Tablet: Pen or Mouse mode?
Hey so today I got my second tablet (Wacom Intuos4 Medium). My first one was a bamboo but it got stolen at board school.
Anyway my question is which do you prefer, Pen or Mouse mode? Pen mode is when the hotspot on the tablet represents the entire screen. Mouse mode is when the cursor moves like a mouse would.
Let me know what your personal preference is.
Anyway my question is which do you prefer, Pen or Mouse mode? Pen mode is when the hotspot on the tablet represents the entire screen. Mouse mode is when the cursor moves like a mouse would.
Let me know what your personal preference is.
Replies
I had my pen set to mouse mode for the first few months, way back when I hardly ever used it. Now I use it far far more and there's really no way on earth you'd catch me using it in moue mode, it just is nowhere near as fast or easy to use. With a mouse you're always holding it and readily able to move it as you need but with a pen you're used to keeping it away from the page until you want to draw a line, so keeping it hovering just an inch or less above the tablet is completely different from what you normally do. When you're drawing in traditional media, you move your pen to the corner if you want to draw in the corner, Mouse mode just doesn't make sense logically and like highelf says I just can't work that way it feels totally alien and unnatural.
In case you're wondering: I use my middle screen for internet browsing, source SDK's hammer (spread across left and mid screen), the bulk of my folder browsing(though often I have a dozen windows open across left and mid screen) then third screen is for instant message chats, chatrooms and anything else of low importance (it's to the side of me rather than left and mid monitors which share the prime space on my desk)
My only problem is I've moved my photoshop layers palette onto my second screen to save on space for the actual image, but this means I need to grab my mouse every time I want to change layer. I haven't found a good solution for this, there just isn't enough space for it on the main screen
Ninja edit: What I really want is the button the cintiq has that toggles which monitor the pen controls. That would be perfect.
/longpost
I just get confused when I click somewhere and my cursor doesn't appear there.
Y_M: The latest wacom drivers have a built in display toggle, at least it does on my intuos 4.
Another option I've been looking into for that is a relatively cheap small intuos 4 small, they go for $150 or so on ebay, reasonable enough to speed things up.
The real trick is getting your workstation setup properly so everything works for you. A lot of people over look this, and its extremely important. Take the time to setup your workstation and you will never look back.
With a mouse, and with the mouse setting on a tablet. The cursor is not mapped to specific areas of the screen. So you have to move the pen like a mouse, otherwise it stay perfectly still. You would take the pen, get close to the tablet with it, then hover over the tablet to move the cursor, similar to dragging a mouse. I hope that clears it up for you.
one other thing i was wondering about is when using the pen is it just like a touch screen when you touch the pen to the screen it will start drawing or do you have to press down a button or something wile doing it, i was just wondering because when im drawing with pen and paper i tend to rest my arm on the paper and i think it would be really annoying if i kept drawing with my elbow or something lol
If you go to the wacom tablet properties > tool > funtions > display toggle and set that the way you want, then put one of the express key to that does it do what you want?
I've set mine to mousemode for a long time now,
I dont have to drag my whole hand across the damn thing every second,
when i place it down it is less of a guess, more acurate,
less dragging mistakes,
i dont have to place the wacom right infront of me, so i can place it better with my keyboard and dont sit with a wrong posture.
Overall it is much faster.
When you do set it to mouse mode, make sure it is fast, you dont want to feel like dragging it,
if you place your hand on the wacom, and have the cursor in the middle of the screen, you need to be able to go to the edge of the screen with a movement of the wrist.
I dont have a mouse on my desk, everything is done with the wacom,
and with that, mousemode becomes much more efficient, and using the pen mode becomes cute.
Isn't there a bit more to it, though? Last time I checked, even in Mouse Mode you get pressure sensitivity and tilt.
I don't have any of that functionality in my 'pen tablet properties' application, which I believe is still what the wacom site tells me is what my tablet needs to use.