The strange thing about my hesitance towards converting to a Wacom Tablet is that you use a "pen" to work with. It's so much easier to use than a mouse. It's just as natural as using a pen... and I collect pens! I collect fountain pens. For a while, I was completely addicted to improving my handwriting. I practiced every day. I got callouses on my fingers. I had ink stained hands. My collection of pens grew to almost 200. Yet I didn't want to convert my worflow to the use of a pen? Seriously!?
Everything changed once I shot my first wedding. When I was looking at so many photos to retouch, the thought of using a mouse just made my wrist hurt. Plus, Belinda was out of town and I have a reputation for buying things when she's out of town. So, I broke down, did a little research and decided to go with the Wacom Intuos4 Small Tablet. Now I have to say, like everyone else said, since I've used a tablet to edit photos I wouldn't use anything else.
The tablet itself is about the size of a piece of copier paper. The actual surface that you use is much smaller. There are keys and a dial that can be customized to perform just about any action you'd like. The pen has a few switches on the barrel and an "eraser" on the end. Again, these can all be customized to perform any function you'd like them to.
Since I use the tablet for editing photos and nothing else, I haven't had a chance to use all of the cool features it has. It can detect the angle of your pen, so if you're using a chiseled tip brush, it will affect the look of your brush stroke. It's pressure sensitive, so by pressing harder or lighter you can control the flow of your edit. But, I haven't used those, so I can't comment on them. Apparently they're awesome.
One of the first things that threw me for a loop was the fact that the location of the pen on the tablet maps directly to the screen. With a mouse, if I needed to move the mouse across the screen, I might make two small movements with my hand, picking up the mouse between movements, so that the mouse never left a small portion of the mouse pad. With the pen and tablet, the left side of the tablet is the left side of the screen and the right side of the tablet is the right side of the screen. This means that when you want to move from the left to the right side of the screen, the pen has to travel that distance on the tablet. Two short movements doesn't do it!
Once I figured that out, using it quickly became second-nature. I found I had a lot more control when using brushes and editing small things. My wrist didn't get sore after hours of use (although my fingers did get a little tired, like I was writing a long letter). I can imagine, in this digital age, if you can't remember the last time you physicaly used a pen to write anything longer than a signature at the bottom of your Starbucks receipt, it might take a while for your fingers to get used to using the pen.
Another great thing about the tablet is it's very portable. It's currently in my laptop bag, next to my laptop, and doesn't take up any more room than a magazine. I was just using it earlier today to do some editing while I was away from home. Wacom even includes two USB cords so you can keep one at home and take one on the road!
If you've heard the hype before, I'll just say it again. If you've never given a tablet much thought, listen up. Once you use a Wacom Tablet to edit your photos, you will never want to use a mouse again! Now, if only I could cram the guts of the Wacom pen into one of my fountain pens, I'd be a happy camper.
A quick note on the photo at the top of this post: I thought I had gotten all of the dust off of the tablet. Apparently I didn't.
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