop CS3.

I use my bamboo with CS3

It's plug in for Elements. I installed all three software packages I got with my Bamboo Fun Tablet to try them out. I might use Elements but Corel Essentials seems to be pretty useless at first glance......but I'll play with it and see if I can use it in conjunction with GIMP. Actually, that's about what I figure I will use Elements for too. I've got way too much time invested in GIMP to change now......LOL.

And on the occassional locking of the curser when in GIMP with my tablet was solved by a quick call to Wacom tech support (and just for your information, Wacom's texh support is superb......only one button to press and got a real, live person in less than 2 minutes). It's an issue with the tablet, GIMP and Vista......the three together don't play nice with the Bamboo default settings The girl had me disable "flicks" and "hold tab" in my preferences for the tablet......it works now so I'm happy. Guess I'll have to wait for either GIMP or Vista to make it right.......not holding my breath for Microsoft. But reading the forums for several GIMP groups GIMP may have a fix someday soon.

Just an update if y'all are interested.

gimp will be first, the makers of gimp actually use their product

since this last release of gimp i have been totally photosnot free, before then it was just for A1R5G5B5 16 bit bitmaps, which is a common video game format (directX, sony, sega) and nothing to do with SL

nothing against photoshop, i just cant drop 3 car payments every time they add 4 things to it

i surpose you mean
http://www.pcworld.com/article/139993-1/bamboo_fun_drawing_tablet.html
that?
i have a rediculous simple cheap and reliable wacom ..some 40$ with a bit of sw. Works fine with gimp, but i also expirience some lag, especially with 'fat' brushes
Anywhitch, i like the wacom 420
BR

That's something that really annoyed me when I first plugged my tablet into my Vista machine. Vista says "aha! You have a tablet!" and enables some tablet PC features without asking.

I am running Vista and just upgraded to Photoshop CS3. I am not a graphics artist, but the idea of maybe having better control when making clothes intrigues me. I was just looking at the Bamboo Fun...they have a small and medium size and seems to be $100 price difference. Any suggestions which to buy?

To be honest it's personal preference: most graphic artists I know went with the medium size as it more closely represented their view of the screen. I have the small version and even then only map 1/4 of the tablet to represent my screen, but I'm a special case!

One tip to increase your control is to work at a higher view. If you are creating detail on a shirt, or anything else, increase the view so that movement of your pen is smoother and does not jump inadvertently. Yes the higher the zoom the more pixellated the image looks, but just zoom out again and it will be fine.

It's really a question of personal preference, Morgaine. I very much prefer larger tablets, myself. I've got three reasons for this:

1. Greater precision. The bigger the tablet, the finer the tracking of small hand movements. But if the tablet is tiny, then a small hand movement can equal rapid movement across a large portion of the screen. Some people actually prefer this, since it makes for greater speed. Me, I'd rather have the control. If I want more speed, I'll just move my hand faster. I don't want my movements to have to be microscopic in order to draw small things. I want to be able to affect one pixel at a time, easily.

2. More natural feel. The closer the tablet is in size to the screen, the more directly your hand movements match the cursor movements. Also, the closer it is to the size of a piece of paper, the more drawing feels like drawing.

3. More flexibility. You can always subdivide a big tablet into a small drawing area if you really want to, but you can never make a small tablet bigger. In other words, there's nothing a small tablet can do that a big one can't, but there's plenty a big one can do that a small one can't. Bu simple logic, therefore, the big one has to win.


Those are just the selling points for me. You might disagree with any or all of them. As I said, it's all about personal preference. There's no right or wrong answer.

If you're strapped for desk space, or if you prefer to do tiny hand movements instead of bigger ones, then a small tablet might be the way to go for you. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. You can make either one work.

Here's what I did before I bought my big 12x19" Intuos3, to figure out if it would be worthwhile. I went to the Wacom website, and grabbed the photos for all the various sizes. I brought them into Photoshop, scaled them to actual RL size, and printed them out. Then I drew on each one to see how it would feel to work at each size.

For me, 12x19 was the clear winner. Not only did the drawing area it turn out to be exactly the same size as my 24" monitor, providing a true 1:1 relationship between hand movement and cursor movement, it's also the only one that approaches the paper sizes I normally use when I do traditional artwork.

But again, I'll stress that no size will really be bad. They're all good, and the only question really is which one is the "most good" for you, if that makes sense. In addition to my big 12x19, I also have a 6x8" Intuos3, which I use when I travel, and I've got no problem transitioning between the two. And before I had either of those, I used a little 4x5" Graphire3 for several years, and did just fine with it. I'd never want to go back to it, now that I'm spoiled by the big stuff, but if I had to it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Bottom line, you won't go wrong either way. Pick whatever size feels right to you, for whatever reasons seem important at the moment, and call it a day.


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Peggy, since I didn't say it earlier, congrats on your new tablet. And thanks for sharing what you learned about the Vista headaches.

It sounds like you've found answers to your software questions already, but I'll offer my 2 cents on each:

PS Elements - There's nothing PSE will do for you that GIMP won't, and there's a lot GIMP will do that PSE won't, so there's no need for you to bother with PSE. PSE happens to be on my shortlist of Adobe products to hate. Coming from as big an Adobe fan as I am, I think that says a lot. Many of PSE's features are deliberately hidden, which makes it pretty annoying to use. You have to go through convoluted work-arounds to access things that should have buttons or menu-commands, but don't. I really wish they'd quit soiling the Photoshop name by slapping it on this program.

Painter Essentials - This is an OK little program for simulating natural media. If you want to do oil paintings, or charcoal drawings, etc., it's not bad. In my opinion, though, it's nowhere near as good as Deep Paint 2.0, which is free. The only problem with Deep Paint at present is that it's getting harder and harder to find. It's no longer available directly from Right Hemisphere, and even Download.com has dropped it. But if you Google for it, there are still a few places to get it. Also, since it's no longer in development, there's no guarantee how long it will continue to work. But in the here and now, it works just great.

NIK Color Pro - I really hate this thing. Not only are the filters just not that useful, but the damned control panel for them pops up every time you open Photoshop. That's really annoying. I try to steer clear of any software that is so invasive like that. If I want to use something, I'll start it up myself. I don't need it jumping up and shouting "Hey, remember me?" at every turn. As a rule, anything that does that to me will find itself uninstalled within seconds. Color Pro actually lasted longer than most in this regard, as I did keep it installed long enough to play with each filter to see what they all do. Once I'd concluded they weren't very special, I happily axed them. (There is an option to turn off the auto-launch, by the way, but it's the principle of the thing that bothers me. It just shouldn't be on by default.)

I'll see your tip, and raise you one more.

Instead of "zooming out again", open a new window. That way, you can do your work at zoomed in level, and watch your progress at the regular size level, both at the same time.

In Photoshop, it's Window -> Arrange -> New Window For [document name]. I don't know if GIMP has a similar command, but I'd be surprised if it doesn't.

Wow! That's cool. It never occurred to me. I keep zooming back and forth all the time. It gets really old. Thanks, Chosen.

Thank you Chosen, I will give it a whirl and see what I can come up with. I just really don't want to make a large investment on something I might not use, and desk space is a consideration as well. I had an Aptix (can't remember for sure what I had other then it had a sailboat on the tablet surface) a number of years ago that didn't really work so never have had much of a desire to try them again. Now that I am in the creative mode and learning new things, I am hoping that a tablet will help me with making SL clothes.

I will have to bow to others on the graphics program stuff, although for never having used one before, I found PS Elements easy to use. I have graduated this week...if you want to call it that..and bought the full version of Photoshop so I will be learning that and having new headaches soon...OL....which means....drum roll please...more questions for those of you on the forums.

I use Paint Shop Pro and was all ready with my answer: until I read your post again I believed it couldn't be done in PSP. I can duplicate a window but that does not track any changes made to the original. But then I tried the New Window command rather than duplicate and it worked. Thanks for a great time-saving tip Chosen, I love learning new tricks in a program I know well and can spend hours messing about in