Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room Graphics Tablet Advice

I know some people on here (Alex S for sure) use graphics tablets for doing digital artwork so I'm looking for a bit of advice on buying one. My partner (I suppose I should start calling her my fiancée since we're getting married in October) wants to use one to design backdrops, similar to stage scenery, to be used for theme parties etc. but she has no art training, though she's actually very good. So we need it to be something with as quick a learning curve as possible. I just want to know what sort of features we should look for and any pitfalls we should avoid.

I'd also like to know what software is best for drawing with one of these things. I have Photoshop CS5 which I use for digital photograph editing but I think that's more of an image editing rather than creating program. Our local printers say they use Paintshop Pro but I haven't used that for years, so it would be easier for me to teach her things in Photoshop if it can do the necessary things. We'll be using it either in Windows 7 on this PC or the dreaded Vista on the laptop.

Hard to say what our budget for the tablet would be in English quid-pounds, but we just looked at one here which is R1257, equivalent to about £120, so there or thereabouts would be a good starting point.

Any advice, either by way of topic reply or PM would be greatly appreciated.

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P.S. Here's the one we were looking at: G-Pen M712X - Any good?

I'm no expert on graphics tablets, but I can offer advice based on experience.

I had never used a graphics tablet, bar once at college years ago, until 2007. I bought myself one of the Wacom Bamboo tablets (about £75, cheaper now). A6-sized work area, so quite small and a little confusing when you're working relative to your bigger screen. However I soon got used to it - handy size too - and produced quite a few pieces including my Dalek painting which was my first 'serious' piece. As a beginner's tablet, the Bamboo was good, but I soon found that for what I wanted to do, I needed something a little bigger.

So last year I upgraded to an Intuos4 'medium' tablet (A5 size working area), and that has just been perfect. The A4 tablets are enormous; you need a lot of desk space and I don't have that!

I'd certainly recommend the Wacom/Intuos range, I guess they're
industry standard, but they may not suit your budget.

Software - I use Photoshop. If you've got CS5 you need look no further. I wouldn't bother with Paintshop Pro - it's pretty much the same, but not as good. Other programmes like Painter are designed for artists wanting more textures, brushes etc, but from experience I haven't found Painter as easy to use and flexible as Photoshop. Photoshop is as much of an art package as it is image editing suite - there are dozens of preset brushes and you can find downloads all over the place. And all you really need is the hard, round brush and the airbrush, both of which come as standard.

Thanks Alex, that's very useful information. Comparing the item I linked to with the Intuos4 I think for the price it's probably perfect for what she needs. It's almost half the price so not necessarily as good but for what Mariana needs it's probably good enough and at least with Photoshop I can help her out as I know the program reasonably well, although I've never really used it before for creating images. She bought herself a new laptop today that she's going to use exclusively for her design work, which has decent graphics capability (ATI Radeon Mobility 512mb) and fast processor with lots of RAM. I'm sure that plus the tablet will be perfect.

Thanks again for the advice, much appreciated.

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No problem, glad to be of service!

The more RAM the better - Photoshop likes to use a lot of disk space to run and obviously the bigger the tablet, the more processing power it needs.

Most tablets will also come with a couple of replacement nibs - these do wear down with use; that's normal, though it's a little surprising at first!

The new laptop is a Core i5 2.27ghz with 4gb RAM and 500gb HDD so should be perfect for a beginner, though maybe a bit of a lightweight compared to professional machines.

Still debating over tablet size and ease of use. I heard that with the Genius one we were looking at you have to draw quite a long line on the tablet to get even a short line on the screen, so we're now looking at the Bamboo option as it seems a smaller working area may in fact be better. She's never used a tablet before so whichever one we go for it's going to be a learning experience. I'll let you know how we get on.

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The tablet to screen ratio does take some getting used to. If your good lady prefers working 'small' and detailed, she may prefer the Bamboo. She may also find, since she's working on a laptop, that the smaller tablet is easier to work with on a laptop sized screen.

And as I said, the bigger tablets get quite cumbersome, as they are always bigger than the working area to accommodate the functions & buttons etc. I can always take pictures of my Bamboo and Intuos 4 tablets if it helps!