I currently use a 19" and 17" monitor for editing. Will the 4x6 Intuos be sufficient. From what i read here, most are happy with a smaller rather a larger working area.
Saw in today's ads Best Buy has a Wacom tablet for sale under 100....think it was the size smaller than 4x5....going to take a look at it...anyone here use this one?
I bought a 4x5 reconditioned Wacom Intuos3 for $119 a couple weeks ago from Digital Graphics Resources.
Over the last 10 plus years I have gone from a very large Wacom(way too much real estate) to a Medium sized 6x8 Wacom to the 4x5 Wacom. I like the 4x5 best.
Tablets are great for mask because there great for brush type tools. The size of a tablet does not make much of a difference unless you like to use long sweeping arm and wrist movements while painting. In that case a large tablet surface would be beneficial. Tablets 12x9 and larger have a quick point mode where the tablet surface get mapped into two tablets. So the large tablet are like three tablets in one. However all tablets surfaces can be remapped so you can map a very small portion of the tablet surface to cover your display whole surface. There is also multi monitor support. you can map your tablet to one or more of you displays.
Learn where in the Tablet driver control panel applet you can map and configure you tablet and devices for applications. In applications find out where there tablet support setting are settable. Use Photoshop's brush pallets to configure tablet brush type tools. Use brush tools tool option bar settings to help also. Don't try to do things in a single stroke. Use low opacity and many strokes. When working on mask and your painting with Black and White using brush blending mode overlay will protect areas that are totally White and totally Black only the gray area in the mask will be modifiable. Once a spot become black or white it will not change. This is very helpful working on edge areas.
I bought a used Intuos3 4x5 over a year ago and simply haven't gotten in to using it. I've tried a number of times but keep going back to the mouse. However, I'm also not selling it (yet). I am quite precise with a mouse, however, and stink at drawing so maybe that's why
One piece of advice:
In terms of desk real estate I was kind of excited about the notion of replacing my m ouse with the Wacom as well since it comes with a wireless mouse that you use on the pad if you want. This would probably lead to me using the pad more since I dont' have to dig it out, plug it in, find somewhere to put it etc... Unfortunately the 4x5 is not a large enough pad for mousing in my opinion. Something like a 6x8 may be perfect to do double duty.
Use whatever aspect ratio your display is. You don't want to use a 4x5 on a widescreen LCD. Your movements won't be proportional or you will not be able to use all of the tablet area. I use a 6x11 with my 24" (with a 20" alongside it but mapped the Wacom to the 24 and small part of the 20 for Photoshop).
I have 22 and 30" monitors and the 4X5" is just fine. But the Wacom will not replace the mouse. I use both, carefully, since I switched to mousing with my left hand.
