The Wacom Intuos4 is a killer graphics tablet and highly recommended if you work with graphics software.

For this review I am referring to the Wacom Intuos4 Medium Pen Tablet, however there are also the Large and Small models available. Each have similar tech specs, and I will discuss why I chose the Medium version in the review.

Wacom bumped up the specs for the Intuos4 line most notably in the pressure sensitivity which is now at an impressive 2,048 levels — double what it was in the Intuos3. The resolution is 5080 lpi (lines per inch), same as it was in the Intuos3 but still the highest resolution you can get in a Wacom tablet.

The other notable changes are in the hardware, most notably the “scroll ring” which replaces the Intuos3′s Touch Strips, and in the new illuminated Express Keys in the Medium and Large models.

The USB cable is also detachable now, which has the added benefit of allowing you to orient the tablet for left-handed or right handed users.

The Intuos4 pen/stylus is also of a newer design, it’s shorter than the stylus that shipped with the Intuos3 and I think it feels nicer in the hand.

The first thing you’ll notice coming from the Intuos3 is that the drawing surface of the Intuos4 has a bit more “grip” or tooth to it. Far less slick and slippery than the Intuos3, Wacom claims it’s more paper-like but my impression was that it had a rubbery feel to it.

That said, the areas where I primarily draw with the stylus are worn down and now more like the Intuous3′s slicker surface, but not as much as the Intuos3. The drawing surface is also no longer replaceable, but in my usage over the last year it has proven to be much more durable that the Intuos3 surface which I had to replace twice.

Drawing and sketching with the Intuos4 with it’s 2,048 pressure sensitivity levels is awesome. You have much more control over the quality of the line you create. And as with the Intuos3, the 5,080 lines per inch of resolution allow you for a very smooth and accurate tracking of the mouse pointer.

I’m not one to use the Express Keys or the Scroll Ring much, but they do what Wacom says they will do. I don’t find the Scroll Ring to be as fluid as I would like as far as the on-screen scrolling.

As usual, the drivers for the Intuos series offer much more customization over the lower-priced consumer line Bamboo graphics tablets, including a per-application button customization which I find to be indispensable.

The primary graphics software I use my Wacom Intuos4 tablet with is Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. I’m very happy to report that it works great with both of those applications. Drawing in Adobe Photoshop in conjunction with the Wacom Intuos4 is a dream since the release of Creative Suite 4 (and Creative Suite 5) due to the new Rotate View tool and the Drag-Resize Brush keyboard shortcut. It’s as close to working on paper as I can imagine it can get.

As far as durability of the Intuos4, aside from the wearing off of the toothy surface, the tablet has held up great and as with all the Wacom tablets I have owned, I have had zero problems with it.

I am using the Intuos4 on a Mac Pro running Mac OS X 10.6.4 and have had no major issues with it that I can recall. I keep my Wacom drivers updated regularly.

The Intuos4 tablets are noticeably thinner than the Intuos3 models, which is a welcome change. The Intuos4 sits nice and unobtrusively on my desk in front of my keyboard (yes, that’s where I place mine).

One last note on my choice of the Medium model: I use dual monitors on my Mac setup, and having the extra drawing surface area helps to keep my hand movements more natural and give me a bit of “play” in the tracking of the stylus. A larger tablet would require me to have to move my arm too far to span the dual-monitor desktop, and a smaller tablet would make the mouse pointer move too fast. If you have a single monitor setup, I would suggest the Small model.

In summary, I love my Wacom Intuos4 and the upgrade from the Intuos3 was well worth it. If you are an Intuos3 user looking to upgrade, I think you’ll be very happy with the purchase. If you are a user of the Bamboo or one of Wacom’s other consumer-level models, the price jump is well worth the quality and features you get with the Intuos4. And if you are new to the entire graphics tablet world, you can’t go wrong with an Intuos from Wacom. It’s an investment that will last for many many years.

While the newer Bamboo graphics tablets are quite nice (I own one myself for occasional use with my MacBook), nothing beats the Intuos4.

Review: Wacom Intuos4 Graphics Tablet is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghill Cartooning

I recently wrote a guest-review over at Mac OS X-based graphic design blog The Graphic Mac for the brand-new font management utility Fontcase.

In short, I have found Fontcase to be a very cool new font manager for OS X. It has a few limitations, but the good news is that the developers at Bohemian Coding have told me all the small gripes I had were to be remedied in the near future and the ones they weren’t aware of (which I suggested) were also added to the feature list.

The biggest drawback for me was the lack of auto-activation plugins for the Adobe Creative Suite software. I currently use the free version of Font Explorer X by Linotype, and it’s something that would be difficult to work without. But it’s coming for Fontcase, and once it does I can see myself seriously considering picking up a license and switching my font manager in the (hopefully) near future.

Head on over to the Fontcase review at The Graphic Mac for my full thoughts.

Fontcase Review at The Graphic Mac is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghill Cartooning

Actually, the Adobe issues began with 10.5 and Acrobat Professional. There was an issue with the print function, but this was something Adobe recognize and blatantly acknowledged would be fixed in late January 2008 — and indeed it was. But other, more sinister issues were lurking in the shadows, preying on InDesign CS3 — issues with placing objects, using the open/save dialog boxes. Yikes. Issues with placing objects in InDesign is pretty much a deal-killer, no?

Turns out the Adobe InDesign team was aware of, and working on, the issues. Only problem is that they weren’t exactly sure what the problem was, although they had it narrowed down to some degree. From what I can gather over at Tim Cole’s InDesign Back Channel blog, the issues are still not fixed but anticipated to be resolved shortly.

As I recently upgraded to a awesome new MacPro, I had no choice but to move to Leopard. I was a bit hesitant about doing so, but a friend was looking to buy my old G4, and I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to offset (some of) the cost of a new machine. As I mentioned above, for the most part things have been just fine.

There are some issues however; another non-critical issue with InDesign not respecting the “hide” menu command has reared it head. Not a big deal as it doesn’t affect workflow. And ever since I activated 10.5′s new “Spaces” (multiple virtual desktops) feature, I sometimes lose all my palettes, requiring an old-fashioned ‘tab’ keystroke (twice in this case) to bring them back. And this happens in Illustrator as well. I have read that Adobe is aware of this issue as well. Kind of annoying, but Spaces, at least on main work machine, is losing favor with me anyways.

I still believe, at least as of the date of this post, that the user should be aware and cautious when upgrading to Leopard if one is a CS3 user.

InDesign CS3 & Mac OSX 10.5 “Leopard”: The Good, The Bad & The Not-Too-Shabby is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghill Cartooning

The review is a companion blog post to his video segment on The Lab with Leo Laporte, which is included as a Google video clip on the post as well.

Rick’s opinion overall is that Spreadshirt is the way to go. Personally, I use the Zazzle service for my cartoon art t-shirts, and have not seen samples of the other services so I can’t compare. I have only seen samples of the light-color shirt printing from Zazzle, and thought it had pretty good quality for the printing technology. I need to order a dark shirt and compare quality.

Spreadshirt has one feature not offered by the others: plot printing. Plot printing is basically like a vinyl sign print, and therefore is limited to flat colors only, and three colors max. While this eliminates blends, gradients and the like, one could still make some exaggerated halftone dots in plot-printed designs. James Dempsey has a great Adobe Illustrator tutorial on creating halftone dots, and Vonster has another excellent halftone dot effect tutorial over at Illustration Class. Note that plot-printing with Spreadshirt requires elements to be a minimum width of .061″.

Overall, an excellent resource for anyone wanting a comparison of these services.

CafePress, Zazzle & Spreadshirt Showdown is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghill Cartooning

In short, the Bamboo is a great entry-level tablet for casual users, but graphic artists will want to seriously consider investing in one of the pricier, but more fully-featured Intuos3 models. Read on for full details.

Out of the box, this thing impresses. Looks very slick, and is amazingly and significantly thinner than the Intuos3 series graphics tablets. Also, the non-active area around the tablet is much reduced, although it may be an optical illusion based on the differing placement of the buttons and scroll area.

The scroll area is round, as opposed to the vertical Touch Strip on the Intuos. I don’t like the Intuos3′s TouchStrip, and found the round touch-sensitive scroll area on the Bamboo to be much more ergonomic. The Bamboo has a unique pen as well, about the same thickness as the Intuos3 stylus, but shorter. It has a decent weight and balance to it, but here I prefer the Intuos3 stylus.

Driver installation was a breeze – the software doesn’t even require a reboot on OS X. Otherwise you just plug it in to a free USB port and you’re all set. One nice feature on the Bamboo that I wish my Intuos had: a detachable USB cable. Nice touch, and I have no idea why the smallest model in the Intuos3 series doesn’t follow suit. Not a deal-breaker for the Intuos3, but cool nonetheless.

I let Dad play around for a while, a bit (understandably) bewildered. Using a graphics tablet takes some acclimatization; I usually recommend using for at least an hour a day for about a month or so. Your mind & meat need to get used to the mechanics of the new device. I swear by ‘Pen Mode’ , where the area of the tablet is matched exactly to the area of the monitor. There’s also ‘Mouse Mode’, where the tablet acts just like a mouse – you can lift away from the tablet surface and drop the stylus back down in another area on the tablet, and the pointer stays where you left it on-screen. Dad seemed to prefer Mouse Mode, but I think that preference will soon wear off. It probably helps with the transition, however.

When I finally had my chance to play with the Bamboo a bit, the first glaring difference I noticed was in the material used for the tablet surface itself – much less silky than the Intuos3 surface. Not bad by any means, but after using the pro series, it’s very noticeable. It reminds me very much of the surface on the old Wacom tablet I use at a contract client’s office who still uses G3 computers (and OS9!) – those older tablets need Apple’s old ADB/serial port that is now (thankfully) discontinued on Macs in favor of USB. I’m not sure of the exact model, but it was not a pro series for sure. Probably an equivalent to the niche the Bamboo now fills.

Another major difference was the driver software. I was quite surprised to see that the Bamboo driver software does not support application-specific settings as does the Intuos3 series. You can set sensitivity settings and customize the stylus buttons, but these are applied system-wide.

Not a major issue, but for customization geeks like myself, this is a limiting feature. Per-application settings for stylus button functions and pressure sensitivity is handy for those instances when you want it. For the target Bamboo customer though, probably fine. The driver software also required you to set everything with sliders, as opposed to the small “scratch pad” area on the Intuos3 driver which would interpret your actual stylus usage and set the sliders automagically.

I thought to myself that Wacom should incorporate the advanced Intuos3 features in the preferences – but gray them out so users would know what other features are available with the high-end models.

Otherwise, the Bamboo was quite impressive, especially considering the price point. I went with the bare-bones version because I knew the Bamboo Fun’s mouse would never be used, and the Bamboo Fun also didn’t look a sleek as the standard version – the rounded edges make it look too toy-like. With a lower pressure sensitivity than the Intuos3 series, you have to allow for the inherent differences. But for basic, casual drawing and photo retouching — as well as general input device usage — the Bamboo delivers.

If you are a graphics professional, or prefer more customization with your tools, I highly suggest spending the extra cash to get an Intuos3 series graphics tablet instead; it’s well worth the price jump. However for the basic, occasional use — or for an introduction into the world of graphics tablets — you can’t go wrong with the Wacom Bamboo.

Wacom Bamboo Graphics Tablet: Nice Entry-Level Tool, But Limited is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghill Cartooning