I have scanned several thousand photos in and am now going to use
Photoshop to touch them up. How helpful would a pen and a tablet be or
should I just stick to my mouse? If I should go with the pen and tablet,
which one?

Thanks for your help
--
Paula Sims
paula_sims00@hotmail.com
(Remove NO and SPAM when replying)

"Paula Sims" <NOpaula_sims00SPAM@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.198a4af936c86c0898968c@news.snet.sbcgloba l.net...
A pen and tablet would make it much easier. Get a Wacom.




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I find the mouse I have is better than the the tablet on my old computer.
Coupled with keyboard short cuts the mouse should be good enough
IMHOP.


In article <MPG.198a4af936c86c0898968c@news.snet.sbcglobal.ne t>, Paula Sims <NOpaula_sims00SPAM@hotmail.com> wrote:

--
Check out my website @
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~gblank

Considering eating out?; You may end up spending a fortune in cookies.

WhoWill@hear-who.net (Gregory W. Blank) wrote:

Same here.
I have a Wacom and virtually never use it. Just try it once a year or so
and see it doesn't help me. It may be good for painting from scratch,
but for photo touch-up my Kensington trackball does it all. YMMV.

--
Charlie Dilks
Newark, DE USA

Paula Sims writes:

A pen and tablet is _mandatory_ for any serious work in Photoshop.

Wacom.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

Paula Sims wrote:
Personally I only use my tablet for art work, not for day to day
retouching. As it is pressure sensitive it can be brilliant for
manipulating images by hand, but if you're the kind of person who likes
to do things by button presses I wouldn't bother.
If you DO decide to buy one and are not going to use it for serious
artwork then why bother with Wacom when there are cheaper tablets which
would suffice.
I have a Nisis, it was cheap, it does the job I want and the mouse which
came with it was crap, which I understand is the usual case with these
mice.

So, to recap, buy a tablet if you want to work on pictures by hand,
otherwise stick with yer mouse :O)
--
Paul. (This machine will, will not communicate)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Not what it seems...
http://www.geocities.com/dreamst8me/

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 01:59:34 GMT, Paula Sims
<NOpaula_sims00SPAM@hotmail.com> wrote:

If you really want to know, try to sign your signature with a mouse,
It is like using the heel of a muddy boot compared to that of the pen
on a Wacom - however you have to learn and not give up too soon.

Borge
For your information, my stats are:
Win 2000, Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz
1 Gb memory,ADSL
80+40 GB of disc space,Oly C2100 & Optio S
Borge Pedersen :-)
Perth, Australia
mailto:borge@SPAMbigpond.net.au
remove SPAM for email

"Paula Sims" <NOpaula_sims00SPAM@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.198a4af936c86c0898968c@news.snet.sbcgloba l.net...
If you have to do lots of retouching, get a Wacom (even the small ones offer
speed and pressure control). Tracing outlines is also much quicker and
accurate than I can do it with a mouse, but perhaps it's my mouse skills
that are sub par ;-)
I don't use the pen for routine navigation, but for smooth pressure/angle
dependent strokes it is better IMHO.

Bart

In article <j181ivoslertrcts36bbofpnt3v3453qoi@4ax.com>,
Mxsmanic <mxsmanic@hotmail.com> wrote:

With the "O" and "A" user addressable wheels.

Of course it doesn't handle it. I don't "draw" on my photos. I just do
the things I did in the darkroom (plus dozens of others). That never
included airbrushing or other gross changes.

You certainly don't need a tablet for spotting or for the healing brush.

--
Charlie Dilks
Newark, DE USA

"Paula Sims" asked: "I have scanned several thousand photos in and am
now going to use Photoshop to touch them up. How helpful would a pen and
a tablet be or should I just stick to my mouse? If I should go with the
pen and tablet, which one?"
-------------------

You've gotten several opinions about this. I think the important issue
is that you are wanting to "touch up" several thousand images in
Photoshop. If your images are typical, virtually all "touch ups" should
be global in nature for each image: set end points, set mid-tone points,
eliminate any unwanted color casts, sharpen appropriately. These
adjustments can be done in a minute or two per image and are reasonable
for several thousand images. Using a pen and tablet might be better if
you need to make individual selections in images and doing localized
color adjustments, but these probably mean taking 30-min-plus for an
image, a daunting task for thousands of images.

I'd go through the images first with the blunt tools of Levels and/or
Curves to do global corrections. If I had images that needed further
work, I'd try color- and density-based masks, which don't need to be
"drawn" or "painted" so precisely, for the next level of corrections. A
pen-and-tablet will make creating outline masks easier, and will make
drawing/painting/"signing names"/etc. easier. However, for most images,
corrections made with drawn outline masks are time-consuming and often
look "fake" when completed.

I'd save the pen-and-tablet money and spend it on books like Dan
Margulis's Professional Photoshop or Katrin Eismann's Photoshop
Restoration and Retouching.
--
Preston Earle
PEarle@triad.rr.com

Charlie D writes:

Even dodging and burning requires opacity control for best results.

You don't need a tablet for anything, strictly speaking. Then again,
technically you don't need a mouse, either--you could just do everything
with the keyboard. The difference is about the same between keyboard
and mouse as it is between mouse and tablet, as anyone who has used all
of these will confirm.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

In article <lv71ivsvjqs9ifmfee0ip6jn3kutms4p4d@4ax.com>, Mxsmanic <mxsmanic@hotmail.com> wrote:

Thats an opinion & you should state it as such,....the Pro Lab I deal
with and worked for never use any thing but the computer mouse
They; I should add do hundreds of scans a week, for simple
spotting the mouse is perfectly fine and alot less expensive
its also works well for more in depth retouching.

--
Check out my website @
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~gblank

Considering eating out?; You may end up spending a fortune in cookies.

In message <mu81iv06t61d2nsfp7qfgcnbtqa4cabohm@4ax.com>,
Rafe B. <rafe.bustin@verizon.net> wrote:

That must be a recent thing. Last I checked, wireless mice could only
report 50 locations per second; not enough to make me feel connected to
the computer. I run my PS/2 corded optical at 200 reports per second.
--

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
John P Sheehy <JPS@no.komm>

Gregory W. Blank writes:

Since I'm not omniscient, it's reasonable to expect others to take
anything I say as opinion. In any case, I'm not going to put IMO at the
end of every statement I make.

That's their loss, not mine.

That's what I thought, until I bought a Wacom. Now I can't believe the
time I wasted and the garbage I produced because of the constraints of a
mouse.

Preparing scans adequately requires more than just removing a few spots,
too.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

On 26/7/03 2:31 am, "Gregory W. Blank" <WhoWill@hear-who.net> wrote:

Having used a Wacom Graphire for a number of years now I find it
unbelievable that anyone who has used both could find a mouse any more than
barely adequate in comparison for image editing.

I found the benefit of the pen and tablet to far exceed the price.


Pat
--
Photos at:
http://www.shuttercity.com/ShowGalle...ll&AcctID=1251

Paula Sims <NOpaula_sims00SPAM@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.198a4af936c86c0898968c@news.snet.sbcglob al.net>...
BTW, can a pen and a tablet be used (or connected to the computer) at
the same time with a mouse? I'm left-handed (I use pen with my left
hand but use mouse with my right hand), so I'd need a tablet that can
be used on the left side of the keyboard, while at the same time
having a mouse on the right-hand side.

I know that many tablets have a wireless mouse included, but I have
understood that those mice are usually not very good. So I would like
to have the tablet but also a separate wired optical mouse connedted
at the same time. Will this result in problems? My operating system of
choise is Windows XP, if that matters.

-Antti

Yes.

Antti Heiskanen writes:

They can both be connected and available. If you literally try to use
them simultaneously, they'll "fight," because the pen tries to position
the cursor at an absolute location on the screen, while the mouse tries
to move it relatively to another location. It doesn't hurt anything,
but it serves no purpose.

In contrast, you can switch instantly between them if you want, moving
first the mouse and then the pen, or vice versa. The pen is normally
configured to use absolute positioning so that a given spot on the
tablet always represents the same spot on the display, whereas a mouse
is normally configured for relative positioning, so that moving the
mouse moves the cursor from wherever it currently is, without
respositioning it in an absolute sense.

I have a set up like that, except that I have the mouse on the left and
the tablet on the right. I'm right-handed, so I keep the tablet on the
right for very precise work, and the mouse on the left for simple cursor
operations. It took a bit of getting used to, as I previously had moved
the mouse with the right hand, but now I'm accustomed to it and it works
great!

Skip the included mouse. Just get the tablet and use your existing
mouse. I have a Wacom tablet at my right and my old, reliable Microsoft
mouse at my left. The mouse is cranked up to maximum speed, so that it
covers the entire screen with about one inch of movement. This works
well for fast operations, whereas I can use the tablet for slow or
precision stuff.

Having two pointers like this also is convenient when you need to type
things at the same time.

In practice, I use the tablet mostly with Photoshop and Illustrator, and
the mouse for most other things, although I use the tablet whenever I
need precise screen movements (the tablet can resolve 100 points per
millimetre and 1024 levels of pressure, so it is very precise indeed).

There will be no problems. The two work together just fine.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

Antti Heiskanen (antti_heiskanen@hotmail.com) writes:

I'm left-handed and use a Graphire. My wired mouse remains active at the
same time. The only warning Wacom gives is not to have two pointing
devices on the tablet at the same time, but what you propose ought to work.
Their wireless mouse is OK, not great, and there are times (lots of
precise double-clicking where you have to position the cursor over a
number of spots) when mouse is nice--but I hardly ever use it in favor of
the pen.

Brendan
--

I have an old 4x5 wacom with a cordless pen.
I love it.
I can have it working with the normal mouse.
I am right handed