Setting up my wacom tablet to work faster in photoshop
I do not know if every photographer uses these set of tools specifically, but if you are one of my fellow classmates at Sue Bryce Education (if you are not you should be ... check the link) and you retouch following the photoshop tutorials these settings may help you
To our matter...
[pictures shown are form mac, but it should look and be the same or pretty close to it for windows]
I know lot of you haven’t installed the proper drivers for you tablet, please do ... every version is different which is why I won't mention them individually but click HERE to go to the page where you can find the right one for yours, not to mention if you register you get some extra stuff like tutorials and (for whoever got a deal at purchase) software, this may take some time and restarting your computer a couple times before is done, so save everything and move forward.
Once you have installed the drivers you will have a program called Wacom Desktop Center, where you can make all the changes to your tablet like pressure and other stuff but I am just talking about express-keys to edit faster, once on the desktop center you should see something like the image below, select the BACKUP SETTINGS menu, click on the RESTORE option and install the preferences I am sharing HERE don’t double click on the folder, right click it and download... please do not do this if you have your own settings for other programs, it will delete them.
That is pretty much it for the installing part... now I would like to explain a bit of how and why I choose those settings, also you can modify them as you go, depending on what is easier or faster for you, the thing is to use them and take advantage of this fabulous tool we have been pushing aways.
To go and see what we’ve installed and modify if needed, you go to the Wacom Desktop Center again under MY DEVICES you should see your intuos name, click on it (it should show something like the image below) the settings I am sharing are set for pen, ExpressKey and On-Screen Control SETTINGS, and any of these menus will open the same window on your preferences.
Now you should be inside your wacom tablet settings, first let me explain; you have a bar on top that says applications there you have the general settings referred as All Other and, if you installed my preferences, you should see adobe photoshop cc2017 (if you have a different version you would more than likely have to activate your own, I’ll mention how to, next) click on it; then go to your first option:
Tablet, will look something like this
If you didn’t install my presets or if your version of photoshop is different all you need to do is click on the + sign on the right side and look for your photoshop shortcut and add it, this is true for any program you wish to set up, and by doing this you are only modifying these settings for that specific software, after adding it you can follow the recipe on the nest steps and you’ll have my settings.
The first key, top left corner, I selected it to be the space bar, as I usually use it to move around the image (I am still figuring out if its the best place for that key... )
Right under you see I selected right click because I have my brackets on the pen, which I find more useful and bottom left corner still gives me easy access.
I left the menu open to explain how to change the keys if you want to, clicks get selected on the clicks menu, Keystroke is for the keyboard, and you can use configurations like cmd+a for example you would just click them like you would using the program no need to add the plus symbol; modifiers would be shift, control, option, command.. by them selves; there you can also find the option to select your On-Screen Controls which we will talk in a bit.
Next, right top corner you see Photoshop power editing that is the name of my custom on screen controls (hmm maybe i should switch it for the hand keystroke... thinking out loud)
And bottom right corner I have Cmd+T for transform, I couldn’t figure out a better one, and it causes me to stretch my hand a little more than copy and paste so that is how I decided, I might change it latter on depending on the use
Pen, will look something like this
The only thing I changed here where my pen buttons to get [ ] brackets there that way I can make my tools bigger / smaller super fast (this is my favorite setting in the world)
You select to make this changes exactly like we did for the tablet, same principal same menu.
now we jump all the following down to the last one (Exiting-scary part is here!!..)
On-Screen Controls, will look something like this
First off (if you couldn’t install my preferences for any reason) this is how you set up a new set of settings:
Click on the plus sign at the bottom of the panels section, you will get a prompt to choose a name, and select a style of presentation for your panel, I selected a radial but you can do whatever feels more comfortable then click ok; this will create a new panel that has no key assigned.
If you want to edit the panel style or name just click on the pencil and it will give you this options for a panel that was created or installed previously.
As you can see I selected to have only keystrokes, and the order is just what I felt it worked.
I selected to have the
Clone (S)
Healing (J)
Dodge and burn (O)
Brush (B)
Eraser (E) - I don't normally turn my pen around to use the one in there, i should try
Color balance panel (Cmd+B) - it may change not sure yet
Lazo (L)
Raw filter (Shift+Cmd+A)
AND THAT IS IT!..
I feel is worth mentioning that I tried having alt or option in mac on the keys but it was just making it react slow, after discovering that I thought: that one, space bar (which I am still testing), copy, paste, and curves are fairly close to the bottom part of the keyboard that gives me easy access to them, and I tried to figure out a way to do numbers faster, but nothing came up, so those are the ones I will still use my keyboard for.
I hope I was clear and that this helps you out a bit =)