[Which graphic tablet are you using?]

On 6/26/2018 at 12:42 PM, SrPx said:

 

Larger ones are good for accurate line art... For photo retouch, you are good to go with a small size, even. Digital painting, for that is enough a medium size one, tho even there I recommend an L size, but that's just an advice. For comic , I'd totally recommend L, unless one already is used to the medium size and can do perfectly the works by heavy usage of line stabilizers. (for inking. For penciling, retouch, pixel art and painting I always would (I do) set them OFF  )

My recommendation (or personal opinion, better said) of the Deco 03 (agreeing with a previous poster) is because of several factors. Main one : Certain friend of mine is pretty happy with it, and he does a lot of and very varied artwork .  Also, it seems it uses a battery free pen: less hassle, but also, battery free ones are said to show less tendency to produce jitter in slow lines. As a difference with other alternative brands, and even with other products from XP-Pen, this tablet has passed more lab certifications than usual for "alternative" (we've got used to call that everything non Wacom, maybe is time to stop it, lol...)  brands. Might sound a bit of a silly thing, but I put attention to that (probably has more probabilities for having good build quality, durability, electromagnetic issues etc)....  It has a size larger than a medium from Wacom, yet still is more or less at the same price of a Wacom Intuos Small. In Amazon, that is (first hand, from the actual company, I believe). 

But that is the recommendation for the 100 bucks range. My total recommendation for serious illustration is the Wacom Large (is true, you need to move more the arm, and less the wrist, but due to doing so, you are less likely to get carpal tunnel and related issues. After all, oil painters work often in much larger canvases). Due to many reasons. Not necessarily the Paper version, as those ink cartridges can't be replaced with cheap refills, must be through Wacom store, but the Paper model is not that much more expensive. (but would only make sense for inkers, IMO. And I haven't tested how good is that feature. In this forum there have been complaints (totally unrelated to Affinity products)  about this feature, I believe it was in the SVG export. So, what I recommend is the non Paper versions. I'd like to check that functionality, though.... ). 

About pen-displays, I'm hearing the best things (and less issues than with other alternatives) lately about the latest, more modern Huion devices (specially the Kanvas 221 PRO. If you don't want to use so much money (900$, I believe) of quite less quality, yet still good, they have the Kanvas 191 (500$)) The only 2 cons for the cheaper model, the 191 (and that's too few for a cintiq alternative) that I see is 1) some nvidia cards may find image with poor contrast, slightly washed out (like many average monitors output), but people have found a  trick for this (seems is less the case for DVI connections instead of HDMI) 2) Screen refresh,  that is at a not very good value, 25ms. Too slow. That forces some ghosting when moving elements or scrolling. I returned a semi professional MVA monitor with great blacks and color depth just for this value, 25ms, was blurry scrolling test.  But the 221 Pro model has "only" 14ms (equal to XP-Pen  22 Pro, and many others). While still a high (the smaller, the better) value, in reviews it does not seem to produce ghosting in movement. I've had a 16ms monitor, and I only noticed sth disturbing playing very fast FPS games, many years ago, tho was not terrible, even in that activity (hardcore gamers would shout at me, but I'm used to 'poor man' solutions ).  

Of course, most cintiq alternatives have this kind of bad refresh values, even more the MVAs screens (tho much much better in color reproduction than a TN panel) . These Huion Kanvas are IPS screens (really good for the purpose... and most other uses), but still, have a bit of a high value in refresh (or should I say slow value, lol, excuse my English). I'd say each is rightly positioned... the 221 pro for more pro people, the 191, even for pros, too (but need to adjust to some stuff that comes with the -400 lower price)).. I'd just go to the 221 all the way, for many reasons.(risking 500 bucks is too risky, anyway, I'd prefer to wait till having the 900).

In general, IMO all brands (for drawing tablets, screen based or not) have evolved a lot, lately. It would be rare that you would get a bad experience with an Ugee, Yinova, XP-Pen, Artisul, etc. Indeed, Huions' count on battery based pens (they give you two, so that you can have one charging in the meantime, but they charge in an hour and last weeks (for me, it'd last 4 days, I'm afraid  )), so, if you hate that, might go for Artisul D16, it uses battery-free ones in their 16" model. Curiously, the newer 22" model uses a battery based one. Dunno why the $@$grfX! is it so, is like going backwards... I can't stand small sizes, but if you like 15-16 inches, their model in that range, Artisul D16, and XP-Pen's 16 Pro, both have really good 16 inches screens in terms of color (above 90% (94 and 92) Adobe RGB, both. That's a lot for a Cintiq alternative. and a lot for a monitor of that price (you are getting a drawing tablet+a monitor that can be used as a regular monitor, too! Sepcially is comes with the vesa mount possibility) . The XP-Pen 16 Pro uses battery based pens, though. Like their 22" model (this one supports a 77-82% of Adobe RGB, which isn't that terrible at least for illustration, means that you can probably get it configured and calibrated as supporting 100% sRGB color space.(anyway, best setup is having a pro monitor to go checking colors from time to time. A lot of complaints about color, though, come from people that do not calibrate their monitors... and an important smaller percentage, from people that really need very good color accuracy in their work (print, photo labs, etc).  IMO, not the case for most amateur artists.  Good sRGB support for them is good to go. )

In general, I'd just remember to calibrate the pen, and calibrate the screen -as with any other monitor- for good color accuracy. There are even free tools, that at least can help you get a non crazy situation in color, but of what I have seen, the free tools are too basic. Might be worth to purchase a hardware calibrator that comes with software for that. They are relatively cheap. Also, I hate glossy screens, and other people hate the lose of sharpness that some too heavy anti glare filters produce -mounted internally or those that you can remove...or those that come to be applied by you (care with the bubbles, and clean first...). Best situation is having an anti glare filter that is not too "intense". One number one bag of issues a lof people find (no pressure detected, calibration issues, offset, etc, etc) comes from not doing a simple thing: Uninstall previously and fully any wacom or other tablet driver (pen-tablet, or pen-display. Just wipe any driver out of the system, first) previous to installing the new pen-display driver.

I am new to this board and am about to purchase Affinity Photo to edit photos and was curious if I bought a graphics tablet if I would be able to use that to do background changes for photography? I figured you would be a good one to ask I would appreciate your advice!