Wacom A4 Graphics Tablet

The graphics tablet is one of the most common post production tools in digital editing. A well established name in graphics tablets, Wacom have a reputation for quality products.

Included in the purchase was the tablet, mouse, pen and pen holder.

Originally I thought the tablet would be very easy to use, just like drawing with a pen on paper but it really did take some getting used to. The pen is quite sensitive but once you've had a little practice it's an extremely fast and accurate way to work on images. Included with the tablet is the appropriate software and drivers including sensitivity options so you can customise the feel of the pen and mouse to suit your style of work.

Used by graphic artists and designers, tablets give you back that feeling of control over your artwork that you lost with the mouse. While I can draw, paint and edit very quickly with the mouse, the pen and tablet mouse give you much more control.
Personally I've customised my inputs (mice & pen) to give me increasing levels of control. My normal desktop mouse will move the cursor 20 pixels at a time allowing me to move the cursor quickly around my dual screens.
The tablet mouse will move the cursor 5 pixels at a time, which is great for closeup work like editing eyes or general painting and colouring.
Finally the pen moves one pixel at a time giving me 100% precision, excellent with the pen tool or tiny details.

The tablet mouse is quite surprising in that it is wireless and requires no batteries. It works entirely by touch on the surface of the tablet, as does the pen.

One of the big benefits of the pen are the pressure options, included in Photoshop. By increasing pressure on the pen you increase the amount of ink, paint or other tool output. For example, choosing a brush and turning on 'pressure' in the brushes tool box you can hold the pen in one spot and watch the paint 'flow' off the brush, just like it would bleed on real paper.

This can be a superb way of building up layers of colour, makeup on a models face, hair highlights or working with masks quickly opens up all sorts of new possibilities.
One thing to note is that the pen cannot be rotated to a brush that isn't round cannot be turned just by turning the pen. An additional pen is available with the rotate function built in but it's pricey.

To increase your workflow speed the tablet includes 3 matching buttons and a 'slide bar' on each side of the tablet suiting both left and right handed people. These buttons can be customised to suit your working needs.
The slide bar is most often set at the zoom function and simply sliding your finger up and down the bar controls the zoom level. The other buttons can be ALT, SHIFT, CTRL or any other key you choose but when matched up with the most common tool you'll use, e.g. the brush they're invaluable time savers.

If you do a lot of painting, changing the slide bar to the brush size control can be useful but not very accurate.

When you combine the tablet with a media keyboard you'll find yourself capable of setting up a very fluid workflow for editing and manipulating images. All in all the Wacom tablet is a superb piece of kit I can highly recommend.

Pros

• Easy to install
• Customisable
• Good build quality giving a long life
• Wide range of sizes to match monitors and desk sizes
• Improves speed of work and precision
• Wide range of pens available for specific applications
  

Cons

• Gets dirty fairly easily (cotton gloves with the index finger and thumb cut off will reduce hand grease on the work surface)
• Quite pricey initially but will definitely last for years
• A4 is the minimum size I would recommend, A5 and A6 are too small to comfortably work on for long periods
• Additional pens are expensive