Posted by
Miriam Howell
on
19/11/2010
To edit our photographs after they have been processed we use an A5 wide wacom tablet. Wacom’s tablet line is now more than a decade old, and over the last ten years has developed from a group of brick-sized slabs of plastic into the impressive, slimline tablet we use in our editing studio. The A5 Wide is specifically designed for use with the latest widescreen monitors.
For those who haven’t used a Wacom before, here’s a bit of an introduction to this little piece of magic…
Visually the tablet is flat and stylish, with a smoked clear plastic charcoal finish. Functionally, this is a pen-based interface that lets you draw straight onto a tablet within a designated working area. There are two sets of four buttons that by default control various keyboard keys i.e. Alt and Ctrl (these can be customised to work as desired keys). Beside these buttons there are two finger-sensitive scroll touch bars. The tablet is a perfect size to fit on your desktop in front of the keyboard. The A6 is too small and hyper responsive to small movements, and the A4 is too big in for desktop use as when you need to use the keyboard to type it’s hard to avoid pressing on the tablet, making the curser go crazy! A5 wide is ideal for optimizing use of the entire working area in widescreen.
At first it might seem a lot of money for plastic rectangle but wait till you've used it for a few weeks on Photoshop. It makes life go a lot smoother! Overall, it's a terrific piece of kit for anyone that takes working in photographic editing seriously, and although it might take a little while to get used to, once you do it becomes absolutely essential. When I first used it, the pen felt strange, but I gave it a few days, and now I wouldn’t edit without it!