Meow House Theatre

That’s graphics sex, not “graphic” sex. Ya pervs.

I just bought a Wacom Graphire4 4×5 Graphics Pen Tablet and I am in love. A graphics tablet is a device that interfaces with your computer and allows you to use a “pen mouse” in place of a regular mouse. Although the G4 does also come with a wireless battery-less (yes, there are no batteries at all in either the mouse or the pen) “regular” mouse if you prefer to use that instead of the pen for certain applications.

I was looking into a pen mouse and tablet because I do a lot of photo editing in Photoshop and PaintShop Pro, and it is MUCH easier to manipulate photographs, especially when layering in Photoshop, with a pen than with a regular mouse. There is not enough motor finessing allowed with a mouse. I’m talking about when using it to freehand around some portion of the picture, which you then need to “cut” and put onto another layer. It’s possible with a mouse but if you get any of the unwanted pixels (the ones outside the edge of the portion you’re outlining) in the cut, then they’ll show up in the new layer. So I decided that I should look into getting a graphics tablet. I had checked out the Wacom Intuos a while back but for me–considering I’m not a professional graphics artist–they were a little expensive. Then I was searching on Amazon for something and came across the Graphire2, and then when checking on the actual Wacom site discovered that the 2 is actually an older model and they are at Release 4 at this point. So I went back to Amazon, found out they’re selling the later-version Graphire4 for less money than the Graphire2 (I can’t figure that one out) and ordered one.

I ordered it on July 6, late; it shipped on July 9 (next business day) and got here on July 10. And that was free shipping. I don’t know why it was so fast. Ritz Camera, the Amazon merchant, sent it overnight delivery but I didn’t ask for that nor did I pay for it.

Anyway, it was a breeze to set up and it works great. The pen is pressure-sensitive in applications that support this (such as Photoshop) and it is much easier to do fine detail work in photographs. Also, it comes with full versions of Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop Elements, which by themselves would cost far more than $79 by themselves. I actually don’t need the Photoshop Elements because I have the full version of Photoshop anyway. The documentation provided with the tablet says that this version of PS Elements doesn’t work in Vista but to visit the site for updates or downloads. Not sure if that means that there’s a way to make PE work with Vista.

The pen in particular takes some getting used to, but once you do it’s fine. Also I think I prefer it to be in “relative” mode rather than “absolute,” which is what the default is. Relative mode means that it functions like a mouse, where you can drag it across the tablet and the cursor will drag along the screen, much like a regular mouse functions. Absolute mode means that each point on the tablet corresponds to a point on the screen, so if you want to move the pen from the top-right corner to the bottom-left, you have to pick the point up off the tablet and then click back down in the bottom-left corner to make the cursor jump there. So far I prefer relative mode, although the user manual says that absolute is actually easier and faster when using the pen. Maybe I just need to practice more.

There is also an “eraser” on the end of the pen that is very useful in Photoshop. And although I haven’t tried this yet, the clear plastic cover comes off the tablet so you can put a picture underneath if you want to trace it and have it appear on screen. The mouse is pretty good too as just a regular mouse; maybe not quite as good as a normal one, but only very slightly less sensitive to touch. And while you may think a 4″ x 5″ area on which to work is far too small (I thought so too), it’s not. Especially when using the mouse: as long as about half the mouse is on the control area the tablet registers it so you effectively have just about as much area to work on as you do with a regular approximately 6 x 6 mouse pad.

I am looking forward to playing with this a lot more. To my mind I thnk it’s a great buy for anyone who uses graphics applications at less-than-professional level. If you are a serious full-time graphic artist or illustrator, perhaps the Intuos would be better, especially if you can get your employer to pay for it, considering it’s well over two times the cost. The Graphire4 can’t be beat at this price.