Graphics Tablets - What should I go for?

Currently, I just use the mouse to do my drawing, painting, and retouching in photoshop. However, the mouse is no good. Neither was the old AIPTEK tablet I have but don't even use because I actually do worse with it than I do with mouse! (It handles curves horridly, and teleports on me alot. As well, pen pressure on it only works 20% of the time).

I heard WACOM is the only good brand, so I went off to Best Buy today and noticed one called Bamboo Fun. I didn't get it because I'm unsure about it. It was within my current price range, however, unlike the Intuos3.

Is it best to just save up for the Intuos3 4x6 or 6x8 instead of getting a Bamboo Fun? Or will Bamboo Fun be adequate for a 1280x1024 desktop area (LCD screen) and adobe photoshop cs3 working with 1024x1024 or 512x512 images?

Any Wacom tablet will be good. You really can't go wrong with the brand. The only one I'd steer clear of is the Bamboo, but only because its pen doesn't have an eraser on it, not because the tablet itself is bad. The Bamboo Fun doesn't have that problem.

The biggest difference between the Bamboo Fun and the Intuos, just so you know is that the Intuos senses both the pressure and the tilt of the pen, while the Bamboo Fun (and the Bamboo) only senses the pressure. Also, the Intuos has double the sensitivity levels, double the resolution, comes in more sizes, and has more accessories available for it.

If you fell you need the absolute best of the best, save up a while longer for the Intuos. If you want something now that will still be very, very good, even though it's not quite the best, get the Bamboo Fun.

As for size, that's a matter of personal preference. I very much prefer a big tablet, but not everyone does. If it helps, one way to look at it is this. You can always subdivide a big tablet into a small area if you want less drawing space, but you can't make a small tablet bigger if you want more. Logically, the big one wins, unless you're strapped for desk space.

In any case, as long as it's a Wacom, you won't be displeased. All these other decisions are just icing.

I have the bamboo fun, and its a great little wacom. Easy to use and manuevre with adobe cs2. I have a 1440/900 display I use 1024's and 512's with ease.

I would def reccomend it for an entry into wacom.

For what it is worth, I've personally had mid-sized and small tablets, and so far my small-sized Wacom (bought before they renamed the low-end to Bamboo and Bamboo Fun) is doing me just as well as a much larger tablet that was from another maker. I had gotten the larger one used, literally as someone else's scrap, and it did me OK for a time. Then I decided to get a decent Wacom, and their smaller size was all I could afford. Gotta say, I love it, though!

Having a big tablet is best if you are used to drawing pictures freehand with pen and paper, and just sketching freeform. It's also handy when tracing something.

With a smaller tablet, I find I rough things in while zoomed out, and then zoom in close in Photoshop to paint the fine details. It really isn't very limiting.

Next time, I probably will save up for an Intuos, to get the pen tilt sensitivity.

My Bamboo Fun is a dream to work with, a great investment. Of course, it's the first tablet I have ever used, so I don't have anything to compare it with except (yuk) a mouse. I can only imagine the value of pen tilt sensitivity for now. Maybe someday when I grow up and have cash dripping from my pockets, I'll get an Intuos and find out what it's **really** like. Until then, I'm as happy as a panda in the Bamboo.

I just recently got a Bamboo myself and so far I love it. I haven't owned any other kind either so I don't have anything to compare it to but for what I use it for it was well worth it. I am still getting used to it and discovering all the things it allows me to do but the more I use it the more useful I find it.

The hardest thing to get used to was that the surface maps directly to the screen so wherever you put the pen on the surface it jumps there on the screen. For a while I kept trying to lift the pen up and down and slide the cursor along as if it were a mouse.

I got the smaller size pad, I don't really think I would miss having the bigger size and for me desk space is a little limited.

Before I start I have to point out that Photoshop has some issues with interpolation of strokes on any tablet I've tried. If you go too fast you'll get curves that are actually a collection of straight segments. Painter and Sketchbook Pro are much much better at this. There may be ways around it, but I just learned to make my strokes a bit slower.

I had a large 12x12 Intuos 2 for a few years, loved it in general. Noteably the dual track that let me mouse and use the pen in Maya at the same time (later replaced by the SpacePilot) and being able to draw using my shoulder. But I was just tired of how big it was (truly a desk killer) and went to replace it with something smaller. I had started out many years ago with a 6x8 Intuos I borrowed from a friend for a few months and thought I'd go back to that size with an I3 as I remembered it being really versatile... then I saw it costs very nearly the same as the deal I got on my 12x12 and decided to give the Bamboo a try. I got the normal black one. While I do miss being able to draw using my shoulder and large motions, I'm really surprised by how little I miss all the extra features and resolution of the 12x12. (Note: The pen does actually have an eraser, though I usually use the eraser hotkey anyway as it's faster than flipping the pen.)

It cost me about $70 from Amazon with shipping. The overlay (the plastic cover you actually draw on) feels much much much better than my I2's. It is wide screen at no extra cost, and the smaller size I'm finding nicer than even the 6x8, and at 5.8" W x 3.7" D (barely smaller than the nearest Intuos) it's really not too small if you're on a wide screen monitor. I personally notice no "downgrades" while actually drawing as tilt was never a big part of my tool set and the resolution and pressure are only noticeable if I really try to notice them. And did I mention the cost? The nearest I3 is the 4x6 and over $200 list. After that if you want wide screen you have to go to the 6x11 which is nearing $400 list, and is a monster wider than even my 12x12.

The only real problem I have with the Bamboo is the software (considering the price). I got really used to binding anything to anything with my Intuos, however the Bamboo only has a small predefined list of things to bind to its buttons. The pen is kind of cheap but I've gotten used to it and it's certainly a better shape than the old I2 craziness.

The I3 is actually a good investment, you can really grow into it like I did with my I2. The extra money on the I3 line buys you tilt, pressure/resolution, many extra buttons on the pad, a nicer pen, extra nibs and pen grip, optional extra pens like the airbrush and inking pens, and much better software. I'll eventually go back to it for these reasons once I come across a deal, a 4x6 more than likely as I've come to realize just how good it is to have your pad already at or near the same aspect ratio as your monitor. The Wacom mouse however... never got much use from me even on the large area of my 12x12, you're likely to pick things up on the bottom when you set it aside and scratch up your overlay (I did), and I find the high end standalone mice much nicer in general. However if you have the money and are willing to commit, it will serve you really well for years to come. But please check the dimensions of the one you want against your work area and make sure you have the space for it.

Otherwise if you're just testing the waters, I can definitely say you'll be happy with the Bamboo. Even a long time Intuos user is (over 8 years.) But definitely go for the plain $70 black one, the $100 Fun only nets you a mouse (again useless in my experience) and the larger version of the Fun puts you near Intuos territory anyway. Get an extra pack of Bamboo pen nibs too ($5), I changed my first one on my Intuos within a few months but the Bamboo doesn't come with extras like the Intuos.

P.S. There's another upside to the small size of the Bamboo; My SpacePilot, keyboard (HHKBPro), mouse, and Wacom live happily right next to each other and are all in a great position for ergonomic work at any time.

Interesting. I've never seen or heard of that happening before. I'd be curious to know if anyone else has run into it.

My first instinct would be to say maybe you need more RAM, since PS can require an awful lot of it if you've got a lot of layers in an image, or if you simply have a lot of images open at the same time. But I've got two machines sitting here, one relatively new and high powered, the other five years old and quite underpowered by today's standards, and they both track my strokes accurately, just as fast as I can draw them.

I don't want to sidetrack the thread too much, but I would be interested to know what might be causing Vox's problem, if anyone has any ideas.

Chosen, it's not quite so bad anymore, it used to be more like I described around PS5. I do suspect it's a possible resource issue, however Painter and Sketchbook Pro seem not affected by it. Here's how it looks these days:

http://amv.upvector.com/interp.jpg

Minimized but you can still see sharper changes in direction than there should be. Compared to similar strokes in Painter:

http://amv.upvector.com/interp2.JPG

It's possible Painter does some stroke smoothing above what PS does, however PS has demonstrated this sort of handling since at least 2000 and I've discussed it with quite a few people who notice the same thing, even on high end machines in VG dev houses. I figured it might be related to Lazure's problem with curves, though certainly not teleporting.

[Edit] Wewps! Forgot Painter defaults to capped extensions. That should work now.

Your second link seems to be broken. Without comparing the two, I can't tell what's supposed to be wrong with the first one.



ETA: I just did a little experimenting, drawing a bunch of circles and squiggles, both slowly and quickly. Aside from the fact that I tend to press a bit harder when going fast, so the lines end up a little thicker, I can't see any difference between the slow-drawn lines and the fast-drawn ones.

As I said, I never noticed any issue before, but I was never looking for it before. And now that I am actively looking, I still can't see any difference. This seems to be a complete non-issue for me. Can anyone besides Vox confirm it?

Chosen, could you post a test of a few curves? (second link is fixed.)

OK, I'm looking at both images now. I see a couple of obvious differences between the two. The most obvious is that the second one is not very well anti-aliased. I'll chalk that one up to tool settings.

The other thing I notice, which I have to assume is what you've been talking about, is that in the second image, the lines are more simplistically curved.

I think I understand what you meant by "interpolate" now. Earlier, I thought you'd been simply misusing the word, and what you were actually talking about was some sort of decrease in tracking ability over speed. Now I'm thinking interpolation really was what you meant. That makes the response pretty easy.

The reason you don't see Photoshop trying to smooth your strokes is because it's not supposed to do that. It's not thinking of your lines as vectors to be interpolated, but simply as a collection of pixels. All it does is track the actual places where your pen is makes contact with your tablet, and then it applies color to the corresponding pixels on the screen. It's a direct 1:1 relationship, no fuzzy math or AI guesswork involved.

It's been a long time since I've used either Painter or Sketchbook, so I don't remember if they try to vectorize your strokes or not. It would appear from your pictures, though, that that's what's going on. The first image represents your actual hand movement, while the second shows a simplified, smoothed out, version of it.

Given the choice, I'll take precision tracking over artificial smoothing any day. I don't like when software tries to assign its own interpretations to my input, as if somehow it knows what I meant better than I do. I want the thing just to do what it's told. If I draw a shaky line, it's because I want it to look shaky. If I want it to look smooth, I'll draw it smooth.

Or am I still misunderstanding you?

Sure. In this image, the stuff on the left was drawn pretty slowly, and the stuff on the right was drawn just about as fast as I could possibly do it. Other than the aforementioned changes in pressure, and the occasional hand-jerk that goes with intentionally trying to go slower than normal, I really don't see any difference. The tracking of my movements was the same on both, as far as I can tell.

Newp, you're exactly right. However I think there's a little more going on with the Wacom input. The same strokes on paper provide something closer to Painter than to PS. I think perhaps one issue is the Wacom's sensitivity and slick surface providing little frictional damping as you'd get with paper in addition to possible other issues with Wacom's internal tracking; The board actually switches between send and receive modes (to/from the pen), albeit at a very fast 20ms, however physical motion is of course not modulated.

For a while after I borrowed that first Wacom I thought it was something wrong with my arm, perhaps from being out of practice at drawing at the time which resulted in quite a lot of practice that never really resolved it. It's definitely a personal preference but to me I'd rather have some interpolation to help mimic what I'm used to with physical media. Painter's and Alias's don't interfere with short intentional jitters to any extent that I can notice, they seem to provide what you meant rather than the raw input from the Wacom which may or may not be precisely what your hand is doing, or what you intend.

Not that PS isn't my primary tool, I rarely run into this issue as line and I aren't the closest of friends and sketches are... just sketches.

P.S. Don't take this as a flaw on Wacom's part, they are indeed the best manufacturers of this technology at this point, and any time you try to convert the physical world to digital data you're going to have translation issues.

It's hard to tell with pressure changing radius, I test with no pressure or only with transparency. But I do see some sharp adjustments, though it's also hard to tell between abrupt direction changes of your arm and whatever's happening on Wacom's end. PS definitely uses no interp meaning the issue I see is what's happening in the raw tracking data.