Graphics Tablet Suggestions

Tod, I must ask, when you say it "works the same as a $400 Wacom", do you happen to have a $400 Wacom sitting next to it for comparison?

The problem with any battery-driven stylus its performance degrades a little bit every single day. From one day to the next, it's not enough to notice, but if you compare one with a brand new fresh battery to one that's been in heavy use for a couple of months, the difference will be quite apparent. For anyone who's serious about doing artwork, the need to have tools operate and perform with 100% consistency, reliability, and predictability at all times is paramount.

Here's a great test to perform with any tablet. Put a plastic ruler on top, and use the stylus against it to draw a series of diagonal lines at various angles. How straight are the lines? My experience with just about every non-Wacom tablet I've every tried has been to find considerable variation in the apparent straightness from line to line, especially at sharp angles (close to horizontal or close to vertical). It's almost like comparing a 1980's blocky diagonal on a TRS-80 with a modern anti-aliased smooth diagonal on a hi-res monitor. The non-Wacom tablets seem to have a hard time guessing how to interpolate a straight line from what can never be a straight tracing (since the tablet itself must be a grid), but the Wacoms nail it every time. That's huge.



Your "Mac vs. PC" comparison is not at all applicable. Macs and PC's both do their jobs with equal competence (assuming equal hardware, drivers, etc.). The significant differences between the two, at the user level, are not in HOW WELL they perform, but simply in HOW they operate. In other words, it's a question of methodology, not of caliber or capability. Determining which one is "better", therefore, is entirely a matter of personal opinion and comfort. If you happen to like the Mac's approach to a given set of tasks better than Windows' approach, then the Mac is the "better" machine for you, and vise versa.

But that's not at all what we're talking about with the differences between tablets. It's entirely the opposite, in fact. When comparing tablets, we're talking about two or more devices designed to do exactly the same thing exactly the same way (again, at the user level, not at the under-the-hood technical level). So in this case, we're not comparing the HOW, but the HOW WELL.

I have never encountered another tablet that performs as well as a Wacom, in every measurable way. That's not just personal preference or blind brand loyalty talking. Believe me; if there were a less expensive alternative that I felt were up to the task, I'd be the first one in line to buy it. I don't want to cough up money any more than the next person does. When I recommend Wacom, it's because honest to goodness experience has taught me that their technology is superior to what their competitors have to offer. That's it.

You're of course welcome to disagree. But on this subject, please don't dismiss the testimonials of others as being in any way tantamount to some sort of "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" commercial. That's not what it is.

I'm sorry, just no. I happen to be very much someone who rolls their eyes about people swearing allegiance to Windows or Mac. I use both operating systems regularly, and I agree that they're really pretty much the same thing. Similarly, addressing your other example, I use OpenOffice and am not blindly loyal to the mainstream brand.

However, graphics tablets are not like that at all. There is an enormous difference between every other brand and Wacom. Your post even directly points at one of the biggest differences; other brands have a battery in the pen. A Wacom tablet doesn't use batteries. For anyone wondering just how important that is, try this little experiment: strap a battery to a pencil, and then use it to draw something.

The other main difference is the quality of construction. Admittedly I don't know about the specific tablet you have, but every off-brand tablet I've ever encountered (and believe me, there have been many) feels cheap and flimsy, like it would fall apart if I pressed too hard. A Wacom tablet is a rock. Short of some really outrageous abuse like attacking it with a hammer, I can guarantee that a Wacom tablet will outlive the computer you are using it with.

@chosen: That straightedge test is a pretty neat idea, I'll have to try that sometime.

The tablet I used before I bought my Wacom ate a pair of batteries monthly. I could take them out of the pen when it wasn't in use to slow that down, but then I couldn't just pick up the tablet and use it whenever I needed it without having to reinstall them every time. If you're spending a 50 to 100 dollars a year on batteries, over the life of the tablet you won't have really saved any money, and quite possibly will have spent more than the Wacom would have cost.

From past experience, yes. I have used 'em.



And this is what I'm saying- Get a Wacom IF you can. But don't look down on those who couldnt afford it and call them worthless & their work Sh*t. Nor is everyone with a Wacom a spectacular professional artist.

Let them know their are other ones out there that may not perform as well, but they're there. Let them know of the advantages & disadvantages.

Not everyone coming to SL is going to want to spend $100 or more on something that might be just a hobby or passing thing.
Don't make the price of admission higher than someone is willing to pay.

Let the Free Account person know this stuff, try it, like it, succeed at it and then go for the better stuff.

Heh! I had one like that before. The new one doesnt suck any juice from the battery till the tip is pressed.

There's also rechargeable batteries now.

FWIW- Wacom would be a 1st choice. They are slick. But I'm not about to tell someone on disability or welfare or hard up for cash that they can only buy the most expensive one to be good. $100 for alot of people is alot of money to spend on something that they may or may not enjoy or be good at in the first place.

Just thought you'd like to know this about OpenOffice. And its about time they did it!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/technology/22format.html?_r=1&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss&oref=slogin

I know how well Wacom's are built. Built very well. And yes, the 'other' tablets can tend to be flimsy. Some are.

My point is to get people to try something they might not want to spend alot of money on or even stick with.

Tod, I'm about to post a rather lengthy response. Please don't be intimidated by the length. I'm replying to each point you raised as an individual topic, and I'm including a few anecdotes, which make the whole post a bit longer than it otherwise might be.



I have to wonder how extensively you've "used 'em" if you really think that others are even close to comparable. But we're not likely to reach any mutual understanding on that point, since we obviously can't get together in RL to compare yours and mine side by side or anything.


Tod, where are you getting that? No one's looking down on anyone. No one called anyone worthless, or even hinted anything of the kind. And certainly no one called anyone else's work "sh*t". To imply that that's what this discussion is about is simply absurd.

We're talking about tools here, not people. And for what it's worth, nobody even called any of the tools "sh*t" or "worthless" or anything even close to that. All most people said was "you can't go wrong with a Wacom". I expanded on that by adding "you can't go right with anything else, by comparison". Those are hardly harsh words.

Kindly don't invent conflict where none exists.


I think that's pretty much what we all did. Nobody denied that other brands exist. Just about everyone pointed out the advantages of Wacom's battery-free technology, sturdy construction, and rock-solid reliability, and high performance, along with the relative lack thereof on all four counts in other brands. I even suggested a very simple test anyone can perform in seconds to judge how well any tablet tracks. What more could you want?

I might add, by the way, that I came up with that straight-edge test a few years ago, after reading a whole bunch of complaints on this very forum from people who said things like "I've used a tablet before, and they're terrible. I couldn't even draw a straight line." When I asked those people whether they'd used Wacom or another brand, not a single one said Wacom. Some ended up trying Wacom as a result of the discussion(s), and they unanimously changed their tune to become tablet enthusiasts. I've had very similar experiences with people I know in RL, also with 100% unanimity.


I mentioned earlier that I gave my old Graphire away to a friend. That friend is a colleague, a professional 3D artist who works in virtual worlds, and he also teaches 3D at a university. We've been good friends for about five or six years now.

For years, this guy swore up and down that tablets were bad. In conversations on the subject, he would often say, "My dad has always had one. I grew up in front of his computer. I've used his tablet many times, and I absolutely hate the thing. I don't know why anyone would ever want one." (His father is a professional wedding photographer, by the way.) When I once asked him whether his father's tablet is a Wacom, the answer (as I suspected it would be) was no.

We had those kinds of conversations from time to time for about four years, and nothing I could say could convince the guy to try a Wacom. He just couldn't bring himself to believe that the experience would be so different. Even when he was at my house and I'd ask him to try mine, he'd refuse.

So, when I finally got my Intuos that I'd been wanting for so long, I made it my first order of business to give my friend my Graphire. I knew exactly what would happen. When I first handed it to him, it was obvious from his expression that he did not appreciate the gift. But he politely fained a smile and a thank you, and put it in his bag. We did not discuss the subject of tablets again for about two months. But you know what our next conversation about them was? He called me one day to tell me he had just ordered a 6x11" Intuos3. And ever since its arrival, he's been raving about the thing.

Obviously, what happened was that at some point during that two-month period, he plugged the Graphire in, and gave it a whirl. And obviously he liked it a lot, just as I knew he would. End result, this guy who "absolutely hated" tablets for most of his life is now almost as big of a Wacom evangelist as I am.


Sure. That would be why I said in the beginning that it's worth it for anyone "with more than a passing interest". No one should invest in ANYTHING unless they're sure they're going to stick with it.


As Chip well pointed out, there's a lot more at stake than just the upfront cost. Batteries alone, over the life of a tablet, can make the real cost of the "cheap" one end up way more than the "expensive" Wacom (not to mention the environmental impact). Batteries might seem cheap when you look at them one a time, but every time you replace them, the total cost is accumulating. As the old saying goes, "that's what we call cash in the trash".

Also, time is money. The better and more reliably a took functions, the faster the work ends up going. That's elementary.

A very wise person once said to me, "I can't afford to buy cheap tools". Every time I've adhered to those words, I've always had good results. And every time I haven't, I've ended up either spending more money in the long run, having a less than enjoyable experience, spending far more time on a project than I should, getting physically injured, or any combination of the four. (Not that anyone would be physically injured by a cheap tablet, but I'm talking about all manner of tools here.) The point is to invest in quality once so you don't have to keep buying the cheapos over and over and over again.



That's a nice thought in theory, but unfortunately it's quite unrealistic in practice. When you recommend people dabble with sub-par tools, they end up having a sub-par experience. And for many, the resulting lessened enjoyability is enough to turn them off of the whole thing, just as it had for my friend for so many years.

While I have been able to rescue some of the "tablets are terrible" crowd over the years by turning them onto Wacom, what about all the ones who didn't listen to me, and never ended up trying it? Those people are going to spend the rest of their lives firmly convinced that tablets are indeed bad, all because their first impression was the result of having gone the cheap route instead of the good route. Those people are losing out on far more than just an amount of money.






I would say two things in response to that:

1. If someone is on welfare or disability, it might be prudent to question whether or not they should be paying for broadband or SL-capable computers in the first place, let alone drawing tablets. But that's really none of my business or yours. Grownups can make their own decisions about how to allocate their money, no matter how much or how little they make.

2. If I've got someone's best financial interest at heart, I'm going to think in terms of what's going to be the wisest long-term investment, not about what might cost less upfront when I know it will actually cost more in the long run. As I said, investing in quality once is always the smart thing to do.

Here's a non-tablet example, which illustrates this point well. For the first 12 years of my adult life, I ran a housewares marketing business. I can't tell you how many times I had customers with families to feed decide to buy a thousand dollar set of knives precisely because they'd just been laid off. Why? Simply put, having good knives means you can buy food in bulk, which in turn means you can reduce your grocery bill by as much as 60% every single week. For an average family of four, that thousand dollar investment pays for itself in four to six months, and then continues to pay money back forever after.

What benefits a person with low income more? Saving a thousand dollars once to spend 2.5 times as much on groceries every week as they otherwise could, or spending a thousand dollars once to cut their grocery bill by 60% forever? I think the answer is pretty obvious (the latter). Would it really have been in those people's interest (or anyone's interest) for someone to come along and say, "But you can get a cheap set of knives for $19.95 at Walmart. Never mind that they can't do what the good set can do. Never mind that they're not capable of so dramatically lowering your grocery bill. You're on welfare, man. Don't buy anything that costs a thousand dollars."? Obviously not. The smart thing to recommend is for the person to do whatever it takes to lower the grocery bill, since that's the larger expense. The less money they have, the more they need the good knives.

Now, obviously the cost savings from investing in a Wacom over another tablet aren't quite as extreme as those that come from having good tools in the kitchen, but the principle is the same. In the long run, the "cheap" tablet does cost more. The less money someone has, the more it would be in their best interest to buy the better tablet.




I find this statement about being "good at" it to be a little troubling. The question of whether someone might be good at digital art or not has nothing to do with anything. First, it's not for you or me to decide who's good and who's not. Second, even if someone isn't good, who cares? If they like doing it, that's enough.

And as for the question of whether or not they'd enjoy it, I will submit the obvious. The better the tools work, the more enjoyable the operator will find the task.




What I consider to be the smartest recommendation for someone who just wants to try it out is this. Buy a small Bamboo Fun from a store with a good return policy, like Best Buy. Run it through the mill for 30 days, and see how you like it. If you don't enjoy using it, then by all means return it. No harm, no foul. You can be sure that if you don't like the Wacom, you won't like any other tablet either. Chances are you will like it, though. Most people do.

If you go the opposite route, and buy a non-Wacom, and you end up not liking that, you won't have learned anything. You'll still have to wonder whether a Wacom would have been enjoyable. And if you do like the non-Wacom, you'll then have to wonder whether you would have liked a Wacom even better, which you undoubtedly would. And if that turns out to be the case, then all you did by buying he non-Wacom was waste money, since you'll eventually replace it with a Wacom anyway.

So any way you slice it, starting with a Wacom is the best way to go. I can't see the logic in doing anything else.

I'm interested in hearing how others configure their intuos settings to make it a little more user friendly...for instance changing the functions of buttons and so on. A while back someone gave me some great suggestions for tweaking which helped alot..I can't seem to find them though.

Chosen already mostly covered what I have to say in response, but I'd like to state things in a short post so that you don't miss the important points in his long post.

First off, the experience of using a Wacom is qualitatively different than another brand. With an off-brand tablet they are likely to decide they don't like it, even though they would have liked a Wacom. Similarly, how well they can draw with an off-brand tablet won't be as good as with a Wacom, and so their experience will be misleading.

As for the cost, I would say if you cannot afford or don't want to spend the money on a Wacom, you are better off sticking to a mouse and not using a tablet. In my opinion, either buy a Wacom or don't even bother with a tablet. I'm not just being cheeky here; I literally find that drawing with a mouse is better than drawing with a non-Wacom tablet.

I suppose I'd prefer a non-Wacom tablet to drawing with those nub things on laptops, but then I hate those anyway and always plug in a mouse.

I think I have to go get a Wacom and see the difference now lol... I think mine is ok, but you have made me realize i might be missing something. I was going to get one of those 3d space navigator things but maybe I'll pick up a bamboo instead

-whyroc

I say get the Bamboo, but a disclaimer is in order here: when I draw with a mouse, I avoid tools that work best freehand (eg. I draw shapes with the pen tool, not a brush.)

I don't really use the buttons on the tablet, so I can't offer much advice there. On the big 12x19", they're not within comfortable reach, so I tend to ignore them. If they were more toward the bottom end of the tablet instead of up at the top, I'd probably use them more.

As for the rocker switch on the pen, I have the forward button set to pressure-hold, and the back button set to right click. I think this is the opposite of the default. I just find it a little awkward to draw while holding the back button. The forward button is easier for me when I want a pressure-held line.

I keep the tip feel set to about 3/4 of the way toward firm. If it's any lower, I find I'm not able to draw fine lines as easily as I'd like. And of course, if it's too firm, you have to press really hard to get full brush width.

I've got tilt sensitivity set to normal. I haven't experimented to see what difference raising it makes.

Hope that helps.

Thanks so much Chosen! Going to try those settings today and see how it works for me.

Chosen, I just got an Intuos 6x8 and in the mapping tab of the Wacom properties is an option to change the orientation. If you change it to Landscape Flipped you can have the buttons at the bottom.

Thanks, Snake, but there's one problem with your idea. The 12x19 is much thicker than its smaller siblings, and it's sloped. It's about 1.5" tall at the top of the drawing surface, and about 3/4" tall at the bottom, before it finally rounds off over the bottom edge of the frame. If I were to flip it around, it would slope away from me instead of toward me, which would be uncomfortable for drawing. I suppose I could prop up the far end on something to correct the slope, but that seems an awful lot of trouble to go through. The buttons aren't that important to me.

Oh well Chosen at least I tried and it may help people with smaller tablets.