Been using mine, it is indeed like a pencil, and I will always use the mouse for most everything, but for drawing something zoomed in, it is great!
I am still pretty much a beginner, so I really need to see your posts, try them out, and learn. Lou had the most informative Graphire info, and it really helped me, here it is again,
Lou M – 09:42am Jan 22, 2004 Pacific
Hi, folks. I admit I succumbed to the Wacom Graphire frenzy that was on this forum before the holidays. I got one
for Christmas! (Santa can be so reliable sometimes, especially when provided with URLs.) <ahem> Anyway, I’ve
been using it off and on for a few weeks now, and thought I’d give some tips on what I find useful. These tips are
on my Mac, and I assume similar if not identical things apply to Windows.
1. Set Tracking to Pen Mode. In mouse mode, you don’t get nearly the control you do in Pen mode.
2. I set the side button to be a double-click on the bottom, and right-click on the top. Actually, the right-click
setting didn’t always work, so I chose "Modifier…" and set it to "Control Key" and "Click" (this is a Mac-only thing)
3. I like using the Click Sound setting, but find that Elements pauses whenever a click occurs and this messes up
my flow. So it’s now off.
4. I live and die by tool tips (the little text that pops up when you hover over an icon or button) but it seemed like
they never popped up when I hovered over them with the pen. Then–duh!–I realized my hand was moving/shaking
slightly, so Elements never thought I was hovering in one spot. Then I realized you could lift the pen up so that its
movement wasn’t detected, and then the tooltip would show up. (Aside: then pen only needs to contact the
surface in order to generate a click; to move the pointer on screen, just move then pen while it’s a few millimeters
above the surface.)
5. Then pen’s pad is PEN-SENSITIVE, not TOUCH-SENSITIVE. It took me a while to realize this, although it’s pretty
obvious in retrospect. I keep thinking it’s like a laptop’s touchpad and I should keep my hand/wrist off of it. But
that’s totally wrong–and makes it really hard to draw. So feel free to rest or move your hand across the pad as
you’re drawing; it will not affect the pen at all.
Follow his instructions, and you will get more out of the tablet, Jane
