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May 24, 2006 Great Pen Tablet and More
Graphire4 (Wacom, $150) is the newest version of a pen tablet that stands out for its cordless battery-free pen and mouse (both included). The unit is also bundled with four programs that make the package valuable for anyone who uses photographs and/or wants to draw or use notes with documents.
The 10 x 10 ½ inch tablet (6 x 8 inch active surface) has two programmable express keys and a scroll wheel, and you use either the pen or mouse on the clear plastic protective surface of the stylish silver-grey pad (white or metallic-blue also available). The pressure-sensitive pen has 512 levels of sensitivity, two programmable side buttons and a cool "eraser" at the top; the mouse has exceptionally smooth tracking and includes left, right and center buttons and a scroll wheel. The tablet works with PC or Mac, features many customizable navigation settings, and has options to let you control or customize a wide variety of other features. The tablet’s surface is also a photo frame that you can underlay with a photo, drawing or image of your own. The software bundle includes Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 (with add-in nik Color Efex Pro 2 GE), Corel Painter Essentials 2, EverNote Plus, and JustWrite Office 4. Photoshop and Painter are filled with features to help you edit, enhance and lay out photos; the other two allow you to annotate documents or jot down notes and also paint, draw, and more. Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 includes 19 pressure-sensitive tools that can be used with the pen to sharpen, smudge, sponge, blur, heal and make many other enhancements to photos. The pen lets users modify the color or saturation of a photo with pressure-sensitive control and also blend one image into another. In addition to all these cool pen enhancements, Photoshop Elements 3 does many photo editing jobs such as cropping, resizing or changing formats, changing color saturation and hue, brightness and contrast. The program also gives you the ability to combine photos or parts of photos for some fun effects, and one-click paths provide a quick fix for red eye or exposure. Included is a photo organizer that keeps images in one place and finds them quickly by date, keyword and the like. Photoshop has templates for creating slide shows, VCD with menu, photo albums, cards, calendars, scrapbook pages, and much more. Once you’ve created whatever you want, you can print, burn, save or send the items via e-mail. The Color Efex Pro 2 GE add-in makes it easier to enhance selected parts of an image and lets you use the pen to precisely control the location and amount of filter effect: brilliance/warmth, graduated blue, violet and pastel. Corel Painter Essentials 2 includes more than 50 pressure-sensitive natural media brushes and a mix of papers, nozzles and patterns to create original artwork or enhance photos. Also included are easy-to-use artistic brushes and a variety of textured backgrounds. The program also has many editing tools and options for adding frames, decorative elements and much more to photos. These photo editing programs are feature-rich and require time and effort to learn, but that time will pay big dividends. And using them with the tablet and pen gives you a much more natural and extended way to take advantage of these features.
Just Write Office 4 lets you annotate Microsoft Office documents. Use the pen with Word, Excel or Power Point, and you can write notes on documents, add drawings, arrows, symbols or anything you would add with an ink pen on paper. You can also sign your name, fill in blanks and more. And, you can save the documents and those notes. The program also features tools that let you add sticky notes to Office documents and provides options to include "Just Sign, Tag, or Write" and more. Very cool. EverNote is a neat program that allows you to type or hand write notes and then file, organize, review and search for those notes easily and quickly. If you choose to hand write notes (much more fun with this program), just use the pen to write, draw, doodle, or whatever. You can select the color of the writing, width of the line, cut what you don’t want, and then save what you’ve created. Choose from the list of categories for filing your notes or create your own categories. The program includes search options for hand written and typed notes, so you can find any saved notes easily and quickly.
The included "ink well" pen holder makes it especially easy to pick up the pen at any time, but there’s also a pen holder slot at the top of the tablet if you prefer. If you switch to the mouse, the tablet detects the change so you’re ready to go instantly. Graphire4 installs easily and quickly, is filled with features that make editing and drawing much easier and more fun. And the included programs give you terrific options to use with photos and documents. A great combination of functions and features. |
We’ve
been using the Graphire4 for some time and love its sleek look and ease
of use. The pen responds instantly and easily, whether using it to select an
item or erase or select text. But this pen truly shines when editing photos or
drawing, giving you much greater control than a mouse or touchpad.