Intuos Tablets

[joebob25]

Anyone here have experience with the Wacom Intuos tablets. The wife wants me to pick out some birthday presents for under $200. I found a refurb 4x6 tablet for about that price, and was wondering what proples thoughts were on them. Is a 4x6 worth it or should I find somthing else to spend the money on?

[Bobster]

it all depends on how u draw - if you use your wrist then a small tablet will do just fine, if you use the whole of the arm, or from the elbow, then you should look at a larger tablet..

even the smallest tablet will cope with high res displays :)

[DavidW]

I ordered a new tablet today to replace my little Graphire 2. My old tablet is taking on a new life as part of our presentation setup - it's great for using the pen tool to mark up PowerPoint slides on the projector.


I've gone for a Intuos 3 6x11 this time - A5 Wide as it's called here in Europe. Part of what I use my tablet for is drawing in Adobe Illustrator - since I changed to a 20 inch widescreen (16:10 aspect ratio), the Graphire 2 hasn't had enough resolution for this accurate work - the tiny hand movements needed are more than I can manage. As a test, I set the active area of the Graphire 2 to represent the resolution of the Intuos 3 A5 Wide, and it was pretty much perfect.

The A5 Wide is a good trade-off between desk space used and tablet size if you have a widescreen monitor. You can always set just part of the tablet to be active if you find you're making excessive hand movements for a particular task. I could have gone for A4 (9x12), but I find I want the tablet in the same proportions as my screen. With my 16:10 screen, I'd not be using most of the extra active area on a 9x12 anyway. Tablets larger than 9x12 are more for lens cursor based applications like CAD and mapping/GIS than graphics or video editing uses.


Intuos 3 gives you two things - the ability to choose your tablet size, and various advanced features - namely the ability to read tilt from the tool, Tool ID (the tablet driver knows about each pen individually - even if you have two pens of the same type), the ability to use optional tools such as the Airbrush and Art Pen, and a slightly different set of on-tablet buttons and scrolling / zooming features to the consumer tablets.

With Adobe applications, you need at least CS2 to make use of the main extra Intuos features. Tilt, Airbrush wheel and Art Pen rotation can only be used in CS2 or later - earlier releases of Photoshop and Illustrator can't make full use of them. I don't know for sure what tablet support there is in Photoshop Elements; whilst Elements 3 and upwards has support for pressure and older versions may do too, I don't think any version of Elements has tilt / Airbrush wheel / Art Pen rotation support.


For photo work in Photoshop, especially if you just need a small or medium sized tablet, one of the Bamboo Fun range that replaces Graphire 4 may be all that you need. I found that for a bit of dodging and burning in Photoshop, a small position and pressure tablet like my old Graphire 2 is fine. It wasn't large enough for accurate work in Illustrator, and it was a touch on the small size for accurate masking in Photoshop on my 20 inch widescreen monitor.

There's nothing wrong with a good refurbished tablet - but I'd steer clear unless it's an Intuos 3. The tools are different for each generation, as are many of the spare parts - and whilst Intuos 2 parts are still available, they've been out of production for something like three years now.


Overall, if 4x6 will do you, then I'd probably settle for a Bamboo Fun or Graphire 4 and save the extra cost of an Intuos 3. If the larger Bamboo Fun or Graphire 4 is all the size you need, and your tablet needs are otherwise pretty undemanding (that is, there's no need for tilt support and so on), go for that.

The most valuable features of a tablet are the direct mapping between the tablet surface and your screen (move the pen to top right and the pointer is in the top right of your screen) and pressure sensitivity. All the Wacom tablets have these features, despite the consumer tablets like Graphire 4 and Bamboo Fun using a cut down version of the Wacom driver. The main omission in the consumer drivers is the ability to configure different settings for different applications - though I think the programming options for the buttons and switches may also be more limited in the consumer drivers. I'm not fully familiar with the differences as my old Graphire 2 uses the professional drivers.

If you need 6x11 or larger, your only option is Intuos 3.

I wouldn't worry too much about a tablet mouse - I find them pretty worthless unless you have a huge tablet because of the small active area. In any case, they get in the way of other tablet tools. My Graphire 2 mouse is kicking around in the cupboard somewhere. I find you can work perfectly well using the tablet as a mouse mat for a more conventional optical mouse, though this does contribute to wear out the (replaceable, but relatively expensive) tablet overlay if you do this.

My new tablet won't come with a tablet mouse, and I can't see me buying one.


That's not saying that the Intuos tablets aren't good - it's just that you won't get much out of the extra features if all you're using them for is photo work in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. The larger 5.3x8.5 Bamboo Fun has a US$200 RRP, which would fit your budget neatly. In the US, Bamboo Fun and Intuos tablets are bundled with Photoshop Elements 5 (Windows) and 4 (Mac), which is worth having if all you have is an older version of Elements.


If you're in Europe, and considering the Intuos 3 A5 Wide or A4, I'd go for the Special Edition. They include the expensive Airbrush for little more than the cost of the base tablet. The American Intuos 3 Special Edition is different, and the extras are much less appealing.

My (European) Intuos 3 Special Edition A5 Wide should be delivered tomorrow. As someone else has taken the Graphire 2 with them to do a presentation tomorrow, my desk does feel very strange without a tablet!



David