The Intuos pen supports 1,024 levels of pressure, pressure erasing and tilt. It also sports two programmable buttons for right clicking, click locking, etc. Other pens, including an airbrush, are available for purchase separately.

The cordless, battery-free Intuos 4D mouse is designed for use with 2D and 3D applications. It includes five programmable buttons and a side-mounted thumbwheel, which can be used for scrolling, applying pressure or a number of other functions. A mouse with an adjustable crosshair mount is also available for purchase separately.

The Intuos also ships with a cordless, battery-free mouse that can do significantly more than the mouse that ships with the low-end Graphire tablets. It has five programmable top buttons and a side-mounted thumbwheel, which can be used to scroll, apply pressure or operate in 15-button mode. (The thumbwheel, incidentally, can be configured for left- or right-handed use.) The mouse is designed for use with 3D applications, providing x, y and z input. And, since the Intuos line can accept input from multiple devices, you can, for example, use the mouse to rotate an object while you use the pen to paint on it.

The Wacom Tablet Control Panel (Macintosh) lets you adjust
parameters like pressure sensitivity and button assignment for
each tool of each tablet in your USB chain.

It also ships with a software suite that includes Photoshop LE, Painter and some productivity tools.

In production
So, you get the picture in terms of features. In terms of actual work, the Intuos 9" x 12" tablet is an absolute dream. I do a lot of work in Synthetik Studio Artist, and, at this point, it would be incredibly difficult for me to go back to a standard mouse. Aside from adjusting opacity levels based on pressure, the tablet can also use pressure to affect color, texture, stroke width and any number of additional parameters. This means no more going back and forth in the settings panels to enter numeric values for these parameters. I just set the tablet on my lap and get to work. Of course, the same holds true for Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter, as well as a number of graphics applications in between. (By the way, Studio Artist can also record pressure along Bezier curves, so, when you apply a stroke to a curve, its color, transparency and opacity will be adjusted automatically based upon the pressure used in the creation of a curve.)

In this example, tilt, pressure and velocity input from the Wacom Intuos tablet modulate direction, opacity, density and texture size in this single stroke executed in Synthetik Studio Artist.

 

Pressure's also great for image editing. The Clone tool in Photoshop, for example, can accept pressure data for better, more intuitive touching up of images. Actually, there are tons of tools in Photoshop that support pressure right out of the box. So, basically, you just install your tablet and get started.

The bottom line
With 1,024 levels of pressure, which can be adjusted graphically along a curve in the Wacom Control Panel, you can attain a lot of subtlety in your work. The stylus is great, and the mouse is unique on the Mac in its design and x, y, z functionality. The tablet is fast and accurate, and the supporting software provides a lot of customizability. The price is pretty decent too. The list price is $459, but look around, and you'll be able to find one just around $400. Final recommendation: strong buy.

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Dave Nagel is the producer of Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; host of the Creative Mac, Adobe InDesign, Adobe LiveMotion and Synthetik Studio Artist WWUGs; and executive producer of Creative Mac, Digital Media Designer, Digital Pro Sound, Digital Webcast, Plug-in Central, Presentation Master, ProAudio.net and Video Systems sites. All are part of the Digital Media Net family of online industry hubs.