             |
The Wacom Graphire
tablet, pen and mouse, bundled with Photoshop LE, Painter Classic and several
other applications, sells for $99. It's available in blueberry, grape, graphite
and slate blue, with indigo, ruby, sage and snow scheduled for release in mid-November.
|
Wacom
Graphire Power Suite Maker:
Wacom Equipment Used: G4 400; Mac OS 9.0.4. Overall Impression: This is a slick little pad that's clearly bargain-priced. The Graphire tablets lack some of the features of their more mature siblings in the Intuos line, but, for the money, they do quite well. Key Benefits: With 512 levels of pressure, which can be adjusted graphically along a curve in the Wacom Control Panel, you can attain a lot of subtlety in your work. Plus it comes with some pretty decent entry-level software and utilities. The pen is comfortable, and the mouse is quite nice, with three buttons and a scroll wheel. It's accurate (1,015 lines per inch), and the driver is very fast. Disappointments: The pad has a small active area, which obviously makes it less useful than some of the other pads on the market. Recommendation: Buy |
Wacom Graphire Power Suite
Pressure-sensitive tablet and graphics software package
by
David Nagel
Executive
Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com
The low end of pressure-sensitive tablets sure has come a long way. I remember my little ADB pad from back in the early '90s—one of the first truly affordable pressure tablets. It was a great idea, but it just wasn't all there. The sensitivity was too sharp, and the driver was slow as the dickens. (Remember watching Photoshop finish sketching your strokes 15 seconds after you stopped drawing?)
The Graphire Power Suite from Wacom has changed all that. Like the days of old, the low end tablet still has a 4" x 5" active area. But, besides the size, you get an outstanding set of tools for the price—$99 including the pad, the pen, the cordless mouse and a chunky software bundle.
Features
The Graphire Power Suite ships with Adobe Photoshop LE, Corel Painter Classic,
Sensiva handwriting notation software (a separate download for Mac right now,
available here)
and the Wacom Control Panel. The Control Panel is one of the most feature-rich
I've seen in a while, with six tab settings for the pen and four for the mouse,
each of which can be customized for individual applications.
The pen itself is comfortable. In addition to the pressure tip, it has a double-ended button that can be programmed for combinations of mouse clicks and keystrokes, as well as an eraser on the end, which, just like a pencil, can be tipped over to erase bitmap data in a graphic (with pressure sensitivity) or text in a text editor.
Post a message in the Creative Mac World Wide User Group.
|
Visit
Our New Sections!
|
 
|