I have a wacom drawing tablet and every time I use with adobe photoshop 7 it makes little bumps, crooks and sometimes short intervals of straight lines when I'm trying to make rounded or oval shaped drawing lines. I also have corel painter and other programs that make perfectly round drawing lines, and it seems adobe simply can't do this! I have a 800Mhz machine (so it's not due to the pc's hardware),, and I'm wondering if others have experienced the same problem?? ..and if there's something I can do to fix it??? I've invested a lot of money into this thing,,and I thought Adobe was supposed to be the pro.....

I'm interested in reading answers since I'm just about to get a Wacom Graphire2 (since that's all I can afford at the moment). Also, if any of you have a Graphire2, would you tell me how do you like it? Thank you!

HI, the wacom tablets are just great and also incredible precise. Of course I had to buy mine right before they announced and started going over to intuos/graphire 2 versions. Well, version 2 isn't very different to be honest :) If you're a 2d artist the tablet's sensitivity (1024 levels) is fantastic and it's incredibly user friendly in terms of software compability, installation, ease of use (comes with chord free drawing applets) etc. ALso, it's quite affordable and among the best on the marked. I only hope I can get around this Adobe thing, since Corel Painter is a hopelessly unstable program (bugs, freezing etc etc) and I really want to change over to photoshop for my 2d work, but I'm not sure yet if it's as streamlined and 'smooth' in 2D freehand paining (as it claims to be). When you need to make fast, dynamic sketches etc, little irregularities to the drawing line is just not acceptable. (also, it tends to stall a bit and the line is updated in a uncorrect fashion..and that's hopeless!)

Have you tried Painter? They say it's the best for painting. Also, thank you very much for your answer! (Although nobody still answered YOUR question, lol)

Is this the edge of your rounded or oval shape? Do you have anti-aliased checked? I can't even use a mouse anymore. I've had the Wacom Graphire 5 x 4 on both my computers for over 3 years now but I can't be without them. Painter 7 is a neat program. It lets you use lots of different painting media.

yes, it's corel painter 4. I haven't upgraded to 7 (expenses!), but I've heard it's as buggy and unpredictable as the other painter versions.. Yep, anti alias is checked and I've tried most other things too with no luck. No matter the width or size of the painter tool, nothing gives smooth correct lines with my tablet (I'm talkiing freehand, not vector of course, so it's not the paths, layers, vectors or any of that, it's just the freehand drawing that seems to be very jittery and unprecise in Adobe 7. Yes, I haven't used the mouse for years either..It's just so annoying going back to less when you can have the cake :)

i got a graphire2 and it works like a dream! don't know what the problem is w/ urs, tho...

yes, it's very annoying.. spent a fortune on this program..and it seemed to work just fine when I used earlier versions. Must be something I can do, I'll contact Adobe for further help (though they don't seem to be the most welcoming bunch of people. hmm.. Well, thanks anyway. Karen.

You might have played with the jitter control in the brush settings which is new to version 7.

Dreamer may be right on the mark with this. In ver7, Adobe reworked the brush engine and added more controls to mimic "natural" brushes better. Check your different settings and see if the "jitter" setting is up.

nope, I've tried that, but thanks..I'll sort this out with Adobe themselves.

spacing is automatically turned on by default, and it isn't automatically set to "zero" (far left of slider). Go into your brush controls, and pull the spacing slider all the way to the left.

I suppose you use the latest Wacom drivers? - Bjorn

actually, I'm geting it now too... with a mouse and with a graphire. I know the graphire sends 50 instructions per second to the computer, so with really fast strokes, you get those things, but I'm getting it with my mouse too, so this is unpleasant... Just never noticed it before cuz I do most illustration in vector, not photoshop... Painter 7 I know however interpolates it's strokes to smooth them out. It's a big reason why its a slow program, even on my P4 2ghz. oh, and I truly dig my graphire 2. They have wicked customer support and warranty service as well.

hmm, 20 minutes after saying a photoshop fault, photoshop cashes on a scan. Reopen photoshop, scan again, and when scan is done, I get an abnormal program termination, Microsoft Visual C++ error or something. phuckin wonderful... incidently, didn't just install anything into it either. It just knows I've been talkin bad aboot it...

Just a note, I have nothing to add other than I am using a Wacom Graphire 4x5, and PS 7 with no probs. Went from PS 5,6, and to 7 with it...sorry can't be of more help.

Retro, do yer damn job and solve my problem dammit!!! lol, I'm only kiddin bro... well, half kidding...

I'll try adjusting the spacing..and I heard from Adobe that using the magnyfying glass will help, which it acutally does!..still a bit annoying drawing in 400 percent zoom.. Thanks, Karen.

maybe it's more of an OS event sampling issue. I assume you're running WinXP...
If it's both pen AND mouse it shouldn't be just the software as the culprit...

i'll continue to look around for an answer, till then use crayons ;)

:)
retrocity

hmm, WinXP home Im using (though in terms of performance, it tends to perform just a teeny weeny itsy bitsy tiny bit better than Professional, so that aint an issue. XP itself though, that I could understand.). If it's the OS, adobe better get their ass and gear and release an update fix. I dont use the graphire mouse incidently. Its annoying to not have quick access to a mouse when using the pen so i use my logitech optical. The graphire mouse is great, but i need'em both at the same time.

Finally, I got my Graphire2 today and I just started playing with it. Though I know I need to get used to it (the absolute positioning most of all), I just love it! I'm sooooooooo happy!!!!!

if you go into the graphire tool software, you can set the pen to "mouse" mode, and then it won't be absolute positioning, you can pick up and go back without the cursor jumping around. Pen mode is best for tracing i find (lift up the plastic flap, put a picture under).

Oh, ficticious, thank you! As I never used a tablet before, there were too many options in the control panel to explore. I tried configuring it a bit, but I thought it was better to get used to it a little before trying more options. I didn't see the "mouse mode" button (maybe because I was too excited!), so I thought I should get used to absolute positioning. Now I love it even more!!! I don't know what configuration I'll finally choose, but having the option is great! Thank you very much for the tip! Barbara

yep,,, those straight lines occuring aren't going away,,no matter what I do..so there's going to be a lot of undo's if Im to use the tablet.. well well..it's a great program otherwise..thoguh I bought it with freehand painting in mind...

I find the plastic mat to slippery to draw on..instead I tape a sheet of paper on top the tablet and use the pen with that.. works very well..and increases the stability of the pen..gives much more precise drawing in my opinion :)

Karen, i'm going to continue to seek out an answer or hopefully a solution to this as many of us use tablets.

You never said what OS you're running...
You did say this only happens in ver7, right?
Do you have anything else going on that may tap into the resources?
Are you ruuning dual monitors/enhanced vid card?

just a few thing i want to mull over, so if you don't mine sharing...

we'll come up with something!

:)
retrocity

1500x1500 at 300dpi...

jackie, when an image is view in halves 4ths 8ths and 16ths (etc), the image should look sharp. When viewing in intermediate areas, like 33% and 66%, the image will look jagged. That's normal, I've seen it since v5.0, and thats only because thats hwen i started using photoshop. and whatever happened to linux, hmmmm? Retro for what its worth, here's m rig. Photoshop 7 Windows XP Home Ati Radeon 7000 powering a 19 inch samsung flatscreen (1600x1200) and a cruddy tv (1024x768, plus a Voodoo3 video card at 1152x864 (which i only use for tool bars and menus, all displayed work is on the samsung). I get the "squared circles" with my graphire and with a regular usb optical mouse (both plugged into usb 2.0 ports, so there isnt any possibility of lag cuz they are both designed for usb 1.1). I got 512 ddr ram, and it happens whther Im playing Unreal Tournament or running nothing other than photoshop. I donate 70% available memory to photoshop, about 350-400 megs at any given time of my ram.

I know...LOL...I was asking if this was rarigens prob or not. Whether it was the dotting or not?

Im running win98 and no other applications at the same time (no dual monitors)..I'm using a nvidia gforce2 card (which is quite powerful on a 800Mzh Dell pc I should think),,and I did have a go with the demo of adobe ph.7 (though I haven't tried out previous versions of the program) At that time I didn't have these problems until I bought the full program package. I'm aware of the dpi and the zoom so that's not the problem either, but I think I'll have another go with the tablet's stock settings,,thanks for reminding me of that.

Ah ok, just wasn't clear on where you were.

I just had a try with corel's suite 11 and it works fantastic with my wacom tablet! The freehand paining utilities are a mile better than Adobe's!.. I don't know if Corel can compete in other departments,,as effects, filters, paths, etc..but the freehand paining and sketching are just plain superior! It never hangs, nags, makes straight lines and always draws perfectly round shapes and lines. It's a world of difference!