Upgrading my Wacom tablet

[bjpiper]

I am thinking of upgrading my old wacom grahire 4x6 tablet. I have had and used it all the time for years. But I am tempted by the good prices on Ebay for the Intuos 3. Wondering what users of Elements think of any advantages to the Intuos over the standard grahire. Does the Intous give you more brush control? Such as tilt with the airbrush etc. I use both stylus and mouse.
Or should I save my pennies and go for a new Intuos 4.

I know I would find more uses for the Intuos in my Painter X but I find myself using Elements most of the time.
Any suggestions appreciated.
Betty

[ricklepage]

The Intuos 4 is a very nice tablet - the OLED labels are worth the price alone for me - but if you could find an Intuos 3 tablet at a great price, I'd go with it. I still use mine: I have the smaller version of that and the medium I4 tablet, and I like the portability of the smaller one.

Rick

[bjpiper]

I actually like the small size tablet that I have. I have gotten used to it and it works well with my desktop. I plan to keep it to use with my laptop. It certainly has been a good tablet with no problems all these years with lots of use.
I notice that Wacom gives brushes to use in Photoshop or Elements with the Intous. Are they more usable for artistic painting than the Elements brushes?
I make some of my own brushes that I try to use in Elements like I do in Painter but am not to successful. I want to blend colors together. I am after the tilt option that the Intuos gives to brushes but don't know if that is usable in Elements.

[bjpiper]

I ment to ask what you ment by OLED labels in the Intuos 4?

[ricklepage]

I ment to ask what you ment by OLED labels in the Intuos 4?

The Intuous has little lighted panes next to the buttons, which display labels for what the buttons do when you are in a specific program (because you can set them to do different things in different programs). The panes are little lights, powered by something called OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes), a version of the old LED lights you might be familiar with.

sorry for being so cryptic.

Rick

[bjpiper]

That sounds neat. Maybe I should wait for a Intuos 4. I'll do more research on the Wacom site. Thanks so much.

[Byron Gale]

The Intuous has little lighted panes next to the buttons...EXCEPT that the SMALL size of the Intuos4 does not have these labels... they only build that into the larger tablets.

If that feature was included on the small size, there would be one beside my keyboard right now.

[bjpiper]

I thought I would update this post because I just received my new Wacom Intuos 4. I chose the smallest size, due to my small work area and the cheaper price. I don't think I will be unhappy with this choice as it is actually much wider than my old tablet.
It was extremely easy to install. I have left the setting for the tablet on the default ones until I get used to using the using the touch ring and express keys. My old graphire had neither. I changed the nib right away to the stroke nib. Made a big differance for my painting in Corel Painter.
I find the tablet is great for tilt with Painter X's airbrushes. Since I only have Adoble Elements I, so far, do not see much difference using the tilt with Elements. Perhaps it does in the full Photoshop. I also cannot get the table to zoom with the touch ring in elements and it does easily in Painter. I may just have to learn how to set it. (Hope that is all)
The stylus with the stroke nib make a whale of a differance with my brushes in both programs. Perhaps more in Painter but still the much greater control of pressure is a real plus. Great for selections as well as painting with brushes.
I was disappointed with the tutorials on the Wacom site. I hate to tell you but I think some of them are the same as were there when I purchased my old graphire tablet years ago. I should not be to hard on them, as these tutorils are still good ones. But I would have liked to see more new exciting things to do. I guess Elementsusers is the place for good tutorials for this.
Love to hear from some of you as to how you custom set your touch ring and express keys. I only have the 6 keys and they don't light up, but I think after I get the settings I want down pat, I will be able to remember what the six are for. Anyway that is what I have now to work with.
I will post some work I have done using this tablet and PSE 7 as soon as I can.

By the way, on Wacom's site it says that they offer PSE 7 as one of the downloads that comes free with the Wacom intuos 4. Surprised since that is the currant version. I didn't take the Adobe programs, as I already own them, but I did choose the Painter Sketch Pad, which is pretty basic compaired to the big Painter, but nice to use as a small companion program to use with Elements on my laptop. Takes up less disk space.
Betty

[bjpiper]

I found lots of videos by Wacom on the Wacom Intuos 4.
This one answered my questions about setting up the Express keys and touch ring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJO5C0ZR2T8