New computer/art toy
May. 19th, 2005 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beige_alertI bought myself a Wacom Graphire3 4x5 tablet. At only $75 after rebates, it’s a pretty cheap toy, not much more expensive than the fancier mice. I spent yesterday evening getting Linux and X to work with it, so I’m just beginning to get some time in using it, but I think I’m going to like it. At any rate, I’ve never heard of anyone getting a tablet and not liking it. Mostly, they rave about how wonderful they are. If you’ve ever tried to draw with a mouse, or even do a little photo retouching, you’ll understand why a tablet with a pen is appealing.
I ended up using the replacement kernel code from the Linux Wacom Project and rebuilding the kernel, and used the Wacom Project wacom_drv.o to replace the one that came with X, and everything works great. Wacom has apparently been a cooperative company. I’ve still got my regular cordless optical mouse installed, and for most software I essentially now have two mice. The Graphire comes with both a pen and a mouse, so you could use it alone for all your pointing needs if you wanted to.
The cool feature is that Wacom-aware software can read the pressure applied to the pen. Push harder, get a darker line in the Gimp. The pen is double-ended, with stylus and eraser sides. Configure your software right, and go from drawing to erasing just by flipping the pen. Alas, Inkscape does not yet know about tablets. There is a little button on the pen for right-clicking. The pen (and mouse) are wireless and batteryless, interacting somehow with electromagnetic fields from the tablet surface. The more expensive Intuos tablets can also measure the angle between the pen and surface, for another axis of control. If you have tons of money, the $1800 Cintiq combines high-end tablet with 1600x1200 LCD monitor, so you can draw right on the screen. Very cool, and very expensive. I, um, saw one on TV once. That’s as close as I’ve gotten to one.
I ended up using the replacement kernel code from the Linux Wacom Project and rebuilding the kernel, and used the Wacom Project wacom_drv.o to replace the one that came with X, and everything works great. Wacom has apparently been a cooperative company. I’ve still got my regular cordless optical mouse installed, and for most software I essentially now have two mice. The Graphire comes with both a pen and a mouse, so you could use it alone for all your pointing needs if you wanted to.
The cool feature is that Wacom-aware software can read the pressure applied to the pen. Push harder, get a darker line in the Gimp. The pen is double-ended, with stylus and eraser sides. Configure your software right, and go from drawing to erasing just by flipping the pen. Alas, Inkscape does not yet know about tablets. There is a little button on the pen for right-clicking. The pen (and mouse) are wireless and batteryless, interacting somehow with electromagnetic fields from the tablet surface. The more expensive Intuos tablets can also measure the angle between the pen and surface, for another axis of control. If you have tons of money, the $1800 Cintiq combines high-end tablet with 1600x1200 LCD monitor, so you can draw right on the screen. Very cool, and very expensive. I, um, saw one on TV once. That’s as close as I’ve gotten to one.
