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Graphic tablet what can you do. How to set up a drawing tablet

A graphics tablet is a very convenient and functional device. Even the simplest model can drastically simplify the work of the artist, increasing productivity, making it easier to create small image elements. With the help of a graphics tablet, it becomes easier to transfer a drawing to digital format, applying any effects right in the course of its creation. Correctly connecting the tablet and starting to work with it is not just connecting the PC and the device with a cable. Fine settings specific model allow it to be used optimally.

different models graphics tablets can mean different ways data transmission. The tablet most often needs to be connected to a computer USB cable. This method can be used on both simple models and quite advanced products.

To use a tablet with a screen, most likely, you will have to connect it to your computer with two cables at once. One will transmit data about the nature of the work with the pen, the other - video information. For example, such a connection method will be needed to use the graphic Wacom tablet with interactive flat panel.

People who want complete freedom of movement will prefer to buy a device with wireless data transmission mechanics. These tablets are really handy if you don't forget to change the batteries on time or keep a new set of batteries ready at all times. The wireless interface of the modern standard is able not only to provide a stable data transmission channel, but also allows you to freely draw at a distance of up to 10 m from the PC (provided there are no obstacles between the transceivers).

To connect the tablet via Bluetooth, just insert a small transmitter unit into any of the free USB ports. The device can be detected automatically, and the program and drivers for its operation will be downloaded from the update center operating system. However, it is recommended to use the more complex method described below.

Drivers

To use quality graphics tablet, you need to install the necessary software. It can be both drivers and graphics packages for drawing. Everything you need can be found at:

the disc that came with the graphics tablet;
manufacturer's website on the Internet;
thematic forums that bring together enthusiasts of working with one or another tablet for drawing.

Drivers must be installed for operating system (with the correct bitness) that is installed on the computer. In some cases, the PC can find everything it needs when automatic search. For optimal performance, it is recommended that you follow the manufacturer's installation instructions.

Important! Modern operating systems are able to find everything they need on a central site windows updates. However, you should not rely on this method. Only the latest updates are downloaded from the update center required drivers. They will ensure the minimum performance of the drawing tablet, but it is not a fact that they will offer access to the finer settings of the device.

Disabling a service on a desktop PC

On laptops, tablet PCs, the Tablet PC Services service is responsible for interacting with the touchpad and display. On the desktop computer must be stopped and blocked. The service will start immediately after installing the drivers and connecting the tablet.

To disable the service, you will need to complete the following steps.

Press start and click right click mouse on My Computer. The same can be done on the desktop icon. From the drop-down menu, select Manage, and then find the Services section. Find TabletPC Services here. A double click is made on the service. Then you need to click the Stop button. Then select Disabled from the drop-down list and click the Apply button.
Login to Control Panel. In Windows 10, this control section is located in the menu Accessories - Administrative Tools. After that, the Administrative Tools - Computer Management icon is launched. Further user actions are similar to those described in the previous paragraph.

Disabling the standard service on a desktop PC is necessary for the correct operation of drivers and tablet management programs. The data coming to them must not be intercepted or replaced by the system process.

Important! The above actions will be successful only when Account desktop user has Administrator rights. With a standard system installation and PC setup for one owner, this happens automatically. If the computer is a member of a domain with account restrictions, you should contact your system administrator for help.

Configuring Basic Settings

To get the most out of your graphics tablet, it is recommended that you initial setup devices according to the user's personal preferences. Beginners usually make minimal edits. However, an experienced artist, especially those who have previously worked on such devices, will prefer to change the default settings.

Devices different manufacturers configured using their own software tools. But certain similarities in the set of available settings and options are always present. Bamboo pen tablet comes with its own BambooDock program. It allows you to change the mechanics of interaction between the user and the device, both at a basic level and very deeply.

Main functionality

The main set of options, interesting for a beginner, allows you to change the basic features of interaction with the tablet. This includes:

switching the location of the touch areas for right-handed or left-handed;
setting the reaction to pressing each function key.

With the help of such simple settings you can switch the tablet to the touch touchpad mode (except for pen operation), bind the launch of programs or the initiation of mouse clicks to the functional area.

Setting pen options

area more fine tuning will allow adjust the reaction of the tablet for yourself. Here you can adjust the behavior of the pen:

change the level of sensitivity to pressure;
switch the pen to drawing or positioning mode (working as a mouse manipulator);
adjust the area where double tap is detected;
set reactions to pen button presses.

Important! Many tablet manufacturers offer not only to draw, but also to erase already formed areas of the image. To do this, the pen has a so-called eraser at the end. Its parameters, pressure sensitivity can also be adjusted in the tablet settings.

Touch functionality

A graphics tablet can work in the same way as a laptop touchpad, but its functionality in this area is much wider. The user can set not only the usual parameters, such as cursor movement speed, double click time, scrolling speed. Available:

setting actions when touching with one finger;
extended sets of parameters for working with two fingers;
reaction to the user's three fingers.

There is also an option global governance, the user can close windows with four fingers, swipe the active display area in the application, and perform other useful actions.

The PC operating system itself offers some customization options. Here gestures are configured, a specific set of reactions to pen movements. This can greatly facilitate the work of experienced users. It cannot be said that the set of available actions is wide, but it will be familiar and sufficient for people who already use gestures in the Opera browser and others.

To be productive, you should use simple circuits work and method of setting up a graphic tablet.

And the last tip, the most important one for working with a graphics tablet - do not be afraid. Drawing is fast, easy, without thinking about the mechanics of the pen and the touch surface. Wrong things can be easily corrected. And with the increase in the time of using such a wonderful device as a drawing tablet, more and more noticeable, high-quality results will be achieved.

The best graphics tablets of 2019

Wacom Intuos M Bluetooth Graphic Tablet on Yandex Market

Graphic tablet Huion Inspiroy H430P (20/320) on Yandex Market

On Yandex Market

Tablet Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite 10 32Gb LTE on Yandex Market

Graphic Tablet Wacom MobileStudio Pro 16″ 256GB (DTH-W1620M) on Yandex Market

The second article from Alexey Dovgul's short cycle of materials about graphic tablets tells about the intricacies of setting up the newly acquired unit. Do you think it's enough to plug it into a computer? It wasn't there!

Of course, we all love, having bought some new thing, immediately connect it and see how it works. It's good if she needs a driver, but graphic tablets in most cases are recognized by the system as a mouse and immediately start working. An inexperienced retoucher will not immediately detect a catch, because the tablet will work, albeit incorrectly. The point is that the pen will work like a mouse, not edge-to-edge like a tablet (that is, the extreme points on the tablet correspond to the extreme points on the screen).

Therefore, before starting work with the tablet, install the latest driver from the manufacturer's website - the driver in the kit may be outdated due to changes model range and updates of operating systems - reboot and only after that get to work. If you already have a driver, then it will not be superfluous to check the settings.

I will mark only the important points.

Check in the Mapping section if Mode-Pen is set: in this case, the pen will work as a pen, not as a mouse.

In the Screen Area drop-down list, if you are working with one monitor, you should set Full, and if with two, then select a really working monitor (not the one on which you watch TV shows, but the one on which you open Photoshop), for example, let's call it Monitor 1. In otherwise you will have both monitors on the surface of the tablet at once, which will significantly change the proportions and, most importantly, significantly reduce the usability.

Not properly

Right

We also check the Force Proportions checkbox - this will allow you to maintain the correct proportions, that is, if you draw a circle on the tablet, then you will also have a circle on the canvas, not an ellipse.

Tablet Area - Full, but if you are tired of working on a huge tablet, you can reduce the size to your liking (Portion).

Let's set up the keys too: in the Tool palette, select Functions and open the Express Keys section.
If you are working with two monitors, then the first thing you need to do is set up the Display Toggle feature.

And set the order of monitors in the Display Toggle section. However, if you really only watch TV shows on the second monitor, then uncheck the second monitor - one keystroke will be less.

If you are working with one monitor, then do not try to find this menu for yourself - it appears automatically as soon as you connect to a second monitor.

Let's continue configuring Express Keys.
What can be hung on Express Keys on a tablet?

Modifiers (Alt, Command, Shift).
Keystrokes.
Actions in Photoshop.
switch applications.
undo/redo.
application hotkeys.
Tools in Photoshop and Lightroom.
Open Apps like Lightroom or Photoshop.

As an example, let's create a couple of settings for these keys. If you try to use the keyboard less in your work, then it will be useful for you to adjust the Undo function. Select the Keystroke function in Express Keys and set the key combination Cmd + Option + Z or in Windows Ctrl + Alt + Z.

You now have the ability to undo your last action in Photoshop for as long as your History resource lasts.

The second setting is one of my favorites, it's Express Key for Action in Photoshop. To begin with, I create an Action in Photoshop - I'll take any as an example, just to demonstrate its work - and assign Hotkey F2 to it. I use many different Actions, for example, frequency decomposition with a certain radius, merging all layers, creating a layer for working with Dodge & Burn, Color Correction layer, and all of them, depending on the type of activity, I fix in Express Keys.

Thus, you can add several Express Keys, for example, Frequency Separation and Merge Visible, in order to quickly unfold and fold a photo during retouching without resorting to the keyboard.

The next thing I would like to talk about is the Touch Ring (only available in the professional line models), the ring that allows you to change the size of the brush, Zoom and much more that you come up with. To do this, move to the Touch Ring section.

Usually I create only two settings, Zoom and Brush Size, and set the rest to Skip.
I like the zoom offered by the Wacom settings more than if I set Hotkeys from Photoshop - Cmd + / Cmd - through Keystroke, as it works more smoothly. But in the meantime, I like Rotation in Photoshop (Hotkey R) better than the Rotate feature in Wacom's Preferences. Try it and you will understand what I mean.

Turn on the Brush Size setting, it will help you a lot when retouching and rendering details.

Adjust the speed of changing the size of the brush for yourself. I have this setup.

If your tablet has Touch, turn it off! The fact is that when you draw some detail or, even worse, select something, then with the Touch function turned on, the bend of the hand in which you hold the Grip Pen can be recognized as some kind of gesture and spoil you a job. Most often, the function recognizes movements as Zoom or moving around the canvas. In general, it's up to you.

The next setting is extremely important - this is the sensitivity setting of the Grip Pen. On tablets of the professional line, it is possible to adjust the pressure sensitivity of the pen more finely.

The first thing to start setting up is Click Threshold, a parameter that allows you to exclude the effects of accidental touch. For example, you thought about eternity and accidentally touched the tablet with the stylus at the moment of selection with a magnetic lasso, and your selection ended prematurely or was completely discarded. To avoid this situation, there is this parameter, Click Threshold.

Relax your hand and let the pen touch the surface of the tablet under the weight of your hand on the Try Here test field. Got a dot? If yes, then we shift the Threshold parameter further to the right. Appears? Not? Great, so this is your pen impact cutoff setting.

The next parameter is Max Pressure, it is responsible for the level of maximum pressure on the pen shaft. If you feel that when working with the tablet your hand gets tired or the rod wears out a lot, then you need to move this setting to the left, which will reduce the pressure on the pen.

For example, consider two options made with the same pen pressure:

Default pressure.

Shift of the point of maximum pressure.

To adjust this setting, you need to test a comfortable maximum point position where you get maximum results without too much pressure on the pen.

The next parameter is Sensitivity, it is responsible for how sensitive the pen is to your pressure. I like to change this parameter depending on what kind of work I do. For example, if I need to draw shadows on a photo quite quickly, then I increase the sensitivity, and if I need to do a fairly fine and precise job, then I take the sensitivity to the average value.
Here are two examples with the same pressure and different settings; I think the difference is obvious.

But if you do not have a professional tablet model, then only one pressure control is available to you. However, do not despair, because, as my many years of experience have shown, everything is in your hands!

Well, the last setting that I would like to mention is the customization of the buttons on the pen. I myself don't use pen buttons at all, and my main pen has no buttons at all, but colleagues I trust say it's convenient to set one button to the Hand tool (Key Space in Photoshop) or Pan/Scroll, and the other - to the Undo command (Cmd + Option + Z).

By the way, the Tilt Sensitivity parameter for retouching does not matter, since we do not use brushes that would support the tilt angle.

There will be no short summary, because customization and customization are all purely individual. In order to understand which of the settings will be more convenient for you, you need to test the tablet in various conditions and under various types works. So try!

For five years now I have wanted to learn how to draw on a tablet. In January, there was a determination to finally start moving in this direction. In this permanent author's column, I will share my experience of mastering, useful books, tips and resources.

When you enter a new field, there are many questions in your head. Actually, they, sometimes even unconscious, are not verbally formed, and are not allowed to dream. And the first step is to write out all the questions. The second is to methodically look for answers to them and learn a new skill step by step.

So, in which program to draw? What stylus? How often? Where can you read about it?

I've been looking at styluses for a long time. I have bamboo, 53 paper. But the most convenient apple pencil. It has a thin tip, it is pleasant to hold it in the hand, it is stylish. And he makes the perfect pair for the tablet - ipad pro. The thickness and saturation of the line reacts to the force of pressing the pencil on the screen. Those. just like with a normal instrument. For example, if you press harder on the pencil, the line becomes thicker and brighter. Similarly with the apple pencil stylus. Or, you start to put more pressure on the brush - the line becomes thicker, just like with the apple pencil stylus.

And here we can say a few words about the advantages of drawing on a tablet, as opposed to traditional tools:

The art workshop is always with you. No need to carry a suitcase of tools, paints, markers and canvases.
All drawing books right there on the tablet.
If the stroke of the watercolor does not work out or the color is not successful, you can remove it with a light touch of the button.
Clothes and hands are clean.
You don't have to wait for the paint to dry.
When you erase the missing line, the paper does not deteriorate, everything just returns to its original form.
Paper is saved, trees are saved.

There are a couple of obvious downsides:

If a pencil or tablet sits down, and there are no outlets nearby, then that's it, fine for drawing.
Never on a tablet can you achieve such bizarre watercolor stains as on paper.

Let's leave the magic of bizarre watercolor spills to work on paper, but for now let's get back to digital drawing.

I decided on the program rather quickly, focusing on itunes recommendations and reviews of sketching programs on the Internet. The choice fell on Tayasui Sketches. It has all the tools you need to get started. I especially liked the watercolor brush and the ability to make blots. At first, the program seemed complicated. But it always happens until you start to understand and try.

At first you are afraid of the abundance of tools, and then you start to miss them.

The program has a convenient panel, a choice of colors, there is a constantly updated gallery of works from around the world. Well, the developers are alive, constantly tweaking something in the program. Here's what the screen looks like. And examples of inscriptions made with different tools.

About tools. It would be nice to understand what each tool in the program can do. I used five sheets for this, experimenting with intensity, size, different layers and tools.

The pencil is an amazing imitation, indistinguishable from an ordinary simple pencil.

The program also includes a gel pen, a felt-tip pen, a marker brush, a pencil, an acrylic brush, a watercolor brush, an airbrush.

A simple exercise is to draw many variations of one subject. The tool is a pen.

The most difficult, as in life, was watercolor. Sometimes it gives completely unexpected effects when mixing, layering and blotting.

With practice, you can make neat drawings with smooth transitions.

By the way, in the program you can change the canvas - watercolor grained paper, regular landscape sheet, canvas, colored paper. And you can experiment with this too.

3. “Art workshop. Graphics"

There is a small background for drawing on paper, thanks to the project. I will definitely participate in the100dayproject project, on April 4th it is launched by the author of our book “Between Need and Want” El Luna. I plan to draw on the tablet every day.

I did not find any books specifically on digital photography on a tablet in Russian. Drawing without a tutorial is like learning to drive a car on your own. It is possible, but difficult. I bought a magazine in New York on this topic, I will tell about it in the next issue. By the way, one more of the pluses is that you can draw on the plane, the screen is bright and a million colored pencils are at hand.

A postcard made on the flight from New York to Moscow.

The following goals:

learn digital lettering.
continue to master all the tools in Tayasui Sketches.
draw whales, cats and space.
work out a lot of drawings in the technique of visual notes.
more active use of layers, it is very convenient.

Join if you are interested in this topic. Feedback and comments can be emailed to me. [email protected]

Wacom, founded in 1983 in Japan, is at the forefront of the pen tablet market. All thanks to the patented technology of energy transfer using electromagnetic induction.

The goal of the company is the realization of harmonious interaction between a person and personal computer. Therefore, the Wacom graphics tablet has become one of the essential tools for every artist.

Wacom company logo

Description of Wacom tablets

With years of experience in the pen tablet industry, Wacom has come to perfection. They produce easy-to-use tablets that will suit each user depending on their requirements.

All products of the company are divided into three groups:

designer tablets
office and home tablets
business tablets

Designer tablets are the most demanded group in the graphics technology market. Therefore, Wacom has released a special professional line is an IntuosPro drawing tablet and a Cintiq pen display interactive display.

IntuosPro graphics tablets

The Wacom Grip Pen, which comes with the tablet, has a sensitive tip - 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, recognizes the minimum pressing force - 1 gram. The built-in pen position sensor in space allows you to determine the angle of inclination up to 60 degrees.

The tablet itself has a convenient Touch Ring button and a set of custom keys to which you can assign, for example:

brush selection
color selection
switching between instruments

Wacom Standard Pen for IntuosPro

For the convenience of the user, the tablet software includes a special display function - Heads-Up-Display, which allows you to quickly reconfigure the tablet without interrupting your work. The tablet has a built-in Wi-Fi interface that allows you to use the tablet at a distance of 10 meters from the workplace.

The Cintiq combines IntuosPro tablet technology but lets you work right on your tablet's interactive display. Depending on the size, the graphics tablet has a weight of 1.2 kg to 29 kg. The smallest tablet in this family is 13 inches, but even that doesn't come with a battery, the tablets are powered by the mains.

Cintiq line

Depending on the modifications, different operating systems can be installed on these devices, for example:

Microsoft Windows XP, 7, 8
Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5, 10.6

The monitor is based on H-IPS Active Matrix, from 13.3 to 24.1 inches. Regardless of the size of the device, the screen has a resolution of FullHD 1920 × 1080 WUXGA, supports 24-bit color (16.7 million colors).

Wacom also has a versatile Bamboo Stylus in its arsenal. Bamboo stylus fits most tablet computers and mobile devices with capacitive touch display, and also acts as a regular ink pen. And last but not least, the genius pen tablet also supports this stylus, although Genius is a direct competitor for Wacom in the market for devices of this type.

Bamboo Stylus Duo with ink

Sign&save tablet from Wacom is a device that allows you to receive signatures directly in electronic document. This unique product pushed the competitive genius tablet into the background and strengthened Wacom's position.

Sign&save tablet from Wacom

Wacom STU-500 is the most popular model from sign&save tablets. Monochrome TFT-display has 5 inches and a resolution of 640x480 pixels. The screen simulates a paper surface and displays the result in real time. Electromagnetic resonance technology allows you to determine the force of pressing 512 levels. Powered by USB port.

Using graphics tablets (for beginners)

Drawing or other operations that can be done with the tablet are based on correct use pen (stylus). So, before using a graphics tablet: take a pen, like a regular pencil, brush or pen. The function keys should hit comfortably under the fingers.

Before you start using a graphics tablet, you need to do eye-hand coordination exercises:

We launch any graphic editor. We select the most standard tool "Line" and draw a grid with square cells - the cell size is 20-25 mm. Initially, we use the mouse to draw.
Choose in graphics editor Pencil tool and stylus pen on a graphics tablet to draw a thick dot at each intersection of the grid lines.
Repeat step 2, but only draw a cross (X) at each intersection.
When the two previous points can be done, we clear the screen and start drawing something.

It's important to know! On almost all pen tablets, as well as on all tablets from Wacom, the pen stops working at a distance of more than 10 mm. To move the cursor without drawing, the end of the stylus should not touch the surface of the tablet, but also not exceed the maximum possible distance.

Setting up Wacom tablets

Before setting up a graphics tablet, you need to check the drivers for the device. So, bring the tablet pen to the upper right corner of the tablet and press there with the pen - the cursor on the PC screen should move there. Then move the pen to the lower left corner of the tablet and apply pressure there. If the cursor has moved, the drivers are installed, otherwise reinstall or reinstall them from the disk or from the official website of the manufacturer, respectively, according to the tablet model.

If the drivers are installed correctly, proceed to disable TabletPC services. To do this, go to the "Start" menu and write "services.msc" in the search bar.

Opening system services

In the opened services, we are looking for the “Tablet PC Input Service” service.

Service selection

Double-click on it with the mouse and first stop the service - click "Stop", and then turn it off - select the start type "Disable". We restart the PC.

Stopping and disabling the service

All the basic preparations have been completed, but before using the graphics tablet, you need to set it up for yourself.

So, to get to the Wacom graphics tablet settings, you need to:

go to start menu
open the All Programs menu
select the Wacom Tablet folder
launch Wacom Tablet Properties setup

It's important to know! The settings program will not start without a graphics tablet connected to the PC.

The graphics tablet automatically adds settings to the settings for any pen you use - you just need to bring it to the tablet. Each pen has its own personal settings.

Pen Tablet Settings Panel

In the settings window there is an item "Application". It serves to define tablet settings for each individual program. To add a program to the list, press the (+) key.

It's important to know! You need to add the program to the settings only after it has been launched.

Android graphics tablet

It is possible to connect a graphics tablet on android (not younger than the 3rd version) as a graphics tablet. But since the Android tablet is specific to the operating Windows systems, then its use is possible only in Linux OS.

For this you need:

GIMP graphics editor
XorgTablet app for tablet
tablet drivers (Linux only)

The graphical editor is standardly installed in the Ubuntu build on Linux OS. The XorgTablet application can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/xorgtablet/files/XorgTablet/.

To use an Android tablet, you just need to install an application on it (2), install drivers on your PC (3) and work like on a regular graphics tablet.

But there is one feature, not all tablets are able to determine the level of pressure on the screen. For full similarity with a graphics tablet, you need to choose a tablet with an active digitizer and a digital pen. For example, a tablet samsung galaxy Note 10.1 with Wacom digitizer.

Sometimes Android tablet users have a problem: how to unlock graphic key tablet if you forgot it.

So there are a couple of ways:

after five unsuccessful attempts to enter the key, the tablet is blocked and sends a request for data entry Google account. Those. you must enter your email and password, but only if the tablet itself is connected to the Internet.
if the first method did not work out, then you need to do full reset (hard reset) tablet. As a result, all data from the tablet will be deleted, and the settings will return to the standard state. To perform a hard reset, you need to hold down the power button and the volume down button on the tablet. Hold until vibration occurs. After that, small text will appear on the screen, followed by two icons. Use the volume keys to select "Wipe Data" and press the volume up key twice.

It's important to know! During the cleaning of the tablet, do not turn it on yourself, after the cleaning process is completed, the tablet will turn on by itself.