Preserved Topic: Configuring a Wacom Tablet for Photoshop or Painter

Does anyone here have some experience with Wacom Tablets and Art programs, preferably Photoshop 7 or Painter 7. If so, what configurations/changes did you make for your tablet that improved performance and or are just plain fun! I have a new tablet and am looking for any experience the many great minded artists here could share - tablet tips are welcome and if there is a faq already, please share.

Thank you.

well... you can adjust sensitivity and this and that and Whoop Lah!

Just fiddle with all the settings till you find what You like. hehehehe. Yalp!

                                     

just install the software that comes with the tablet, it has the Photoshop and Painter sensitivity plugins and beyond that, pfft, gravy yeah? If there's any fine tuning to be done after that I've never discovered it from lack of need for it. ymmv of course.

Jason

JK, for configuring for painter, were you referring to the Power Suite CD?

I don't recall if it was the drivers CD or the seperate power suite CD. stick them in your CD tray and find out if you haven't already

Jason

Will do that. Know any sites with brush libraries that are worth getting for painter?

One thing i never got figured out on mine at my old office was how to configure the working area on the tablet to match a document size in photoshop...had a look at the new graphire 2 today and am thinking of buying it, i miss the one i used at a clients of mine.

also does anyone know a way of configuring the table so if say you are working on an image in portratit mode you can turn the tablet so it rotates round the left corner say clockwise 90 degrees and then the bottom left corner would be the top left corner, and get photoshop or use the drivers to configure the tablet this way??

thanks

Tom,

Configuring the tablet to match your workspace is quite simple. It was necessary for me to do this because I have two monitors, but only use one for painting. That means that half of my tablet would go to waste when doing art if I did not configure it to use only one monitors dimmensions.

Wacom tablets specifically provide a Wacom Controls option in your Control Panel. Go there, and then choose Pen, in my case i2 Grip Pen, then choose Mapping/Speed.

Under Mapping/Speed there is an area called "Display Area" - It should currently have the words "Monitor 1" with a small bullet box selected. Below there should be an unselected option called "Portion of Display." Click on that a new window will appear. This new window allows you to configure that display setup. Click the button "Click to define screen area" and it will allow you to click the top left and bottom right dimmensions of your screen, which in your case might be the dimmensions of your adobe photoshop canvas. Do so, then select Ok, Apply, Ok.

Restart adobe photoshop if necessary and then guide your pen along the dimmensions. You 'should' find that the pen is now restricted to the dimmensions of your canvas.

Enjoy!

For a final response to my own question, JK provided the correct information. On the Wacom Power Suite CD there are Wacom PenTools for Painter/Photoshop and PenPallete for Photoshop. PenTools increases the functionality of the Wacom Tools and Penpallete adds special filters designed to be used along with wacom pressure sensitive pens/tablets for some great filtering effects.

wuji thanks for the info that will really help, i am off to pick up my wacom tomorrow

Emps or someone it might be a good idea to tack this onto the FAQ.

Argghhhh!!!

ok, i followed your instructions exactly (i am using ps7)


I created a new ps document and clicked on the top left white part of the new image, i then went to try and click on the bottom right area of the image but it dissapeared! my canvass doesnt match the exact size of the new image, say i breate an image at 1280x1040 and zoom out to 66.7% which is what i want to work at. I have the outer grey area around the image.

i fire up the control panel, do as you suggest selecting the top left pixel in white area and bottom white pixel area but even after pressing ok and then restarting ps and recreating that exact image i dont get the top left corner and bottom right corner of the image matching the box on the tablet itself

problem number 2

when i test the pressure settings for the pen in the control panel it works fine .ie press lightly smal mark,heavy thick.

but in ps7 no difference say in airbrush or paintbrush tools.

WTF am i doing wrong??? And yes i did RTFM

Make sure your wacom controls are set to use the Pen and not Mouse Mode. if it is Mouse mode, or ifyou made those changes for Mouse Mode, it will only affect the Wacom Mouse, not the Pen boundaries.

If this is not the case, let me know and ill take some screenshots to guide you through it.

wuji i double checked again that i was in pen mode...stilll no joy.

thanks for ya reply

tom