Recently Amazon had a Big Smile sale and they were offering photo editing/drawing tablets. By that I mean, to connect it to the computer and use an accompanying pen to edit photos with. It was not an iPad/Galaxy type tablet.
I always wanted to try one of these, but was never sure I’d adapt to it. I would generally see Wacon tablets starting at (AUD)$100 and wasn’t going to pay that much for something I might not adapt to. So, when I saw the Big Smile sale and found one for (AUD)$50, I immediately decided to try my luck.
I’ve had it for a while now and I have to say I have adapted very well to it. I got a XP-PEN Star 03, with 8 customizable buttons, adjusts to left handers (I am left handed) and you can rotate the orientation/direction of the tablet. As a left handed person, I rotated it 270o so that the buttons would not sit under the palm of my hand, but instead closer to my free hand.
There are a few interesting things I can say about what using the tablet to edit photos has done for me. First thing is that (digitally) cleaning up dust and scratches from old photos for restoration has become faster. I used to take about 1 hour per photo just to remove dust and scratches using the technique presented in a previous post. With the new tablet, I have cut it down to 30-45 minutes.
I know mine isn’t the most powerful tablet with features beyond what I would ever use, but for my work, I don’t really need that much. I have customized it for Lightroom, Photoshop – mostly for the dust and scratches removal – and am starting to customize to other applications.
The precision and detail that the pen on the tablet allows me to have and the speed in which the pointer moves com
pared to what I get with the mouse are incredibly superior. I am also using the hand that is stronger and has better eye-hand coordination, which significantly reduces the time it takes for me to “aim” the pointer at something. The interesting thing is that even though I am left-handed, I use the mouse on my right hand.
Below are a few photos that I have edited post purchase of the pen, that I have used the photoshop techniques to smooth the skin. The results of the technique I’m using was presented in the post Photoshop, when I was just starting to learn it. I also used the mouse back then and didn’t quite understand the nuances required. I have, as in the original post, put the before and after to help highlight the result of the process.
