It really depends on how you draw and if you plan on doing any tracing. For me, I have to have room when I draw as I'm not that artistic to begin with. In addition, I do some tracing from time to time and need the larger space. Finally, I use my tablet with CC3 and so need the larger space for the customized template for all the macros and such.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that one benefit of the smaller tablet is the portability. If you will be moving around a lot a smaller tablet is much nicer. Also, I wanted to recommend that you get yourself a piece of paper that is the same size as the drawing area of the tablet and try drawing a picture on it and see how it "feels" to you. That will go a long way toward making the decision regarding size.
Last edited by RPMiller; 10-25-2008 at 12:56 PM.
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I bought a large tablet initially and hated it. It takes ages to move the pointer around the screen and it took up a huge amount of desk space. I then got an A6 wacom and haven't looked back. I have never felt that the size was too small when working on it. I have absolutely no regrets about going for the smaller model and it comes with me in my laptop bag wherever I go.
That's interesting. I thought about the size issue too. When I'm drawing in the old-fashioned way, I'd never use anything smaller than A4, so I thought a smaller tablet wouldn't make sense for me. What do you mean when you say that it "takes ages" to move the pointer around the screen?
Big arm movements.
The tablets map to the screen, so to move from one side to the other using the stylus requires moving from one edge of the tablet to the other.
If you are used to a more sensitive mouse setup, say 2 inches of movement across the whole screen, this change takes getting used to as you arm has to move, not just your wrist.
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Well I use my tablet to draw images that are A4 and larger. The point really is how often you draw one stroke from one side of an A4 page to another? If you are not doing large strokes like that then you don't need your whole image up on the screen. You zoom in on the area you are working on and the tablet will map very well to that region. You then move the window to the next piece of the image and work on that. I've found no issue with working like this. It just allows you to zoom out on the image for doing the rough sketching and then zoom in when you work in the detail.
The one issue I can see with the smaller tablet is that you can't really trace anything that is larger than the drawable size without some careful jiggling but I don't trace stuff so its not so much of an issue for me. Hope that makes sense.
Regarding the large arm movements, don't forget that you can turn off the point to point mapping and have the stylus behave exactly like a mouse moving further the faster it is moved. For navigation stuff I have the configuration set to mouse, and for drawing and other precise work including text conversion I have it set to stylus. One of the greatest strengths of the Wacom tablets is their configuration ability.
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That's a really good point. The large tablet I had before was a nisus and I don't believe it had that level of configuration. I have tadmit that I haven't looked that deeply into the Wacom configuration. Can you set it up so that it switches automatically between modes - or do you have to go into the settings every time you want to change between stylus and mouse behaviour?
That's the cool thing! The configuration recognizes the different styluses and mouse as well as the applications. So you can actually configure each input device and each application to have their own settings. So if I'm primarily doing typical "mouse stuff" I just grab the mouse or my second stylus depending on the application of course. The primary stylus (the one with the padding) is configured as a pure stylus in all applications so it always behaves like a stylus when I use it.
It sounds kind of complex I know, but once you have it set up, you are set and it works great. It isn't hard to set up either, but I do recommend reading the documentation before you do it so that you understand the options and the configuration set up.
Bill Stickers is innocent! It isn't Bill's fault that he was hanging out in the wrong place.
Please make an effort to tag all threads. This will greatly enhance the usability of the forums.
I recently found an older wacom model (volito 1) that was sold blistered on eBay for only 14€ (yes I said 14€, not 140 !) so that made something like 20€ (around $25 or something like that)... and I'm so happy with it ! It has only one stylus that has only pressure recognition, no additional stuff but is highly sufficient for my needs. Plus, my new laptop automatically set up the built-in Tablet PC options (built-in every Packard Bell model, even non-tablet pc)...
I now use it with Photoshop, Illustrator, Blender and the like and it's almost a must have for any would-be graphic designer...
Definitely no problems with it. I have my mouse and tablet plugged in and found no conflict between them. I only disabled the "click animation" that goes with the stylus in Vista, because it caused lags... but now I did that it's perfectly fluid.
Plus, shipped in two days (Belgium is far smaller than the US ^^).
Clearly, 20€ was worth the expense ;-)
Edit : I think they still have some for sale, in case someone would be interested ;-)
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I bought a tablet a couple of years ago, but I couldn't get the hang of it and stopped using it almost immediately.
So I'm a mouse-man myself
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