The Medway Handyman wrote:

SWIMBO bought me a Trust TB2100 wireless tablet for my biffday, knowing that
I like to edit the odd photo & would like to do the odd drawing.

OK, in the world of graphics tablets we have Wacom at the Makita /
Festool end of the spectrum, and Trust bringing up the Power Devil end!

Very kind of her - but what the hell is a wireless tablet & what does it do?

At its simplest it is a kind of mouse replacement when you move the
pointer with a pen rather than a mouse. Some also accept puck style mice
that have an accurate crosshair target mounted on them, that you can use
for accurate digitising of points in 2D space (say capturing a diagram
into a drawing or CAD package).

I'm trying to sound enthusiastic & grateful, but basically I'm trying to buy
time "haven't had a chance to install it yet love".

WTF does it do?

As a replacement for a mouse they generally feel a bit odd. However in a
paint package used with freehand drawing tools they feel far more
natural than trying to draw with a mouse. Activities like shading and
tracing become far more natural feeling (e.g. trying to trace round an
image in Photoshop so as to extract it from its background is usually
far easier with a pen than a mouse). As is signing your name.

I've installed the mouse that came with it, which is ferkin useless, so I've
gone back to my old one.

Do I have to open some sort of program to use it? Word? Picture It? What
will it do if I open whatever program?

If you have Photoshop (or Elements) try that, failing that Paint Shop
Pro or whatever your normal prog of choice for graphics retouching is.

They will usually work with any graphics software. The better software
and the better tablets paired together (e.g. wacom and photoshop) should
unleash a bunch of extra things that you can't get with a mouse.

Pressure sensitivity is the most basic. Here the program responds to not
only where you draw, but also how hard you press on the "paper". Hence
lines thicken with more pressure etc, or an airbrush will increase opacity.

The posher ones also recognise "tilt" in two axis. This allows the type
of line drawn to accurately reflect how a real pen or pencil would react
- giving different line styles depending on the angle the stylus is held
at.

At the moment its a potential doorstop.

I simply don't understand why it exists? Will it solve a problem I don't
have?

Try it for freehand drawing in a graphics package. I find that I can
write on screen just as badly as I can on paper with a tablet! ;-)

Note some tablets offer the options of mouse mode and absolute - the
former allows you to lift the pen from the page move it and replace it
at the same position you left off - rather like lifting and moving a
mouse to get more usable roll space on a desk. Absolute mode maps an
exact point on the tablet to one on the screen. Not as intuitive for
some actions but better for tracing and digitising. (some of the larger
tablets have a transparent lift up surface to allow a picture or diagram
to be inserted for tracing over)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/