Hi neighbours. Here’s a question that I get pretty regularly. People want to know if you need a tablet to do photo editing, and at what point, if any, a tablet becomes most useful.

What do we mean when we use the term tablet anyway?

In this scenario we are talking about some form of pressure sensitive device that works with a stylus and that acts as an alternative input source for your computer operating system. For many years, this concept was synonymous with products from Wacom, although we are seeing alternatives at lower cost now from people like as Chinese maker XP-Pen.

It is the tablet and stylus together that make the difference, and the people who orient fastest are those who are comfortable writing or drawing with a pen/brush type of device. There are tablets that also include a display and while it sounds like their learning curve may be shorter, many users find them tougher to work with unless they are quite large.

The more traditional tablet with stylus doesn’t need to be that big. In regular discussions on the KelbyOne Community, the size of tablet gets discussed a lot. Based upon feedback from people who actually use them, there is a high preference for the small version. It brings portability and also saves on desktop space. Moreover, the brain easily creates the connection between the working hand and what the eye sees on the display. And unlike the camera which is basically a right hand device, the tablet can be placed and used for whichever hand the user wishes. Just because every image you see as the tablet on the right, does not mean it has to be there. My daughter is left handed and keeps her tablet on the left side of the keyboard.

What’s the Use Case?

The primary driver for a tablet is for the creative editor who wants to do finer grain editing work beyond moving a slider., or making global adjustments. While one can use a tablet for any editing purpose, my own experience has shown that the embracing of a tablet happens in alignment with deepening use of selections, masks, brushes and the like within Photoshop. There is nothing that says you cannot use a tablet with Lightroom but the real value is limited to when you start to use Lightroom’s brush tools that operate on specific areas.

Once you move to Photoshop however, things change. If you are using any of the Healing tools, or the Clone stamp tool, the level of fine control that a stylus and tablet bring you are significant. When doing complex selections, a stylus is a huge advantage. If you are a user of the Pen tool, that alone can justify the cost and the learning curve of a stylus based tablet.

The Learning Curve

Humans are funny. On many times, I have had folks get a tablet and in the first hour decide that it is completely unusable. When we were young, we didn’t give up on crayons this easily and for those of us of a certain vintage, we did not give up on manual transmissions because we stalled the car several times while learning to drive a stick.

For reasons that I choose not to delve into too closely, these days the average person wants perfection right away. Nothing actually works in this manner as competency always requires some level of effort. I have been typing for many years, but will likely never achieve the speed or accuracy of my mother’s level of skill. She put more into it and got more out of it.

Learning to use a tablet requires effort on the part of the user. If you go in with the attitude that it’s going to be difficult and frustrating, you’ll be right. If you go in with the attitude that becoming adept will require proper practice, you will become adept. It really is that simple. The availability of tablets that are also displays can shorten the learning curve somewhat, although you will find screen tablets of small size to be a challenge as your hand holding the stylus is going to block a lot of the screen. in addition to the traditional non-screen tablets, I have a 24” Wacom Cintiq. The large display makes it a joy and ease to use, but it is not portable in any sense. Choose your tool to fit your use cases.

Technical Issues

Operating system upgrades seem to constantly be causing issues for tablet users. I have a simple solution. Whenever you do an operating system upgrade, download the latest drivers for your tablet from the manufacturer’s website and reinstall them. This has solved issues with my own tablets 100% of the time. So one of the things to consider in choosing a tablet platform is to look at how regularly the maker updates their drivers.

Poor drivers can also result in significant latency. You move the stylus and it takes a visible amount of time for the screen cursor to catch up. This can be caused by low end display processors or too little system memory, but when it happens, the issue is typically the tablet driver software. And of course, ensure that the tablet that you are considering supports the operating system that you will be using it on. Device support is one reason where I recommend not being the first on a new version of an operating system as you may discover that your valued tools are not yet supported by version newest.

Recommendations

I only recommend gear that I have bought and use myself. The nice folks at XP-Pen invited me to test their kit and I was open to doing so, but they wanted edit rights to my reviews. I absolutely see their point, but don’t ever agree to such terms. So while I cannot recommend XP-Pen, it is not because I think that there is an issue, but rather that I have no experience at all on which to base a conclusion.

Consequently, my recommendations are going to be Wacom. There are a couple of caveats. I am less than enthused by the quality of Wacom technical support. They are slow and sometimes unresponsive. They do driver updates, but in my experience, sometimes these updates appear rushed. From a hardware perspective, I find their tablets and stylus units to be superb and that they not only last, but handle heavy daily use with aplomb. I do find the number of options potentially confusing.

There are three families of pen based tablets. My longest experience has been with the Intuos Pro lineup. I own a large (excellent but needs lots of desk space), a medium (best for a permanent placement where there is sufficient desk space) and a small (my preferred choice and recommended option for ease of use, space flexibility and portability) They all have touch capabilities, which I personally do not use and for painterly types have an enormous pressure sensitivity range. The regular Intuos line is similar but foregoes touch, and the One line, looks to be a replacement for the old Bamboo series. Frankly, for general photo editing, they all work great, although my personal preference is for the stylus and surface feel of the Pro line.

In display based tablets, Wacom offers the One line, the Cintiq line and the Cintiq Pro line. I own the original Cintiq Pro 24” (no touch) and a Cintiq 13” which is the middle one. I have never seen nor used a Cintiq One so have no thoughts on this. As noted earlier, my opinion is that a display tablet is best large. My Cintiq 13 is currently on a shelf because I find the display too small to be useful for fine editing unless I want to spend my time zooming and moving. It’s a fine piece of kit but is a cabling nightmare and I cannot see what I want so I would not recommend any small display tablet. If you have the space and the money, the Cintiq Pro larger displays are superb. My personal caveat here is that if you are going with a big Cintiq, budget for and buy it with the ERGO stand. This gives a necessary level of positioning flexibility.

Conclusions

Only you can decide if a tablet is worth your time and money. Know that there is a learning curve that will be as steep as you choose to make it. Also know that once you are using a tablet, you will wonder how you ever worked without one.

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I'm Ross Chevalier, thanks for reading, watching and listening and until next time, peace.