Bamboo Pen And Touch Graphics Tablet Review of the Wacom/Bamboo CTH-460 Tablet

[evought 0]

I do a fair amount of digital sketching/illustration (mostly botanical sketches), photo retouching (for the family business), and some document work requiring pen support (e.g. "signing" digitized documents and sending them). I have had a Wacom Graphire 3 tablet for a good while now. I finally lost the stylus to it and found out that since Wacom is now two generations further along with the Graphire tablets, that I can no longer get a replacement. So, finally, after some thought and research, we ended up with a new Bamboo "Pen and Touch" tablet ( http://www.wacom.com/en-us/products ). We purchased it for an Intel-based Mac Mini running Macintosh OS X 10.5.8. The tablet also claims Windows and Linux support. This is a short review of the "Pen and Touch" tablet.

 

The Graphire 3 came with both a stylus and a mouse. Either would work on the tablet and both were cordless. The Bamboo "Pen and Touch" comes with only a stylus. The tablet itself acts as a multi-touch touch pad to replace the mouse, much like a larger version of the touch pad on a MacBook. The tablet recognizes basic gestures for single and double click, right and left click, drag-and-drop and so forth. More complex gestures are available (and seem to work, depending on the program) for zoom, rotate, and other common drawing operations. Four buttons along the left side also help replace some mouse functions. One acts as a right click, one as a left click, and one turns on and off touch support (so that you can disable recognition of touch while using the stylus so that stray touches do not confuse the drawing program). I have not figured out the purpose of the fourth button yet; all of the buttons are supposed to be programmable, but I have not figure out how to do so. The stylus itself can also be used somewhat as a mouse and has two programmable buttons (which can be reprogrammed through System's Preferences->Pen Tablet).

 

The tablet's sensor area is 5.8"x3.6" which is fine for most photo work and for illustrations. My illustrations are seldom larger than 3"x4". If you do larger work on a regular basis, Wacom makes larger tablets. For us, desktop space is at a premium, which is why it was important that the tablet also replace the mouse. I like the fact that it has a larger, non-sensing frame than the older Graphire 3. This allows me to use rest my wrist on the tablet for some drawing functions as I would rest it on a piece of clean paper for precise control when I needed it in pencil sketching. The texture of the tablet is a vast improvement for me over earlier tablets. The Graphire 3 was smooth and glossy, which felt totally unnatural to draw on. With a pencil or pen, I use the texture of the paper to control my lines. The smooth surface of the Graphire was much harder to draw on unless I actually taped a piece of paper to its surface. The Bamboo "Pen and Touch," on the other hand, has a slightly roughened texture which feels much more natural. Wacom also includes several replacement stylus tips (because the tips will eventually wear out on the roughened surface) and a metal sleeve whose purpose I have yet to determine. There is a fabric tube on the right side of the tablet to slide the stylus into when not in use--- perhaps I will not lose it this time. The tablet is easy to reorient for left or right-handed use. I typically draw right-handed, but have a nerve and muscle condition which sometimes makes my right hand less than useful. Being able to swap the tablet is useful. The USB cable is longer than most similar peripherals, and this makes it easy to reposition and arrange.

 

The conflict of having to keep it far enough away from my monitor (which ends up being farther than my keyboard tray extends) has resulted in the tablet being dropped several times so far with no apparent decrease in functionality :-)

 

Installation

 

This part was a bit rough. The installation program on the included CD-ROM immediately crashed every time it was started. I submitted the crash report and went to the Wacom website. I downloaded a new driver dated November of 2009. This version ran without a hitch and my "Pen and Tablet" Preference panel was updated. I plugged in the Bamboo "Pen and Touch" and it was immediately recognized. I still had the Graphire 3 tablet connected and both still worked. The "Pen and Tablet" Preference pane worked to control settings for both. Once I was satisfied that the new tablet was working, I disconnected the old tablet. The initial settings for the Bamboo "Pen and Touch" were reasonable. The "Soft or Firm" setting controls the tip sensitivity and that is what you are most likely to play with right off. it would be very nice if the Wacom folks would label this slider with, for instance, like pencils are labeled: 3B 2B 2HB 2H 3H, etc, to give the user an idea of what to expect out of a particular setting.

 

There was no "Bamboo" Preference pane as described in the very brief quick start guide included with the product. There was no printed manual and I could not figure out how to start the "Tutorial" the quick start guide also mentioned. This meant, in particular, that I could find no way of programming the buttons or gestures. The "Pen Tablet" folder now in my Applications folder contained a Pen Utility program which only allowed one to uninstall the drivers.

 

The second disk contained the various programs included with the package, including Photoshop Elements. The installation program on that disk also crashed every time. I looked to see if the extra programs were available in an update package like the driver, but failed. I submitted the crash report, registered my tablet, and left a message with Technical Support.

 

One other interesting problem was quickly apparent: the Bamboo "Pen and Touch" tablet did not like my Plasma flat-panel monitor. The old Graphire tablet has issues if it was within about two feet of the screen, but the Bamboo tablet has more pronounced problems out to a greater distance. Control of the mouse becomes erratic and, if too close, stops moving at all. We are going to need to completely rearrange the cramped desk space to solve this problem.

 

The Preferences pane allows you to use absolute or relative positioning for the tablet. That is, you can make the upper left-hand corner of the tablet map to the corresponding corner of the screen, the center of the tablet to the center of the screen, and so forth. That way, you know when touching the stylus to a particular portion of the tablet exactly where it will go on the screen. This makes some kinds of sketching very natural. You can also map the tablet to only a portion of the screen to make best use of the tablet's size by only using it for the actual drawing area you are worried about.

 

Trying It Out

 

Among the benefits of the new tablet are greater resolution and sensitivity, especially pressure sensitivity. I tried it out in Inkscape ( https://inkscape.org/en/ ), which is an illustration program I commonly use, but, although it has rudimentary tablet support, it really focuses on mouse-based drawing and the better tablet made little difference. I had roughly the same experience with GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program - https://www.gimp.org/ ) but quickly found out that the new version has greatly enhanced tablet support and began downloading it. I fired up a shareware program called, cleverly enough, "Tablet Draw," ( http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ) which is an excellent tool designed from the ground up to support Tablet-based drawing. Most drawing programs, even Photoshop and Illustrator to some extent, are designed for mice and add tablet support into the mix, but many of their functions, especially how they draw curves and freehand lines are simply not correct for the short, quick strokes of a stylus in the hands of someone used to sketching with a pencil. Lines come out blocky, flood fills have unfilled white regions (or fill the whole drawing area) and so forth. Tablet Draw really does an excellent job of approaching things from the other direction, and in this little program, the difference between the two tablets was quickly apparent. Tablet Draw lets you use pressure to control thickness, opacity, or a combination of both depending on the drawing tool, and it allows a higher resolution tablet to draw smooth sketched lines that act very much like a real pencil or pen. I have yet to try the tablet in either Photoshop or Illustrator which are on my wife's laptop. I will do so once I have a chance to install the drivers on her machine.

 

Macintosh OS X has general drawing support in all applications, allowing you to use handwriting recognition or add quick doodles in most programs. This is controlled in the Ink Preferences pane. You are allowed to use a button on the stylus to turn Ink mode on and off. If find this seldom works correctly, however: it tries to recognize handwriting when you are using the stylus to drag something or when you are actually attempting to sketch in a drawing program. I therefore end up turning it off completely from a menubar icon when I am not actively using it. Handwriting recognition is alright, better than with the old tablet, but it still makes mistakes unless you take the time to learn what the program expects.

 

Using the tablet as a mouse is 95% correct. Aside from the problems with my plasma monitor, drag-and-drop operations are awkward and error-prone. I tried to select a shortcut folder in Finder, for instance, and ended up dragging the folder off of the shortcut bar so that it disappeared. In trying to repair this damage, instead of dragging the folder to the shortcut bar, I dropped it partway and ended up copying the folder to another drive. This kind of mishap is not uncommon, nor is mistaking a left click for a right click or vice-versa. Selecting long runs of text is also more exciting than it should be. It is fairly easy to hold the stylus in your hand while using the touch support for mouse operations, however, and this is much less awkward than with the older mouse-and-stylus arrangement.

 

The Software

 

As the included software failed to install, I will add details here once tech support gets back to me.

[iGuest 3]

An odd, but positive note:Bamboo Pen And Touch Graphics Tablet

I have a Pen&touch for windows7. And it works perfectly, noTrouble with the drivers or software.  Except for a small oddity withCorel Painter essentials, nothing serious.Art-rage, another program included, worked without a problem at all.

 Mac is the well known graphics designer machine, so I'm surprised toRead your 'bad' experience on the Mac, especially with a tool like this. But atLeast the creative minds that own a windows Vista or 7 PC can enjoy this toy care-free.

I'm not an artist or anything, I just bought this thing for fun. So l can't really tell if it makes a good tool as well. But at least it hasNo problems functioning on Vista or 7.  XP however might miss out on handwrite recognition.

-reply by Real4xor

 

[iGuest 3]

Bamboo on Kubuntu 10.4 with KDE 4.5Bamboo Pen And Touch Graphics Tablet

The Wacom Bamboo Tablet CTL-460 works perfectly on Kubuntu 10.4 with KDE 4.45 and 4.5.   I am running the 2.6.32.34-generic kernel.

That is important.  If a kernel update occurs the wacom.Ko module has to be recompiled for that kernel to restore functionality.  It is not hard to do. After you use Ark (from Dolphin) to extract the source, preserving folders,  do the following steps in a Konsole (also from Dolphin, if you wish):

• cd linuxwacom-0.8.8 the version number may be different, as may be the path.

• make clean # In case of a  kernel update since the last compile

• ./configure --enable-wacom

• cd src/2.6.30/ # Wrong kernel version, but it's the highest available and it works fine

• make

• sudo cp wacom.Ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/input/tablet/  # those "`" are back ticks, on the Tilde key.

• sudo rmmod wacom

• sudo modprobe wacom

• sudo depmod -a #to make it permanent for subsequent boots. 

That's it! 

Make sure you have xserver-xorg-input-wacom installed. 

You could cut & paste it all in a text file residing inside the linuxwacom-0-x-y directory.  Replace "cd linuxwacom-0-8.8" with  "#!/bin/bash" as the first line, save it as compile_wacom.Sh,  and use the Right Mouse --> Properties on it to mark it executable.  Then, if you have a kernel update, just open a Konsole, cd into that directory and run "./compile_wacom.Sh".  Without the quotes, of course.

The Lucid Lynx repository has "MyPaint" (Universe repository), which works very well with the tablet and includes textures and other features.  The Pen works well in GIMP-2.6.8, too.   There is also a "wacom-utility"  (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/) which allows adjustments for pen pressure, and the four buttons, if your tablet has them.  Both the Pen and the mouse work to control the cursor when the tablet is plugged in.  The buttons on the side of the Pen work well.

I got the CTL-460 from Amazon refurbished for $42.99.

-reply by GreyGeek

[iGuest 3]

Bamboo Pen and Touch ResolutionBamboo Pen And Touch Graphics Tablet

 I am very annoyed with purchase of the Bamboo Pen and Touch because I have stuck with this thing for months, hoping my coordination or style would improve, but it has not, and now I am literally stuck with it. Three major problems cause this device to be unusable for anyone other than a child of 5 to 7 years of age. First is the horrendously low resolution - Due to it's microscopic size no doubt. If you used a compass to draw a circle with this thing, it would still look jagged. Second is the extremely light-weight pen/stylus. A heavier pen, according to common sense and current laws of physics, could only help to smooth-out the movements and clearly would have improved the overall performance of this unit. Third major problem is the usability of the pen switch... Annoying placement in the wrong location causing endless miss-clicks and inadvertent triggering of unnnecessary behaviors! Value at $99??? ZERO! Save your pennies for a pro model or better yet, get a decent mouse that actually moves in ever direction, has incredible resolution and uses already known and well understood left and right clicking! 

-reply by Pete

 

[Atomic0 0]

I have a Wacom Intuos 3 6 x 8 tablet which I use with by Windows 7 desktop computer and 24-inch. Yes, it is a bit small now that I have a 24-inch Samsung monitor (I used to use the Wacom tablet with a small 15-inch LCD monitor) and the screen ratio compatibility (since the Samsung monitor is 16:10 while table is 4:3). Other than usability problems between the monitor and tablet, the Wacom tablet has worked great with programs and applications like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. The handling is exceptionally smooth and responsiveness is excellent (I have not encountered any problems with accidentally incorrect mouse actions, with all different types of clicks working perfectly). The only technical problem I have encountered is that in around 1/100 operating system boots, the table driver crashes upon system startup and needs to be restarted before the tablet can be used. Otherwise, the Wacom Intuos is an excellent professional tablet. Personally, I wish I could get the newer Wacom Intuos 4 tablet, but currently my Intous 3 tablet is still in working condition and there is no need yet to replace it with a newer model.Back on the Bamboo Pen and Touch tablet, I am surprised at the problems encountered by Bamboo users, considering the quality and build of my Wacom Intuos 3 tablet. I suspect the inclusion of multi-touch support i.e. support for touch gestures and not just the use of a stylus, is to blame for all these problems that users are encounter. Personally, I think it was a very bold move for Wacom to move into the multi-touch market by integrating it into the stylus tablets. No doubt some of the space taken up by the multi-touch gadgetry could have been used to increase the resolution and stylus sensitivity. A suggestion for users is that if you intend to use the stylus for graphic work, you should look to purchasing an Intuos or Cintiq tablet, which have higher resolutions and sensitivity of its styluses, and also having ExpressKeys built and designed for graphic work.

[evought 0]

Some updates on the original review:I have occasional complete lockups on the OS-X desktop which I have narrowed down to the tablet driver. This requires a log-out and restart, occasionally with the logout hanging and requiring a hard reboot (or an SSH connection and shutdown). It seems to happen when RAM gets extremely low (such as after doing batch photo processing) where the tablet driver does not deal gracefully with the situation and becomes a Zombie. So, maybe this is similar to what a user reports above under Windows.Now that I have the plasma screen mounted on the wall and an LCD on the desk, the erratic multitouch mouse behavior has pretty much gone away. With the new desktop rearrangement, though, I also have more room for a normal mouse, so it has become less important.I should also mention that I have successfully used the Bamboo tablet with Fedora Core 13 Linux on a Panasonic CF-29 Toughbook and am playing with it under Fedora Core 14 on the same laptop. The laptop itself has touchscreen and stylus support, but the tablet works better, mainly because I can use it in a more natural position.

[iGuest 3]

botanical sketchingBamboo Pen And Touch Graphics Tablet

Replying to evought As a botanical artist myself (on paper not computer!) I would be very interested to see what is capable on this medium. Can you let me see an example please? What tools do you mostly use?Thank youDanny Raymond

-reply by Danny Raymond