Dan Scott wrote: > With Photoshop, most of what I do is just easier to do with a mouse than a > stylus. Being able to simply take my hand off the mouse and use the > keyboard is a lot quicker than having to set the stylus down, type, and > then pick up the stylus again. It sounds trivial, but if you do it a lot, > you'll probably find yourself using the mouse more and tablet less. Using > a stylus as a mouse substitute for accessing tool pallets and menus isn't > much fun, either.
Its a matter of personal preference, I think. For quick typing (eg a filename) I can still type while holding the stylus, I just do so with one less finger & thumb. Its slightly less convenient but only because I touch-type. For typing something longer such as an email, I stick the stylus in its holder and type to my heart's content. It doesn't bother me whether I use the tablet or the mouse for menus (BTW my mouse is a normal mouse, not the mouse you can get for the tablet, which behaves the same as the pen). Wacom Intuos tablets have 9 programmable buttons at the top of the tablet for commonly used menu combinations, or there's always shortcut keys. Toolboxes are just as easy either way, IMO. The one time I resort to using a mouse is where I want absolute accuracy on a slider control, because the mouse is less likely to move when you take your hand off the button :) > My mouse takes a lot less effort to access any of those due to the > difference in mouse tracking software versus stylus tracking > software�mousing software is speed sensitive and click sensitive whereas > stylus tracking software is much more oriented to tracking path, pressure, > and angle. Moving a mouse with a quick flip of the wrist will get you from > one side of your screen to the other almost instantaneously�you're going > to find yourself moving your whole arm to cover the same territory with a > stylus. Again, it sounds small, but it grows old quick. That's exactly what a tablet is designed for ;) You must trade off accuracy for "speed" in absolute mode. There is no acceleration factor. This is one reason I opted for the 5x4" tablet over a larger one. > The other drawback of a tablet is the feel. Instead of the tactile > feedback you get with a pen, pencil, paintbrush or crayon, with a stylus A stylus feels far better to me than a mouse, but I'm editing scanned photos rather than creating my own drawings (in other words, crayons are not an option for me;). > you have only the feel of a tiny point of plastic sliding on flat smooth > plastic�featureless and unresponsive�dead. Sucks a lot of the positive > tactile energy you get from wielding the tool right out of the experience. With Intuos pens you can replace the tips, and if you wanted a certain feel I'm sure you could make a tip or modify an existing one by gluing something to a tip. You can also place material (eg paper) on top of the tablet if you wish but anything soft would probably wear out quickly. The eraser tip (on the top of the stylus) has a much softer feel, but I'm not sure if you can configure it to not suddenly switch Photoshop into "erase" mode. > My tablet gets most of its use with Illustrator and Painter, places where > I want to use expressive strokes or quickly sketch out an idea for further > development. If I really want to brainstorm visually, I usually pick up > the old analog tools�if I need to get any of what I do with them into into > the computer, I can scan it on my old lowrez scanner. It works fine. Horses for courses really. I agree that its a lot easier to just sketch something out on paper. My perspective comes from touching up images which are already in the computer. Cheers, - Dave http://www.digistar.com/~dmann/
