Becoming a Wacom Cintiq Tablet Power User – Pt 1

Written by Scott

When I do anything artistic on the Mac, I power up my Wacom Cintiq tablet. It is one of the best investments I’ve made in my business. In fact, we own three tablets: the Wacom Cintiq 21UX 21-Inch, Wacom Cintiq 12WX 12-Inch, and one Wacom Intuis.

I keep my Intuis or my 12-inch Cintiq in my laptop bag at all times, with my MacBook Pro since I’m on the road so often.

Preface
There are multiple uses for the Cintiq and I’m going to focus on using the Cintiq for two main types of art.

The first is visual effects. This is what I spend the majority of my time doing. This includes using programs such as Photoshop, modo, Shake, Nuke, Silhouette, and a few other lesser known programs.

The second type of artwork I’ll gear this series toward is digital caricatures, since that is my wife’s line of work. She travels across the country with her 21″ Cintiq and uses it daily with both Photoshop and Painter.

This series will go over the 21-inch and 12-inch Cintiq setups, preferences, and tips. However, many of the tips will work for any of the Wacom tablets.

System Setup
Obviously, you need to do is purchase a Cintiq. Duh. Just wanted to get the obvious out of the way! I’m assuming you know how to plug it in and connect it to your Mac.

The first thing I do is setup the System Preferences. Below is a screenshot from my preference pane:

You’ll notice that if you have multiple tablets, you can configure each one independently. This one will be for the 21-inch.

I use a lot of programs that need a middle mouse click (like Shake and Nuke, two popular visual effects programs). The default setting for a Wacom stylus pen is to use the rocker button to “Right Click” and “Double Click.”

For me, this never really worked, so I changed it to “Middle Click.” After all, I can still double click with the tip of the pen.

This one little tip has saved a ton of time for me.

Next, change the sensitivity. You can calibrate the sensitivity by clicking the “Details…” under “Tip Feel” on the bottom left of the screen. Some people press harder than others and you should change this setting to match your personal usage.

Next, we’re going to setup the Function keys:

The second row from the top labeled “Tool” will allow you to select the function buttons. These are the buttons on the sides of a Wacom tablet. Note that earlier models of the Intuis don’t have these buttons. The new ones do have them.

The first comment I’ll make is that I leave these at their defaults. I sometimes use other people’s tablets and locations of modifier keys, like CTR, OPT, or the Apple-COMMAND key, should always be in the same place so you don’t have to look for them.

The second comment is that these keys are here for a reason. USE THEM! They are so useful and will shave off a few seconds of time for many, many routine tasks.

For example, in Photoshop, it is habit for me (as it is for many of you, I’m sure) to keep your thumb near the spacebar to pan around an image. Well, the bototm button on the Cintiq’s group of modifier keys acts as the spacebar.

Finally, the “Touch Strip” is useful for zooming. Just be careful that you don’t have the zoom speed set too high or you’ll be zooming down to a pixel level very quickly!

This wraps up Part 1 of this series on Using your Wacom Cintiq. Our next part will deal with color calibration and the “get-ready” for your Cintiq. Hopefully, by the end of this series, you’ll be a Cintiq Power User!

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