chico

I am new to the Photoshop sofware and I see that some artists use tablets for their artwork. Are these worth the money that they go for and are in your opinions do they make using Photoshop easier? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you

Rick

chico - use the boards search function and search for graphic tablets. Tere are quite a number of discusions on this topic already on the forum [righton]

and BTW Welcome 8))

Welles

Most people who use a Wacom with Photoshop never go back to just the mouse. A smaller minority don't like them. One particular area of added utility is in pressure responses and brushes. Much of their value depends on what you do. If you manipulate photographs as your primary task in Photoshop, it would be less important than if you were creating images which required lots of brushwork, it seems to me.

Things I've read over and over are a huge tablet is not necessarily better than a smaller one which would require less arm motion and many are happy with a 4" X 5". If you do get one, put your mouse in a drawer for two weeks and don't use it. That will create circumstances for most rapidly becoming accustomed to it's use. Use of both the pen and mouse is a very utilitarian combination. If you have a multi-monitor setup with an extended desktop, the entire screen real estate is represented on your tablet so a larger one might be in order.

If at all possible, before buying a tablet, try and borrow one long enough to get a feel for it, or at least give one a try in a store prior to buying although the physical learning curve is a week or two.

KelliShaver

I think it depends a lot on the type of work you're doing. If you're donig a lot of interface design and web layouts where you're mostly using things like the marquee tool, the pen tool, and your layer styles, etc. then a tablet isn't really worth the money.

On the other hand, if you're doing digital artwork with the airbrush/paintbrush and freehand drawings, then the tablet is invaluable for the pressure sensetivity, the pen-tilt features (on the higher-end WACOMs) and just the ease of using a pen instead of abrick er-- I mean mouse.

They do take some getting used to, though, so don't get discouraged if you don't pick up on it or see a huge improvement right away.

Through college, I had a 4x5in Graphire. It was a great little tablet and was small enough that I could take it to the lab with me and use it during class. You can do a lot of things with a little tablet, so if you'r enot looking to invest a lot of money, then one of the Graphires might just be the way to go. It's definately worth the money.

Having said that, just over a year ago I upgraded to an Intous2 9x12 and it's amazing. The largert size does tive you a lot more room to maneuver and work.

Graphires are great, inexpensive starting tablets, though.

Whichever size you pick, I do reccommend sticking with a WACOM rather than some other brand. There may well be other good brands out there, but there's a reason that WACOM has become the industry standard. Of the tablets I've tried (about 6 or 7 different brands), WACOM has far out-shined all of them. Other folks here may know of some good brands, but I've never come across one that begins to compare.

Take care,
Kelli

MindBender

Some reading from the venerable folks at the Asylum:

http://faq.ozoneasylum.com/995/rating/

I've heard good things about the newer Aiptek stuff. Especially attractive since they're about 30% the price of Wacom's stuff.

I'd read through the things at the link I just gave. Lots of good information, not worth me restating it since they've said it all already.