- Wacom 12WX
WACOM 12 WX
I have just received the new Wacom 12 wx tablet and thought it appropriate to write alittle bit about it before I do a full review of it’s features. I have been interested in advancing my skills in the design stage of Lightroom and Photoshop CS4 and have found that with a mouse there is only so many things you can do before accuracy becomes somewhat hit and miss.
I read various reviews of the tablet before handand then watched a podcast by the team at Layers TV and decided that this was the tool for me to be able to add different effects to my processing in CS4.
Once the tablet arrived, it became clear that I could not run the same system that I have had for some time. This is focused around two large 24 inch HD screens supported by a GeForce Ultra Graphics Card. Whilst this supports two DVI ports, attempting to wire up a VGA splitter just produced poor quality graphics and an unstable system. So, to get around this I have arranged the Wacom to be my primary screen and one of the main monitors to be my secondary. As I do most of my processing on this large system, the accompanying laptop can be used for the internet stuff.
Although I have had the tablet for only a few days, the benefits are evident straight away. To allow the easy use of CS4 and LR2, I have set my main workspace in CS4 onto the large 24 inch screen. Here the panels are all visible and it allows me to access the tools I need by a simple ‘toggle’ button on the Wacom tablet.
The tablet itself displays the image, whether in jpeg or raw formats. However, if I then try and place the working image on the main screen, the image disappears and a black canvas replaces the work.
To get around this I have increased the navigation panel to its largest size for the screen, so now I can see the image on the main screen, which does help for overall perspective and composition. LR2 is as easy as ever to use and with the great benefits of the hot keys on the tablet accessing them is a easy as you would expect for the price of the item. Cheap, it is not, however if you want to invest in something that will alter the way in which you conduct your workflow and have dramatic changes to the finished product then this item does the job a treat. I am going to spend a little time getting use to the overall performance of the tablet and will poast an updated article once my overall review is completed. I will also post a couple of images that I have created using only the tablet and include the ease of use, if that is the case; and what I thought of the overall performance.
My set up at the moment has the tablet plugged directly into the secong DVI port on the graphics card, however I intend to do some research to see if this can be improved with no concequences to the overall performace and calibration of the hardware.
Filed under: Equipment
