Got quite a bit of editing to do and wondered if anyone could recommend any pen tablet graphics thingies.

The price range seems to go from about £15 to about £2500 and more so I imagine the scale of quality is something similar.

Anyone have any advice?

I was looking at these which seem quite nice...

http://uk.shop.wacom.eu/Products/Bamboo

I had a cheap/budget one from Trust.

It was dreadful - I fleabayed it, and let someone waste their life with it.

I have had a go on a Wacom tablet and, with my limited experience, the difference was night and day. I can see with they hold their prices very well.

Anything by Wacom will do the job.

For ages I used an elderly USB A6 size thing that cost me about £40. It was more than adequate for most of my needs, but I've since been bequeathed a larger model that cost almost ten times the price.

Bamboo I think is the current Wacom entry level stuff.

I've got a Bamboo Fun at home.
It's OK but I hardly ever use it. The pen's too light and the area to draw on is too small.
I find it rather fiddly but I'm not exactly known for my artist skills (I'm more accurate with a mouse than a pen)

I've used some of the bigger & more expensive models and they are a lot better.

What sort of thing do you want to use it for?

To begin with it will be mainly for creating button images and app icons and stuff (i.e. fairly small).

However, I need to start creating more GUI stuff for polishing apps in the future.

@Heather, I saw you the other day! I bought Pixelmator a couple days ago and was browsing the user bits of the website and saw your avatar!

Love Pixelmator! Brilliant piece of kit.

You can buy online "clip art" sets of stuff like that, I think. You may need to check the end use licence, but many are designed for web sites and so on.



Uh-oh! Rumbled!

Yes, I have a copy of Pixelmator, too. The Mac App Store has a lot to answer for. PM doesn't get as much use as it ought to at the moment, as it's lacking in a couple of areas compared to Photoshop. Still, it's handy to have about for a quick and dirty edit on something when I can't be arsed to hang about waiting for Adobe's bloatware to stagger into life.

I've seen (and used) a couple of free images in the past but for the stuff I'm going to be doing in the future I'm going to have to create stuff myself.

Speckyboy and Smashing Magazine usually have loads of free buttons and UI elements that you can use as you see fit - no restrictions. Some are layered Photoshop PSD files, some Adobe Illustrator vector files. Really polished, professional looking stuff, I've done a few websites using their UI bits. There's lots of other good developer articles on those sites too, for both web and app developing, definitely worth a look.

As for graphics tablets, yes Wacom are the king especially on a Mac, other cheaper tablets don't always have Mac drivers available (or work very well). You probably need an A5 one to have a decent area to draw on, I've tried the A6 ones but they're too small to do much with. We have the old A5 USB Wacom Graphire 4 models, really good for Photoshop work - not sure I'd use them for buttons and UI bits, but I suppose they'd be OK for that too.

Bamboo Fun Medium which is really useful. Got it for a good price too as they we're around £140 IIRC when I bought mine.

I can recommend a Wacom Cintiq 24HD.
Mmmmm...

+1

Even their iPad stylus is a pleasure to use.

HANVON are supposed to be very good as well, they pretty much replicate the Wacom Intuos line. The older models were pretty dreadful, but the last 2 generations are "almost" as good as the Wacoms, but generally a lot cheaper. They include some of their own innovations now as well, they aren't direct clones any more.

I haven't tried one, but they generally get good reviews over here.

Now, this is something I could find rather handy. The reviews say that the software is a bit rubbish though.

http://www.wacom.eu/index2.asp?pid=9226&lang=en

http://uk.shop.wacom.eu/Products/Bamboo ... /?c=138088

Just bought this.

It's pen only input (rather than the higher up models which include touch) but I have a mac trackpad already so £30 extra for something I already have seems a waste.

Anyway, I also have £15 worth of vouchers left on Amazon so I used them up too!

Will arrive Tuesday (hopefully).