Art software for use with graphics tablet.

I saw one of these at an electronics store recently. I am anxious to see what the masses think.

I reeeeaaaallllly wanted one. I was told no. Something about diapers, rent and student loans was said. You know how those women can get "pay the bills, clothe the kids....nag, nag, nag"

Seriously, it looked way cool. What do you think so far Del, del Gato blanco?

Pretty cool..it's a Trust 4200 only abot £45 ! yet it's an A4 useable area!! The reveiews all said it was v good or awfull..I suspect the 'awfulls didn't install the latest software/set it up right/have any software to use it on.
The only gripe is the absence of sotware...(but waddaya expect at that price)...and free demos of software are out there for free. One of the set up routines changes line thickness with pen pressure, funky... but I havn't found that on an art software yet.
Even 'Paint' is pretty good using the pen, and on one of the freebie art progs I tried 'project dogwaffle' (I jest not) I could write with the pen pretty much as I would in my log book. All in all 10 out of 10...it does all it says...I just need software to get best use out of it.

Del

I was using the A3 version quite a lot.

1) For digitising field size and shape from areal photos and satellite images for agricultural irrigation design.

2) Digitizing art work for CNC engraving tool paths.

3) Some CAD work replacing the mouse. I made a little program to emulate a mouse.

My thoughts - A bit bulky but nice.

If you can get hold of an old pen plotter you can make a virtual drawing machine.

You take the output from the board as the input of the plotter (Scaled, warped, reverse, invert etc to your liking). I had some CAD features added as well. (lines, arcs , hatching etc). For some drawings I used the proximity mode as pen down.

Myself and children went through reams of paper until the pens became scarce.

Thinking of it I have a A0 pen plotter in the garage to hook up to the board / tablet. (my 3rd garage is used as my computer museum)

These seem to go in and out of favor. I had one many years ago (20 years ago?), a Summagraphics, if I recall, and used it for both casual drawing and drafting. For drafting, it had a printed menu around the edges, so maybe 50 commands were all visible simultaneously.

Eventually, I could no longer get drivers, and I stopped using it. I have fooled around with pressure sensitive art applications, (some of which emulate a paint brush really well) but not recently enough to make a recommendation. Have fun -- for freehand art, they are a huge improvement over a mouse!

I am a digital Artist and Designer with twenty years in the area of your question. I have used almost every brand of consumer and commercial digital art software in this time. Corel Painter is the most powerful and comprehensive tablet enabled paint program. It has been written with the intention that you will use it with a Wacom pressure sens tablet. Other tablets also work well with it though Painter has specific brushes that are a match for the additional stylus models made for the Wacom tablets. Ryan Church is the leading digital artist for George LKucas on his movies and he is also the Author of multiple Gnomon Labs tutorial DVDs on tablet based digital painting. links to Corel Painter http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1166553885783 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel_Painter As for sketching there is no peer to a little program called Alias Sketchbook Pro. It has a natural media mathematical algorythm in it that makes your work look like it was directly drawn on paper with a sketching pencil or pen. Although the art materials in this little program are slim in comparison to Corel Painter it is this elegant sketching style that makes it my first choice for mobile or quick concept sketching. links to Alias Sketchbook Pro http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=6848332&siteID=123112 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alias_Sketchbook I wont say I hope this helps because I am absolutely sure it will help. Happy new year Del.

Hi Rega,
Great call..I've downloaded the Gimp...it looks brilliant, it's got the pressure sensitive pen thingy... It looks to have all the functions I could want, and more...it'll take a while to get my head around it, but it is still user friendly enough to let me play.
What impressed me is it accepted a file i'd done in the other program that I'd tried despite it being in a daft unheard of format ( .tga file).

Brilliant, thanks again.

Del (and the price is right )

Thanks for the answers guys..I'll check out your suggestions...