[quattro]

hi there,

i was curios to find out of how many of you guys out there use the wacom cintiq vs the intuos series tablets. Is the advantages worth the cost? Personally I have been using only the intuos series and would like to get some feed back on the cintiq from those of you who uses the cintiq.

thanks.

[Impaler]

From what I've gather, the Cintiq takes the main advantage of the Intuos, an unobstructed view of your drawing, and puts your hand in the way again. Plus, for the cost of a Cintiq, you could get a fat Intuos 2 and TWO top of the line monitors, which is better, in my opinion at least, than gettingwhat amounts to a beefy Graphire and an average LCD.
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QED, sort of.

[B0b]

only good thing about the Cintiq is that it gives u a more natural drawing position - ie. u can turn the tablet

[Dekard]

If you are lookin at a Cintiq, you may as well look at a Tablet PC. You can get a gateway M275XL Tablet PC for 1900 or so.. I love mine and it's my PC and everything, not just an extension to my PC.

[skullmonkeys]

I don't know about cintiq but on the tablet pc I found that the cursor lags behind the pen which I found very annoying. Could be different in other models tho.
I'd personaly go with big intuos and a nice monitor.

Plus if you are using painter then you can rotate the canvas so you get a more natural drawing angle.

[Dekard]

I think that would be attributed to the speed of the Tablet the first ones were fairly underpowered the 1.6GHz Pentium-M chip I have in mine with 512MB of RAM works fine.

[Nimr0d]

I have an Intuos2 6x8 at home, and a Cintiq at work, and I can also say that there is no real advantage worth the extra cost. Your hand does get in the way, and it is prohibitively awkward to lift and turn it, eliminating even that perceived advantage. It is a nice and pretty toy that will impress people, but your money could very well serve you better elsewhere (like nice monitors).
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[quattro]

hey nimrod,

do you work in photoshop or painter at work?, so that means that you can't turn the canvass with in painter with the cintiq? it's odd to hear that your hands get in the way since it's suppose to mimic traditional drawing in the first place.

[Nimr0d]

I haven't used painter with the cintiq, only photoshop. But it isn't so much that you can't rotate the canvas (i'm sure you can) it's that I would think one of the perceived advantages of having the cintiq would be to rotate it (the unit itself) for real, which would be much more akin to having real paper/canvas. I have always thought that rotating the canvas on the computer screen was awkward and unnatural, and I rarely if ever do so (except to check proportions or composition). I hope thats clear... In short, Its awkward to rotate the canvas on the screen and the intuos in your lap to the same degree; however, the cintiq isnt any different because its huge and heavy and has a large stand type thing in the back that gets in the way.

It is strange about the hands, but true; even having only drawn with a tablet on the computer for a few years, you find that you are used to being able to see everything all the time on the screen. It doesnt affect traditional drawing, but on the computer its just somewhat disorienting and inconvenient. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way too, some of my coworkers also noted this.
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[Mega Muffin]

[skullmonkeys]

As for the rotating the canvas, yeah it is disorienting at first but it becomes second nature pretty fast. Just like rotating a camera in a 3d application. Im not a painter only user but whenever I use it I do take advantage of that. It's not a must have feature, but it's nice since it's easier on your hands quite a bit.

[MoejoeIC]

I had a Cintiq at my last job as did all my co-workers and know several people who have them.

I used a Mac G4 and had two, twenty inch monitors and the 15" cintiq - It was sometimes a bit of a pain going back and forth between all the monitors and would recommend the "partner" I think you can actually wook up an additional pen tablet to the cintiq now to go back and forth bewteen multiple monitors. The 15" and it was a bit buggy but none of my co-workers ever had any problems with the 18".

I primarily used mine for retouching and it was great. I would highly recommend them for that. If you are an illustrator and are seriously going to be using it a lot then get one, it will pay for itself over in terms of not buying tracing paper or pantone markers ever again - I mean I would plunk down a $100 bucks a month easily in art supplies alone before going digital. If you are a graphic designer using all sorts of other programs and do just a little drawing then this probably isn't for you. Use the money for a cinema display or two.

I initially asked the company to get a 15" because I did not think I would use it that much but immediately regretted it as I used it often and would again say if you can afford it get the larger one and will use it often, make it your primary monitor.

If you have a Cintiq and have not color calibrated it you should, as they all seemed to be a bit off, usually over saturated.

As for the hand issue, it wasn't really that much of an issue for me especially when using photoshop - I almost always had my cintiq in my lap. One of the things I did was set the preferences to "show brush size" once youget comfortable in your workspace... at least I never noticed. I would love to see a small clip on keyboard for the cintiq so I could access the keyboard shortcuts easier and tab turn off the palettes.

The Cintiq speed can be helped by a nice video card and is NOT compatible with all Macs. Make sure you have the appropriate hookups etc, for example it won't work on an iMac. One of my friends who works as an illustrator at famous frames tells me there are artists there who have been able to hook up the 18" Cintiq to Mac laptops and take them on the road to meet with clients.

I used one of those smaller tablet pc's at work too, just to play around with. It was ok for what it was, bit awkward to go back and forth to the keyboard as i drew and stuff and the screen was a little too small for my tastes but it had some potential.
It really comes down to how much you are going to use it IMHO. Good luck, hope my two cents helps.

[digitaldecoy]

I used a Cintiq 18SX for about a month and I must say that there definetly is an improvement in feel compared to the ordinary tablet. Especially when you are sketching the Cintiq feels very comfortable. I once spend a whole workday leaned back in a cosy seat with the Cintiq on my lab and even after 8 hours of permanent scribbling I did not feel uncomfortable.
When it comes to coloring or shading the Cintiq indeeds lacks a bit in precision. The cursor moves a bit sluggish behind your mouse movement and with the 512 pressure points (compared to the 1024 of the intuos 2 series) you definetly loose a bit of controle over your shading. I guess, that this also depends on your personal working style but on comic coloring for example I missed the precision. On the other hand, when painting in photoshop speedpainting style it did not really bother me.
Well, after a month I had to return the hardware (I leaned it for my community convention) and now I�m thinking about bying my own Cintiq. In fact, at the moment I�m not sure if it wouldn�t be the better idea to spend the money on a nice tablet PC which uses the same technology as the Cintiq. I work for WACOM from time to time doing presentations on events and fairs and they asured to me, that tablet PCs use exactly the same technology (you even can use the Cintiq Pen on most tablet PCs). There are some nice tablet PCs on the market and they are even cheaper than a Cintiq 18SX. This comes with the mobilty bonus (painting in the park ... how great that must be). Now, is there anybody who uses a tablet PC for sketching and painting? I would be really interested in some opinions.
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