1. was made with the Wacom
2. was made with the mouse
enjoy:
We held our breath, looked down at the water 249 feet below and jumped!
Yes, we took the plunge! We bought a INTUOS Intelligent Graphics Tablet System Special Edition ( size 6" x 8" working surface )
The 249 feet mentioned above is $249.00 after a $30 mail in rebate. We ordered it from shopharmony.com.
The entire tablet is 13 inches wide by 10 inches tall...(it is the same size as our monitor screen...the glass part is 16" diagonal. ) The working surface is the same size as my mouse pad.
The tablet plugs in my USB port, and the computer does not have to boot up with the tablet plugged in. ( Unlike my digital camera download USB connection where I have to turn the computer off, plug in the camera and turn the computer back on: what a pain! )
My regular mouse still works! Im glad because it still has some value, not much, but some!
Unlike a mouse, you can hold this tablet in your lap, and touch the tablet with a "pen" that has a plastic tip. In fact the pen only has to be 1" away from the tablet and things start happening on the monitor!
Unlike a mouse, you do not need to drag your pen over the surface of the tablet. You simply set your pen down on the tablet where you want to "tap" ( click ) For example, if you want to go up to the top left corner of your screen to click on "File", all you have to do is set the pen down on the top left hand corner of the tablet and the cursor will instantly move to that position. No more slamming the mouse down to make it function when the ball gets jammed!
The 6" x 8" is perfect for me. I find it very comfortable to hold it in my lap directly in front of the keyboard. The Mouse is sitting off to the right hand side where it always sits, and I use it when I can't figure out how to do the same mouse function with the tablet...like right clicking...and a few other things.
Whatever is on your monitor is the exact working surface of your tablet. If you open a new program, the table instantly conforms to the new size...you don't even know it happend!
Don't buy one of these....buy two!
If you do any photo retouching, or create airbrush effcts in lettering, you need this tablet. For example, When you are using the airbrush tool in your photopainting program, if you push down on the pen lightly a light stream of "paint" will flow, but if you press down on the pen harder, a bigger and bigger blob of paint will come out. Very easy to control this.
Well, I've said enough....sorry to put you through this long boring explaination...I'm just sooooooo excited!
Some of you are very curious about these tablets and have held back from buying one.
Again, if you don't do design work, photo retouching or digital airbrushing....then don't get this tablet.
If you own a Gerber Edge and print product pictures and arty graphics, then you will need to use digital photo retouching programs like Corel PhotoPaint and this Wacom Tablet will come in very useful!
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Draper The Signmaker
Bloomington Illinois USA
Stop in and visit a while!
309-828-7110
signman@davesworld.net
Raptorman or Draper_Dave on mIRC chat
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The SignShop
Mendocino, California
"Where the Redwoods meet the Surf"
Oh, for the faith of a spider! He begins his web without any thread.
Here is a little test of how much better the tablet and pen work better than a mouse
These are really low resolution pictures so bear with me.
Both of these examples were made in Corel9 PhotoPaint.
1. was made with the Wacom
2. was made with the mouse
enjoy:
The screen resolution in Corel was set to 8" x 8" at 40 dpi
These look pretty fuzzy on the internet because I resampled them to a low res .jpg file just to show you how smooth the drawing tablet works.
In the top screen, you can see the swirl starting out small and getting bigger. That is because I touch the pad lightly with the pen then increase pressure (push down harder) as I draw.
Notice in the second example, I can't even begin to do that with the mouse and I can't get smooth swirls.
Both screens were identicle....what a difference.
This is where you would use a Wacom Tablet:
This was an original photograph that was made into a digital airbrush painting using Corel Photopaint.
I have an article coming out in the April Issue of Sign Builder Illustrated that shows and explains the step by step process of this artwork.
Enjoy!
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Draper The Signmaker
Bloomington Illinois USA
Stop in and visit a while!
309-828-7110
signman@davesworld.net
Raptorman or Draper_Dave on mIRC chat
[This message has been edited by Dave Draper (edited February 06, 2001).]
Dave, just wait til you get into the custom menus and all the other stuff that tablet can do for you! Talk about slick.. you can assign Photoshop Actions to any of the menu spaces along the top of the tablet and a single tap runs the Action... or macro.. or whatever you have assigned to the menu space.
Check out the PenTools PhotoShop plug-in software that came with the tablet too.. the tools in that software can sense the angle of the pen in relation to the tablet, and it changes the spray or brush patterns just as it would be affected in real life!
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Mike Pipes
-----trapped in a box with a computer and a slice of cheese-----
HERE"S A TIP:
Tablets tend to get dirty. I cover mine with application tape. I used the regular Hi Tack tape to start with, but now use the clear "reusable" type tape (you can even get this with a grid pattern). The mouse slides better as mine doesn't have a roller ball underneath.
When the pad gets dirty, pull it off the tape and renew ... it even makes a handly scribble pad 
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Bushie
aka Jon Butterworth
Jonsigns
old signwriters never retire ... they just fade into the background!
Toowoomba,Queensland
Australia.
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Gray Hodge
celtman@ireland.com
Cam River Signs
Somerset, Tasmania,
Down Under
take two WACOM tablets and call me in the morning!
my buddy mark jordan swears by this fandangled contraption!
a past SOTM winner...
http://markfair.com/sotmaug2000.html
have yo-self some fun!
maybe some insight from Mark Jordan on the subject of wacom tablets?
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Mark Fair
Mark Fair Signs
http://www.markfair.com
Home of "Sign of the Month
http://www.markfair.com/signomonth.html
2162 Mt. Meigs Road
Montgomery, Alabama 36107
334-262-4449
"Mark Fair is a Proud Contributor to The Letterhead Site!"
Just wondered what the advantages are I digitize stuff I can't scan direct into my Gerber software.
Its a 20" tablet anyone else use one....I have also looked abit at Wacoms stuff.
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Henry Barker #1924
akaKaftan
SignCraft AB
Stockholm, Sweden.
A little bit of England in a corner of Stockholm
www.signcraft.se
info@signcraft.se
[This message has been edited by Henry Barker (edited February 07, 2001).]
I don't think of the Wacom as a digitizing tablet, although it does have an optional cross hair mouse attachment for more $$$ as well as a 4D cordless mouse and a tool that looks just like a real airbrush.
I think of the Wacom as a canvas. The pace you paint pictures, except the painting appears on the monitor. Corel Painter would be a program you would most likey use to digitally "paint" a fine art painting with a Wacom tablet.
To use it for a digitizer, hmmmm, Im not sure how that works.
I have not digitized the old fashion way in years (with the cross hair mouse). My method is to scan the drawing, then tweak the nodes or redraw the object on screen over the top of the scanned object. Works for me! I do this with customers business cards all the time. I bump up the scale in the scanning software so the artwork comes into Omega as a .bmp file "24 inces tall x whatever. Then I just click the pen tool and draw over the top of the bitmap. Then I delete the .bmp and I can go right to the plotter with the graphic.
The "6 x "8 size would be pretty hard to digitize on, that is just a bit smaller than a mouse pad. If you want to spend $2000 - $3000 they make a really big tablet.
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Draper The Signmaker
Bloomington Illinois USA
Stop in and visit a while!
309-828-7110
signman@davesworld.net
Raptorman or Draper_Dave on mIRC chat
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Mark Jordan
Houston, Texas
msign205@aol.com
You just take the pen and tap wherever you want to place a node, the motion is just so much more natural than using a mouse.
The nicest thing about using a tablet is the fact that it doesnt jump around the screen on ya, nor does it have a ball that gets hung up in the middle of trying to do detailed work.
The accuracy is amazing.. The Intuos line of Wacom tablets have a resolution of 2540 lines per inch which equates to ultra-smooth movement on screen.. imagine splitting a milimeter into 100 segments, and that's the accuracy of the tablet.
The only thing I dont like about the tablet is that my dad uses my computer from time to time (while Im visiting him) and sometimes he walks off with the pen, mistaking it for a real one, then procedes to lose it. In the past two months he's spent $200 to replace tablet pens.
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Mike Pipes
-----trapped in a box with a computer and a slice of cheese-----
