How to Make the Most out of Your Graphics Tablet

 Whether you’re an experienced illustrator or just starting to venture into the field of digital art, a graphics tablet can be an invaluable addition to anyone’s desk. A tablet essentially acts as a pressure-sensitive stylus for your computer, which takes away some of the awkwardness of trying to draw or paint using a mouse. Even for those who prefer to create vector art in Illustrator rather than hand drawing in Photoshop, using a graphics tablet can streamline your illustration and make for a more intuitive working process.

That being said, there are several important things to know that will help you make the most out of your tablet. The first thing you need to take into consideration before even making your purchase is which type of tablet is right for you.

The most well-known and popular brand of tablet is Wacom, which encompasses a few different products:

Intuos Pen/Pen and Touch

The Intuos Pen tablet, formerly known as Bamboo, is a portable tablet with wireless capability and four programmable keys. The entire surface of the tablet is responsive to the stylus, which means it is able to have a more sleek and compact design than the other products Wacom offers. It comes in a pen-only version, which is solely used with the stylus, and a “pen and touch” version, in which the surface of the tablet can function as a touchpad (a feature which can be toggled on or off with a switch). While it is certainly dependable and the most affordable option Wacom has to offer, the Intuos Pen is lacking a few features – this makes it more suited for beginners or for those who won’t be doing too much Photoshop drawing or painting, such as vector artists, designers or photographers.

Intuos Pro

A step up in quality from the Intuos Pen, the Intuos Pro is suitable for intermediate users and for those who will be primarily using Photoshop to draw or paint. The responsive area is surrounded by a border a few inches wide, which makes this model slightly more large and unwieldy than the Intuos Pen.  However, it does have a wider range of features, such as eight programmable buttons (compared to the Pen’s four), a rotating wheel, stylus tilt sensitivity, and a variety of different pen nibs. The Intuos Pro can also be flipped around to have the buttons on the left or right side of the tablet, depending on the user’s dominant hand.

Cintiq

Wacom’s Cintiq tablets are actually pen displays in which the stylus is used to draw directly on the screen, allowing for a more intuitive process that closely mimics drawing on paper. These tablets are usually large and mounted on a desk like a regular computer monitor would be. They are also outrageously expensive, and are often used by animators, comic artists, and other professionals who are required to do highly detailed illustrations. Wacom also makes a product called the Cintiq Companion, which is a smaller, portable version of the Cintiq.

Wacom’s tablets all come in various dimensions and start at about $80 for a small Intuos Pen.

If you are looking for a more affordable brand that can hold its own next to Wacom’s more popular products, Monoprice carries tablets that can run as low as $30. While they don’t necessarily have as many features as Wacom’s tablets, they are still reportedly very sturdy and dependable. They will certainly get the job done if you don’t want to shell out extra cash for something slightly more fancy.

Frenden’s“reviews” section has more detailed descriptions of all of these products, plus dozens not mentioned here.

Once you have purchased a tablet, there are still several steps you can take to make it a more useful tool:

• Customize your tablet’s interface. The tablets mentioned above have programmable buttons on their surfaces. These can be customized to correspond to hotkeys or keyboard shortcuts. Intuos Pro tablets have a rotating wheel which can be used to zoom, scroll, or change brush size in Photoshop. Customization settings can be found in your computer’s system preferences or in your tablet utility file.

• Intuos Pro tablets have 2048 different levels of pressure sensitivity in their pen tips. However, if you are using a Windows computer, there is a function labeled “Pressure Compatibility” that will be enabled in the tablet’s settings by default. This feature adjusts the sensitivity levels down to 1024 in order to be compatible with a few older programs that there is a 98% chance you are not going to be using. Uncheck this option in your settings in order to enable full pressure sensitivity.

• Over time, tablet pen nibs can get worn down and unusable. Replacement nibs can be ordered online for relatively cheap, but most products also come with a number of extra nibs stashed in a discreet location on the tablet itself. These can be easy to miss. On Intuos Pen products, the nibs are in a slide-out compartment on the underside of the tablet, next to the battery pack. The spare nibs for the Intuos Pro are located inside of the pen stand – unscrew the top half of the holder to access the nibs, which come in several different textures to mimic different types of drawing utensil. There is also a round metal ring in the middle of the pen stand that can be used as “tweezers” to pull the old nib out of the tip of the pen.

• While not a feature of the tablet itself, custom brushes can be used in Photoshop to take full advantage of the pressure sensitivity that a graphics tablet offers. To start: Frenden’s ink brushes make improvements on some of Photoshop’s default brushes; Kyle T. Webster also has several custom brush packs for sale, many of which mimic different types of traditional media.