Customizing Your Wacom Pen Tablet for Painting
By Cher Threinen-Pendarvis
This month's tip is the second in a series of tips on customizing your Wacom® pen tablet for working with Corel® Painter™. When using your pen tablet, have you ever hit a touch strip or tablet key and been surprised at having your tool change or image zoom out? This tip will show you how to set up your pen tablet for your dominant hand so you don't accidentally activate the tablet keys with your painting hand.
My botanical illustration Pink Cymbidium, shown below, was painted with the smeary Oils and Impasto brushes in Corel Painter. One of my favorite tips for the pen tablet is to sample color from the image while painting by using one of the wet, oily brushes in Corel Painter. While painting Pink Cymbidium, I used a tablet key to temporarily switch from the Brush tool to the Dropper so that I could sample color.
Step 1. Set up Wacom® preferences for Corel Painter. Begin by launching Corel Painter. To set up Wacom preferences for any application, that application must be running for the Wacom control panel to recognize it. With Painter running, open the Wacom control panel. In the Tool area, click Functions. In the Applications area, click the Plus (+) button to open the Add Application for Custom Settings dialog box.
Click the Plus (+) button to access the Add Application for Custom Settings dialog box.
In the Select Application area, choose Painter X and then click OK.
Step 2. Set up the Touch Strips for your dominant hand. Have you ever hit a Touch Strip or tablet key and been surprised at having your tool change or image zoom out? I am right-handed and sometimes rest the base of my hand on the right side of the tablet. Doing so covers the Touch Strip and Express keys on that side of the tablet. To customize the Touch Strip on one side of your tablet, click the Touch Strips tab in the Wacom control panel. In my case, I clicked the pop-up menu on the right side and set it to Disabled.
Step 3. Explore the default Express Keys setup. In the Tool area of the Wacom control panel, click Functions and then click the Express Keys tab. The graphic below shows the default Express Keys set up for the Intuos3 tablet with its four keys on each side of the tablet. By default, the four Express Keys are programmed to keystrokes that allow you to access the Command, Option, Shift, and Spacebar keys. By pressing the Command key, you can switch from the Brush tool to the Layer Adjuster tool. By pressing the Alt/Option key, you can switch from the Brush tool to the Dropper tool so that you can sample color as you paint. By pressing the Spacebar, you can access the Grabber to pan around your painting as you work.
The default settings for the Express Keys.
Step 4. Customize tablet keys for your dominant hand. To ensure that you don't accidentally hit a key, I suggest disabling the Express Keys on whichever side of the tablet you rest your hand on while painting. You can also set up the Wacom preferences for the Touch Strips and Express Keys to recognize only input from the stylus. (This solution will be covered in a later tip.)
In this photograph, you can see my right hand holding the pen and resting on the right side of the tablet as I press a tablet key with my left hand.
Step 5. Customize a key to access contextual menus. I find it helpful to access contextual menus while painting with the Brush tool. For example, to make a quick change to a different brush variant. Here's how to change the small top key (by default programmed to Shift) to the Control key so that you can access the contextual menus. Click the pop-up menu below the second key (in my case, on the left side), and select Modifier. The Wacom tablet control panel will appear. Disable the Shift Key option, enable the Control Key option, and click OK.
By pressing the Express Key, which is set to Control, you can access the contextual menu for the Brush tool on the fly to choose a different brush variant.
Congratulations! You have learned how to set up your pen tablet to increase ease of use and productivity. Happy painting!
All content and images © Cher Threinen-Pendarvis
An award-winning artist and author, Cher Threinen-Pendarvis has always worked with traditional art tools. A pioneer in digital art, Cher has been creating illustrations with the Macintosh® computer for two decades. She has been widely recognized for her mastery of Corel® Painter™, Adobe® Photoshop®, and the Wacom® pressure-sensitive pen tablet and has used these tools since they were first released. Exercising her passion for the artist tools in Corel Painter, she has worked as a consultant and demo-artist for the Corel Painter developers. Her artwork has been exhibited worldwide, and her articles and art have been published in many books and periodicals. Cher holds a BFA with Highest Honors and Distinction in Art specializing in painting and printmaking, and she is a member of the San Diego - Museum of Art Artist Guild. She has taught Painter and Photoshop workshops around the world, and is the principal of the consulting firm Cher Threinen Design.
Cher is the author of The Photoshop and Painter Artist Tablet Book, Creative Techniques in Digital Painting, and all eight editions of The Painter Wow! Book. The latest edition of this highly-praised volume of techniques and inspiration is The Painter X Wow! Book.
To learn more about Cher, visit her web site at www.pendarrvis-studios.com