What is the best Pen Tablet for Photoshop/Illustrator

[mhossey]

The more I get into design the more I keep seeing digital painting, and hearing about tablets for drawing using pressure sensitive response from the tablet. I've been on wacom and literraly just started researching a bit. I see a bamboo tablet and also an intuos tablet. Any advice for an up and coming designer and which one to buy, what to look for, what not to look for, good/bad experiences and so on?

Michael   

[JJMack]

I agree about the levels of  pressure  It more about the transition between levels the feel of it that is important.  The number of levels is not a big deal. A  1000 levels is more than needed IMO.

However he only use sketchbook and small pen tips and flippantly stated application make no difference.  I can not agree there.  Photoshop with a large high resolution document  zoomed out to fit on screen with a large brush tip and  spacing 1% will have big lag.  Make it a mixer brush you will see a brush stroke  will take forever and a day.  The Application's Design, Brush engine, document size support and settings  can make a very big difference.   It is easy to overtax your machine using Photoshop. It is an image editor with  painting added on. Photoshop always work on the full size document and then scales the result to the zoom level for viewing.  A Painting application may work much differently for a better user experience by painting on the small scale image and work on the full size image in the background.

IMO the Application may make a world of a difference when it come to performance and lag. My first intuos 1 was a 12" tablet tool big and it most likely would still work if you could get a COM device driver for it.   You would most likely need to regress to Windows 95 for that. Wacom now a days support USB and wireless connection of their tablets.  They dropped support for my intuos 1.

[D Fosse]

Trevor.Dennis  wrote

you are going to be very hard pressed to tell the difference between 1000 and 2000 pressure levels.

Yes, I know this post is a month old, but I didn't pay attention back then.

The difference between 1000 and 2000 levels is the difference between 10 and 11 bit depth. Considering your monitor has 8 bit depth (or at most 10) - no, there's no possible way you can tell the difference, even theoretically.

What will make a difference, however, is if some of those levels can be set to touch, no press. In other words, rest the pen on the surface - but no click until you press. The cheaper "Intuos Pen and Touch" that I had, and threw away in disgust, couldn't do that. The Intuos Pro, as I understand, can.

I've come to realize that my main objection to the Intuos Pen and Touch has a name: parallax error. It's completely equivalent to rotating a camera and lens, and getting a planar shift as a result. As your hand rotates around the wrist - the position of the cursor shifts. It ends up in a different place than you thought. To me, this made the tablet completely useless for precision work.

Say what you will about a mouse, but it doesn't do that. It sits dead still until you move it. It doesn't click until you click.

[tonyk16244512]

Wacom tablet is one of the best cheap drawing tablets available under $100. The tablet is also compatible with Mac and Windows Laptop too. It also includes free downloadable software.

[xink29820638]

XP-Pen is more essential to Photoshop/Paint programs than to Illustrator. However, having said that, Illustrator’s brush tool is pressure sensitive and thus using a tablet here is very helpful.

I use XP-Pen products. I currently have an DECO 03 ( https://www.xp-pen.com/goods/show/id/314.html ). I recommend this because it has all the best features, and the drawing size is enough to get the job done. Also it’s a more portable size. It’s about the same size as a laptop, and it fits in the same carrying case, easily. Side note: I has the small size graphics tablet Star G640S ( https://www.xp-pen.com/goods/show/id/371.html ), which was fine. For the way I worked I could get the job done. But the DECO 03 is better because I use two large monitors

[Lance021]

Best Pen Tablets for Graphic Designers and Illustrators – Reviews

• Huion Inspiroy Q11K Wireless Graphic Drawing Tablet. ...
• Parblo Coast10 10.1″ Digital Pen Tablet Display Drawing Monitor. ...
• Huion H610 Pro Graphic Drawing Tablet. ...
• Wacom Cintiq DTH1320AK0 Pro 13″ With Creative Pen Display. ...
• Graphics Tablet M708 UGEE.

[Mohit Goyal]

Hi all,

Take a look at the following article to move designs between Photoshop and Illustrator for different workflow that suits your design objectives: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/move-designs-between-photoshop-illustrator.html

Also, if you are looking to work with Illustrator design in Photoshop? See this: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/use-illustrator-artwork-in-photoshop.html

Hope it helps.

Thanks,

Mohit