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acresofgreen
acresofgreen
Inspiring
March 13, 2011
Question

Wacom tablet: changing brush size shortcut

  • March 13, 2011
  • 4 replies
  • 80254 views

I just bought a Wacom Intuos 4 tablet  and am experimenting with the settings.  There is a great shortcut in PS CS5 (and CS4?) which lets you modify the brush size & hardness by holding the Alt key and the right mouse button and dragging the mouse up and down or sideways. Is it possible to program the Wacom pen to mirror this functionality?  I found a tip with for the Mac which apparently works but I haven't found a tip for Windows because I can't find a way to combine Right Click with Alt in the Wacom pen settings.

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    4 replies

    J
    Just Another5FB7
    Participant
    July 26, 2021

    On windows you can use alt+ctrl

     

    A
    atypicallife
    Participant
    December 20, 2011

    I realize this post is kind of old, but I found it searching for an answer to the same probem myself. So, after failing to find an answer online and encountering a lot of frustration in my experimenting, I thought I would share the answer to save others some time who might do the same search in the future.

    Though it took me forever to figure it out, the answer is rather simple:

    Just program one of the buttons on your tablet's pen to act as a "Right Click".

    The key is that you must still hold down "Alt" and click and hold the pen's button while you are hovering the pen over the tablet, moving the pen around in the hover position to adjust the size.

    Alternatively, you can set the your pen to "Click & Tap" mode, such that you can drag the pen along the tablet after you click, instead of hovering. I found the settings to switch between this and "Hover Mode" by clicking the "Advanced" button in my tablet's settings.

    P.S. I have Bamboo tablet, so my settings might be different than the Intuos tablet, but since they're both Wacom, they should be similar.

      Trevor.Dennis
      Community Expert
      Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 20, 2011

      Why wouldn't you use the touch ring for brush size?  The third position defaults to brush size and is more intuitive that the right click method IMO. 

        PECourtejoie
        Community Expert
        PECourtejoieCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        December 22, 2011

        I haven't seen it all, but in this excerpt of a Wacom training Video, Angie Taylor explains how to map multiple keys. (but my gut feelings was to try what atypicallife suggested)

        https://partner.video2brain.com/angietaylor/videos-84261.htm

        Noel Carboni
        Noel Carboni
        Legend
        March 13, 2011

        Not having used a tablet myself (yet), I am led to wonder...

        Thinking of the tablet as a more or less mouse replacement, do you not expect to still use the computer keyboard for command modification while using the tablet?  I just sort of naturally assumed your non-writing-hand might want to be over on the keyboard anyway.

        I am anticipating getting a new Intuos 4 myself very soon.  As soon as I have the new workstation together...

        -Noel

        acresofgreen
        acresofgreenAuthor
        Inspiring
        March 13, 2011

        Thanks for your idea of using the two buttons on the pen for increasing and decreasing brush size.  I currently have two of the touch ring settings set up to adjust brush size and brush hardness but I think I will switch to your method for the size.   I hate having to go to different places to adjust size and hardness, so when I saw the Mac tip to make use of the new functionality to adjust size and hardness by merely dragging, I thought it would be great to have.  But I'm not willing to buy a Mac to get it!

        I have as yet no idea how I will be using the keyboard to supplement the tablet (or vice versa).  I guess time will tell!  I have a German keyboard layout, which makes some of the keyboard shortcuts difficult.  Some of the keys not used by Photoshop don't work when I try to use them in customized keyboard shortcuts.

        A
        Anonymous
        March 13, 2011

        No idea, but since making the brush tip larger and smaller is the thing I use the most too, I set the buttons on the pen to do this.

        Bottom button= larger brush

        Top button= smaller brush

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