Wacom Tablet in InDesign?

Has anyone used a Wacom Tablet to draw with in InDesign? I have the chance to get one used for cheap and I want to know if it’s worth it. I’d love to be able to draw freehand for some designs instead of relying on outside images and the pen tool, which I have SUCH a hard time with.

 

Thanks, Ladies!

 

Samantha

Hand Deliver Press

I use nothing but my Wacom! Did you mean using it with Photoshop + Illustrator? since InDesign is a page layout program. What size are you looking at? Good Luck, I think you will love it.

Hmm. Yes, I’m still learning InDesign so I guess it didn’t occur to me that I would need Illustrator in order to do drawings. I wanted to buy that anyway, so maybe I’ll spring for both. I just imagine how great it would be making drawings into plates…

 

Thanks for your response!

I have an Intuos 4 (not the newest model) and I still love it. It works seamlessly with both Photoshop and Illustrator. I really love the freedom it especially gives you in Illustrator when it comes to making lines just the way you want them.

 

I found this particular tutorial very helpful for learning to create custom line art with my Wacom in Illustrator. While the whole tutorial is awesome, I really thought the experimenting with lines in Illustrator was the most beneficial. Fiddle a bit and have fun once you get everything set up!

I love them too. They take a little getting used to so don’t despair after first couple of days. They can replece mouse all together regardless of application.

I find my workflow goes best when sketching in photoshop and then taking that into illustrator to convert to a vector file. I usually use the pen tool for doing the vector portion rather than using Live Trace.

Inkscape is an open source (and free) vector program that has a good calligraphy tool (I set my pen options at 13 width, caps 1, mass 40, and everything else at 0) that makes drawing curves freehand pretty natural. You have to go to file > input devices to enable the pen though. It doesn’t have support for most opentype font features, so I still use Illustrator the most.

I really dont use InDesign at all since Illustrator can handle fonts pretty well.

Yes, I have used the Wacom tablet in video applications and in photoshop, it is incredibly intuitive, and since most of my work is based on my handwriting, it is the best method to translate handwritten work digitally.

I’ve been using a Wacom tablet for 8 years, don’t use a mouse at all, love it! Best to use it with illustrator or photoshop to draw, indesign is good for layout though!

i use my ipad as a tablet to draw and then open them in illustrator to make them vector files. there are tons of sketch/draw/paint apps available for the ipad. the one i use is call paper by 53. I believe there is a way to make the ipad function like a wacom tablet but you have to use airDisplay and turn off your firewall (which I don’t recommend. So I’ve just been using it to draw the frames to the illustration and color it in Illustrator. I have been using InDesign since 2003 and it’s a great layout program, but any illustration or art should be in illustrator and exported to an eps and then imported to InDesign. you can import illustrator files but it makes your inDesign file super huge.

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