[Frog]

Hiya all,

I'm seriously considering buying one of these as I feel it will be an improvement response-wise to the standard Intuos pen. However the little blighter is quite expensive at �70, almost as much as a Graphire

Anyone got one? And if so is it worth the money? Any input from anyone who's ever held one of these would be much appreciated.

Cheers

[Jelo]

I have one. It gives you smother a feel and more pressure control (really nice). But I stoped use it almost right away. Simply becaus it doesn't have buttons on the shaft..... sooo stupid. I don't like to physically change pen every time I want to right click, may it be in PS or in another program or to simply edit files. The "stroke pen" feels very much designed for MAC, if you don't need more than one button then fine.
But I tell you that if you tweak the softness of your pen in the settings e.g. soft, med, firm or just change the shape of the curve in the advanced setting you'll be pretty much there. Note that the stroke pen does indeed give you a higer pressure resolution of 1024 levels. That you probably won't be able to fully reproduce with the original. But I do prefer the physically firmer feel of the original pen. Now that I've tried the other one I'll stay with the original.
My conclusion is that the main issue for me is the lack of buttons.


Hope this helps. Feel free to add questions if you whant to know more.

[ August 06, 2002: Message edited by: Jelo ]

[Frog]

Yes, I thought that the lack of buttons might be an issue, I've got a heavily customised pop-up menu linked on one of my Wacom buttons, I'm a shortcut junkie. The only way I thought to get round it would be to customise the softbutton strip on the tablet itself but everyone does that anyway

I always change the pressure settings on the fly with the buttons on the tablet as I like to use different settings for different brushes, I just thought that the stroke pen would feel more like a brush since it has so much more give than the normal pen. This would give more response but could also be harder to control...

My pen menu:

[Jabo]

I wonder why there isn't some kinda mousewheel on those pens where you can define the brush width by scrolling, I have to change the width manually in photoshop

[Frog]

You can probably do just that with the wacom airbrush, it has a pressure wheel. It costs even more than the stroke pen though!!

I'm lucky in that I'm left-handed so I can draw with the tablet while my right hand is poised near the brush size keys and the number pad for size and opacity control

[edit] If you own an Intuos you could always stick the brush size controls onto the tablet's buttons. If not you could still put them in the pop-up menu

[ August 07, 2002: Message edited by: Frog ]

[Jabo]

The airbrush has a wheel, yes, but it's kinda big and clumpy. I have a graphire but am seriously about to buy an intous2 A4 (9x12). So I can have those shortcuts on the tablet...