Wacom and Wacom good!

Doh double post! It's 6:30am and I'm on my iPhone.

Yup, you can tune the pressure. You have to, really, if you want it to behave like a pencil.

I find that I actually need to really up the pressure so I can get more out of the low end of the scale.

Might have been pixelated cause you were using the Pencil Tool, which is designed to fill in color in exact 100 opaque pixels, unlike the Brush tool which gives you a variety of opacity in pixels, thus that smoother look...

Press "B" for the Brush tool, however if your preferences are set to change over and over, I forget the actual name of making them stable, maybe Liz can help me out. But I have them set so that each time you press a key, it will change to the next setting, but when I mess up, I just cycle through and keep it on what I need at the time. So sometimes if I press B twice, it will go from the Brush tool to the Pencil tool.

You can also just click on the Tool pad at the left for what you need.

But for a nice pencil "feel", I use a hard brush, which are the first series of brushes in the default brush group... then I set the Opacity to somewhere between 45-75 percent and this is the more important part, I set the Flow to somewhere between 25 - 35 percent. This is what I call the Eddy Swan method.

I don't know Pyro, you may need your own, I hate when my Dad plays with my toys. K that sounds wrong...

Another thought on the pixellish look...

When zooming in and out, Photoshop will hit both 66.7% and 33.3% view. Viewing your work at these "odd" sizes can cause some distortion.

If the new file you opened was a bit too big for a 100% view, it would have automatically zoomed out to 66.7%.

Does anyone know of or willing to make a "so you got your first wacom tablet, here is how in the hell the thing works" article? I've already seen you guys post some things that will be really helpful to my techno-shy sister. Once she gets it I know she gonna give me that look that says "now what" and if there was a nice place to point and say "here!, now go, do artz" I think that would make this bir-stma-duation present more complete.

To give you some perspective, she still hasn't set up a DA page even though I showed her the site over the summer...maybe this is techno-phobia...or more likely she just thinks I'm an idiot...which is well true.

Some useful stuff concerning Photoshop CS3:

Tool Bar breakdown

Tool Bar by version of Photoshop

Wacom Tute for Beginners - Author says it's outdated, but I think it still has some good points.

Painting Tute - Same author as above, expands his new style...

Wacom Basics - Very concise basic info on using a tablet.

Wacom set up for Painter and Photoshop comparison.

That should fill in some of the blanks, if you're looking for a certain kind of coloring tute, let me know... ie. Cell shading, comic style with cuts, or digital painting. Lastly, you should still learn about preparing your line work for coloring properly, AND in my opinion inking digitally...

I've been on the fence about getting my own tablet for a few years now. When they first came out, I was not a big fan...however, it would appear the quality of these have greatly improved - even on the low/beginner end. This thread pushed me over the edge and I ordered my Wacom the other day. Can't wait to use it!

That's awesome JohnnyKat! Glad I could help you spend your hard earned cash.

Christmas Day can't get here soon enough. I think Jr. is going to love this!

You're welcome, there's much more... but after you get the basics down, you can jump through that door.

So anyway I went Christmas shopping the other day and wondered past the tablets they had the bamboo pen, touch and pen/touch. then they had the Large intuos4 and the medium intuos4 then off to the side there a 6X11 intuos3.

I got a screaming deal on the table got it at almost 50% original price the outer box was rather scratched up and i assume it is last years model. I love it.
There is definitely a steep learning curve to get all of the functionallity out of these tablets.

Sounds like you got a nice snag Scoots! Grats!

Yeah just playing with it for five minutes made me realize how much of a learning curve there is. But I think his Jr's young mind can handle it!

Yeah that's a great deal, we got one once for $25 cause it was a discontinued model and a floor model to boot, also had a friend working there. I actually gave it away to a friend I had met during a lecture (from the wife's stock art site), only because he expressed a great interest in one, and was a very nice person... so I chalked it up to art karma.

You will find the learning curve disappears within a year if you apply yourself. I still use my mouse in conjunction, because I find using one to right click isn't very intuitive. Best improvement is the speed factor of using the pen! Enjoy them guys...