Ever wanted more precision than your mouse can provide? For years, Wacom has been producing the excellent Intuos series of tablets, which bring the feel of pencil and paper, or pen and ink, to your computer.
The Wacom Intuos4 comprises a graphics tablet and pen - in combination, they act much like a pen and paper, except that the pen allows for multiple thicknesses and types of brush, and the results appear onscreen directly. The Intuos range are designed for creative professionals - Wacom has a "Bamboo" range for graphics tablet beginners.
 |
| Japanese engineers re-engineered the Intuos pen nib for 2048 levels of sensitivity |
Wacom's Intuos4 range has been in development for over three years. As David Spencer, Managing Director of Wacom Australia explained, the Japanese engineers re-engineered the pen nib for 2048 levels of sensitivity (compared to 1024 on the previous model), then redesigned the pen, for maximum effectiveness, only to discover that the new pen didn't work as perfectly as hoped with the old-style tablet. So they designed a new tablet. And then had to refine the new pen a bit...
After three years of engineering effort the results are impressive - see our review for more detail. The range includes a small, medium, large and extra large models, at 4x6in ($378), 6x9in ($598), 8x13in($798) and 12x19in ($1338).
2048 levels of sensitivity means that the new pen nib can feel a minute 3grams of pressure on the pen, and deliver a slender line in response. Increase the pressure, and the line darkness and thickness also increase (depending on your settings) in 0.25gram increments, so that you can precisely control the results.
Each tablet comes with ExpressKeys that let you control applications from the tablet, each ExpressKey has an OLED display that can show your programmed keys for any application you use, from Scroll and Ctrl through to more advanced scripts you create yourself.
If you don't already have creative software, the Intuos4 comes with Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 (mac) or 7 (Win), Corel Painter Sketch Pad, Autodesk Sketchbook Express, WAcom brushes and Nik Color Effect.
Each Intuos4 includes not only the new pen and tablet, but 10 spare nibs in a pen holder. The small Intuos4 has 6 ExpressKeys, but medium, large and extra large come with 8 ExpressKeys.