[pixlart]

Hi:

I recently discovered a useful productivity enhancement that I'd like to share with Wacom Intuos3 and Cintiq 21UX owners.

I've owned a Wacom Intuos3 tablet for about a year. When I initially received it, I found that when using it with Corel Painter IX, the Touch Strips and ExpressKeys (located on either side of the drawing area) were a nuisance and that I would inadvertently hit/touch them with my drawing hand. To eliminate the problem, I disabled them.

Well, I recently had one of those Aha! moments and realized that I could take advantage of this functionality for productive purposes. I've mapped Painter's Increase Brush Size and Decrease Brush Size keys to the Touch Strip.

Since I'm left-handed, I applied this functionality to the right Touch Strip (I keep the left Touch Strip disabled to avoid accidental input when my left palm occasionally rubs it while drawing). Right-handers may want to alternatively apply this functionality to their left Touch Strip/ExpressKeys set.

This new functionality enables me to paint and interactively adjust my brush size. The size change increment is adjustable in the Preferences: General palette. I personally prefer a 2 pixel increment, but you can set it to any interval you'd like.

Once I mapped the Touch Strip, I played around with the adjacent ExpressKeys and found that they make very useful screen adjusting shortcuts. I've mapped the keys to Zoom In, Zoom Out, Fit in Window, and Toggle between Full Screen and Window modes. All this is now accomplished without interrupting my drawing/painting activity.

I'm assuming that this functionality will also work with the Cintiq 21UX (which also has ExpressKeys and Touch Strips. I don't have one, so I can't test it, but I'm believe the drivers are the same.

I hope this is useful for some of you Intuos3/Cintiq owners.

Viva la Painter!


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John Derry

Email your Painter suggestions to the Painter Team at Corel! - [email protected]

[stoli]

I do the same thing in Photoshop with the touchstrip. In addition, I have the express keys set to brush, eraser, alt, and space. I rarely have to move my left hand to the keyboard.

Does anyone know how to adjust the brush increment size in Photoshop? The jump from 10 to 20 can get irritating.

[eyewoo]

Agreed about that 10 to 20 jump problem... and I also have the touch keys on my Wacom set to brush and erase, which works so very well...
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[neff]

mmh, nice. i mapped redo, alt, ctrl and shift on my expresskeys...
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[saiko]

i live my Intuos 2 6X8 ... no 'problem' of expreess keys !!


cheers,
saiko

[buntaro]

Another useful programmable key combo in Painter is command-option, (at least on Macs), hold down the progammed Intuos3 key and resize the brush with the pen, let up the key, go back to painting with the resized brush. Very quick, very handy, and keeps me from having a bunch of different sizes of the same brush in my custom palette.
I also have command-z, or undo, as one of my Intuos keys, keep drawing fast and loose, if I run amok, hit the undo key as needed.