Convinced by the many demos I had seen on Youtube, I acquired a year ago aWacom Intuos Pro tablet, in the “medium” size (the Special Edition type with the brushed aluminum panels on the top and bottom, very good looking). It is a very nice object, which works well. The radio receiver accepted to be plugged into an available USB port on the side of the Eizo monitor, and did not require to be plugged directly into the computer, which was also good news, as it is getting pretty crowded back there, with all the other devices that fight for USB real estate...
The tablet and
the pen are fully customizable, probably beyond the needs of any normal
photographer —it would probably be different for a graphics designer or digital
painter, for example. Using the pen and the tablet in general is easier than I
thought, the “absolute positioning” of the pen (as opposed to the “relative
positioning” of the mouse) did not pose any major problem and the possibility
to work wirelessly (and, therefore, to rest the tablet on your lap, for
instance) is quite nice.
However —and
here we come to the crux of things— I must admit that I did not find that using
the tablet increased my productivity, nor did I find that it gave me more
control or more precision when using the tools in Lightroom or Photoshop.
Let me state
this in a more detailed manner: if I were an unconditional user of the mouse,
if I used always and only the mouse, and therefore if I had to travel across
the big 24-inch monitor all the way to the menu bar up there every time I
needed to accomplish any action, or all the way to the left to the toolbar to grab
this tool or that, then I would probably save time by using the tablet, as the
absolute positioning of the pen makes it travel instantly across the screen.
Furthermore, getting better used to using the pen would probably end up giving
me at least the same degree of control over the pointer as I now have with my
top-of-the-line, super-precise laser mouse (Logitech MX Master running on a
smooth Lucrin Swiss leather pad), and maybe more.
However, I am
not that kind of computer user. I know how much time is wasted on bringing the
mouse/pointer to where it needs to go to effect any given action, and if there
is a keyboard shortcut to implement it, I'd rather learn and use that shortcut
—and, in the case of Photoshop, customize my own shortcuts to better suit my
style and the tools I use (like me, you probably only use a fraction of all the
tools and functions Photoshop offers). Therefore, I rarely use the mouse for
anything else than to draw. So, in this “actions” department, the tablet is no
improvement; in fact, it slows me down considerably when compared to using
keyboard shortcuts.
And coming to
actual drawing, I find that the pen in my hand is not really more precise than
when my mouse is guiding the pointer. Maybe that would change if I got really
used to using the pen, but I have grown so accustomed to “drawing” with a mouse
for so many years now, that it has really become very natural for me. So, no
improvement in that area either. The only sector in which I can see the pen
helping me better than the mouse is when cropping out part of a photograph.
Then, it is probably more natural to use a pen with the Pen tool than to use
the mouse... but I so rarely have to do this that I wonder if it is worth
owning a Wacom tablet!
I'll be
interested to hear your thoughts... Do you use a Wacom (or other) tablet? Do
you know of any photographer who does?
