Your pros and cons about using a drawing tablet/graphics tablet

hi!

so, i’m actually on a school project and my project is about the uses of the graphic tablet for designing. but, im really short on ideas and data about what is actually the benefits and disadvantages of using the graphic tablet/drawing tablet.

your answers might really, really help me.

thankyou.

Welcome to the forums, @Alya.g.

Designing what? Designing in general, designing logos, designing websites (the main focus of these forums) or what?

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yes, designing in general.

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I’ve been using a graphics tablet at work for many years now and really like them.

They are particularly useful in paint programs.
For an artist used to working with pens, pencils, paint brushes, etc; the stylus has a much more natural feel to it than a mouse for drawing and painting which makes it far easier and more precise.
They are pressure sensitive which means you can apply a varying amount of pressure with the stylus and the program will react to this in a variety of ways. For example the pressure can affect stroke width, opacity, blend between foreground and background colour, etc. This allows you to create more natural looking works, as it can be set up to emulate traditional real world mediums.
As well as the creative effects, the pressure has some practical uses. When matte painting I generally use varying stroke width as it allows me to effectively change my brush size dynamically while painting without having to move away to a tool box every time I want to adjust. So a can press lightly to get around fine details and more heavily on other areas I want to fill quicker.
Another feature is that some have a transparent plastic flap over the tablet so you can place an image on paper, maybe a sketch or photo under it and trace it into your paint program.

Aside from painting they can be good for other graphical applications. Working with vectors, as in CAD or 3D modelling, the absolute positioning of the cursor gives a good level of precision over a mouse.

As for the cons, I can’t think of too many. There is the cost on them. The stylus may not have as many buttons as some mice do, so you won’t have quite so many short-cuts in your hand. Typically the tip is a left click, then there’s a rocker switch where the bottom is right click and the top your middle button, then on the reverse end to the tip is an eraser tool, like on an old pencil has, though these can be reconfigured to your preference. This was meat to be cons.
Some people have difficulty translating their hand movement on the tablet to the cursor movement on the screen, though that’s never been a problem for me. I don’t see how that’s any harder than with a mouse. You can get tablets that are a screen, so it’s like you are drawing directly onto the screen with the stylus.
Another thing is, the ergonomics may not suit everyone. Maybe if you suffer with arthritis or some physical disability of the hand or arm it may not the best tool.

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I don’t do digital art, just any graphics I need for my web projects, but I thought I would really like to have a drawing tablet. My digital artist son gave me one for Christmas a few years ago and I hardly ever use it.

I found adjusting to the different hand movement difficult after using a mouse for most of my image processing for so many years. And because I only used it occasionally, I found the little bit of setting up required was an inconvenience.

Apparently you can have finer control with a tablet than a mouse if you need to do detailed work, but I haven’t found my mouse bad enough to make the effort to get used to a tablet.

So I am still using my mouse for all things graphic, even for the pen tool in Illustrator when I am making vector graphics. But I carry my little drawing table around with my laptop just in case I finally get around to trying to learn how to draw in Photoshop.

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Hello there! :slight_smile: To be honest, getting used to it if you did not grow up drawing in general, feels really odd. But for me and perhaps many other artists that grew up with a pencil/stencil/brush attached to their hand 24/7 this feels very natural. The learning curve is just as if you were to learn how to use a new tool in front of your canvas.

There are many benefits to having a tablet. But the most intricate benefit that I definitely believe it is the number one positive quality is that it lowers the risk of acquiring or aggravating carpal tunnel syndrome due to the ergonomic posture you will acquire while using the pen versus using the mouse or in many cases “overusing” the pen and or the mouse.

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