Graphic Tablet. Which one?

[Shea Harrison]

I'm looking for a graphic tablet that I can use in Photoshop. I've never use one before and I'm not sure which brand is most recommended. I heard Wacom was a good brand. Please help.

[Susan S.]

Chuck - as far as i know the Graphire comes in one-size -fits all 4x5. you have to pay a lot more $$ for the Wacom Intuos to get the larger sizes.

The big deal with the Wacom is not just the price (their upmarket professional models are expensive) but the battery free technology that they use - any other cheap tablet needs a battery in the pen (or a cord tether) which makes them clunky and heavy.
I'm a big fan of the graphire 2. It comes with a good bundle of toys - when I bought it it included lite versions of Painter (which in this region entitles moving to the full version at upgrade price - saves nearly twice the price of the tablet here in Aus. if you want that software!) and Expression. I'm told that the Intuos tablets are far superior to my little Graphire - but I'm pushed to work out where that would be, as they work so well - and a large tablet would ake up such a lot of desk.
Susan S.

[Chuck Snyder]

Susan: thanks. I remember visiting the Wacom website once and taking their
survey; of course they recommended an Intuos 6x8, even though my responses
would have made me wonder whether a Graphire 2 was even too much for me...!
(And I still feel that way - no tablet here.....maybe someday)

Chuck

[Susan S.]

Chuck - I wouldn't be without one - my wrist hurts too much if I do as much mouse work as photoediting/image manipulation involves
Susan S.

[Chuck Snyder]

Susan, I use an ergonomic mouse pad that has a fairly thick foam wrist
rest - has been a lifesaver. And I'll wager that I don't spend nearly so
much time on an image as you do - your work is terrific!

Chuck

[Susan S.]

Chuck -Thanks for the compliment! Some of the work does take a long time - I tend to extract by quick masking by hand at high magnification - for me it gives a better result but requires a lot of time. (And it's a downside of moving to a 4MP camera - twice as many pixels to extract, it takes significantly longer! One nice thing about the G3 tho' - I'm getting much better exposed and framed images out of the camera and they require a lot less fiddling with- usually just a touch of levels, crop and unsharp mask.)
I also am not (paid) working so I spend rather too much of my day (and morning and evening) in front of the computer. And as what little paid work I do at the moment is editing stuff for my husband and his co-authors, that's even more computer time. Makes for sore back and wrist and neck,and switching between mouse and tablet helps a fair bit.

[Chuck Snyder]

Susan, re exposure on the G3: have you been able to prevent 'blowing out'
the highlights? That was my biggest problem in the early days of using the
G2 - lots of images with big white areas. Dialed exposure compensation down
1/3 stop and have lived happily ever after, albeit with every image needing
some boost in contrast.

Chuck

[Raymond Robillard]

By the way, the Graphire 2 comes a many tools specific for Elements and compatible applications. Plugins to do some nice stuff.

Ray

[Susan S.]

Mine didn't come with the mouse - not available in the Asia-Pacific region for some reason.

Chuck - yes it is hard to prevent highlights blowing out with landscape shots. Particularly with Australian lighting conditions which tend to have a lot more than 5 stops range of contrast. And while I often don't mind the sky blowing out a bit, the lens is sufficiently prone to purple fringing with high contrast and over-exposure, that it's a bit of a nuisance. I tend to use it on aperture priority most of the time (depth of field control - I'm still fighting the auto focus a bit - although I find that remembering to put on my reading glasses when looking at the LCD helped a lot to master the manual focus!!) and set the Exposure compensation down a bit. The one stop stripes on the histogram background are a big help in judging just how much compensation to use.. But I mainly take portraits and macro stuff at the moment - I've bodged together a bounce flash set-up by mounting my old flash and the G3 on a bracket, and connecting the flash unit to a slave sensor. The onboard flash triggers the slave unit, and with the G3 I can set the flash manually so it doen't pre-flash and confuse things. The G3's own flash set to minimum provides enough light to fill in the shadows from the bounce (or I can put my hand over it if i really want just the external flash!) The bracket balances much better than a large hotshoe mounted flashon a little camera
susan S

[SES]

X-No-Archive: Yes

hmmm... Amazon has the upgrade at $134.99


SES
--
[url]http://www.sarantos.com[/url]
Listen to the Universe and Dance to the Rhythm of it-*SES*

[Raymond Robillard]

And I got mine cheaper than the canadian price at Business Depot, as well.

Ray

[Lee Miller]

"Shea Harrison" <shea@sprayingdevices.com> wrote in message
news:1de9b353.-1@WebX.la2eafNXanI...

> I'm looking for a graphic tablet that I can use in Photoshop. I've never

use one before and I'm not sure which brand is most recommended. I heard
Wacom was a good brand. Please help.

In case you hadn't guessed by the other posts Wacom is "the" brand. As far
as Graphire2 vs Intuos2 the main factor (other than size) is what type of
tools you want to use with it. If you're handy with an airbrush the Intuos2
is probably the way to go and you can buy an airbrush accessory for the
Intuos2 that you can't for the Graphire. If you're looking for using
implements other than the standard pen the Intuos2 is the way to go. I have
an Intuos 6x8 and love it (even if I don't use it near enough to justify the
price I paid for it a few years ago), but I bought it just before the first
Graphire's came out. If I had to choose again I could very likely go for
the Graphire instead.

[Shea Harrison]

Christina,
What kind of work are you using your tablet for?
Shea