Thread: Mouse vs. tablet

Skip the food and cake. Instead, go for booze and cigars. You want these people to pony up, after all.

Actually, I did about the same thing last year. Showed my wife a link and told her that's what I *really* wanted. She was very good and also threw in CS4.
M

You got a tablet and CS4?! Damn! I got a rock.

I was thinking about cutting off the end of a paintbrush and super-gluing it to my mouse so it might feel more like I was drawing with a pen. That's how well my tablet budget is going lately.

Found a very informative blog: http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/too...ts-your-needs/

Wanted to say thanks again for the advice. As of yesterday I'm the proud and extremely happy owner of a Wacom Intuos 4 XL. I didn't get it set up and working until 2am this morning but I got it going and I've been playing with it all day. I'm so glad I went with the largest size. I combined my Wedding Anniversary (Today) with my birthday (in 2 days) and fathers day and just barely managed to convince my wife to let me get it. I was very happy to see it's use came back to me with little to no adjustment. My kids have all been hanging around all day trying to play with it as well. The only problem I had was getting it to recognize using it in left handed mode. I could not for the life of me get it out of right hand mode. After many hours of searching I ended up finding the answer on the Wacom europe site. I can safely say I would have never figured it out on my own. The setting was not intuitive at all and was located in an obscure location.

Anyway, wanted to say thanks again, and hopefully in the not too distant future I'll be posting a few of my maps as well.

Alarian.

Just ordered me a Wacom Bamboo Fun - Medium for $159, should be here in a couple days. I'll post a map using it right away...

GP

I await your verdict GP.

You can have my preliminary verdict now - its cool ... love to be able to draw like I do with a pen AND be able to erase again - and add photoshop layers to that equation and - its cool
Granted, I've only had time for one map (this month lite challenge) so I haven't really had time to practice, but I'm looking forward to playing a lot more with it ... plan to take up art again too... just posted my first digital art on Deviant Art last week, before I got the Bamboo, but now its time for some more

Well I just received my Wacom Bamboo Fun medium tablet today, a couple technical issues in that it requires Vista or higher to run. My laptop is Vista, but I don't have Xara loaded on it, and I never successfully could get it to load. I've been wanting to upgrade to Xara Xtreme Pro 5, and might be forced to do that instead. My work PC that I do most of my design work is XP, so I'd need to upgrade that to Vista or Microsoft 7 - and I was planning to do that, just when I need by a new PC that has the lastest OS.

So I don't have it hooked up yet...

But it came bundled with Adobe Elements and CorelPainter, so at least I've got some toys to play with using the tablet.

I used to have Fractal Designs Painter, which was eons ago, and thought that was very interesting software and I've always wanted to try it again, for mapping. Because CorelPainter can simulate oil/acrylic painting, in that the painted strokes stack emulating the buildup of pasty paint to simulate 3D in terrain. Say for a green plain that is basically flat, but has gradual rises and falls and rockfield and ditches, yet not hills and highlands. I think "painting" in this way might create an interesting terrain feature in that way. Something I want to try anyway.

But I have to get the tablet hooked up and using it soon - hah, I should have expected this wouldn't be as easy as I thought it would be...

GP