Wacom Tabs

I use the Wacom Intous pro small (it is about 8 x 8 inches). I find it great for some things and horrible for others, I find it great for brush strokes when retouching or anything that requires a precision touch that can be hard to do with a mouse, simple things like pressing harder for different levels of brush softness can be a great time saver. I can move around in menus and click on options in photoshop but I find it an absolute pain when working the sliders in Lightroom.

When I was buying I was very worried about getting the small one and it being too small but now that I have it I find I only use about 1/3rd of the tablet surface. It is not like a mouse that scrolls across the screen, each point on the tablet equates to a point on the screen, for example if you were working in the top left of the screen and then lifted off the pen and tapped it in the bottom right the cursor would instantly be there rather than scrolling across the screen like a mouse. Reducing the size of the working area on the tablet means you don’t have to make large hand movements to get from one side of the screen to the other.

The software that comes with it is quite good and allows for a great deal of customisation of working area of the tablet, and the button functions.

I took me a while to get used to it, the best thing is to force yourself to use it instead of a mouse for everything for a while, that will get you used to the movement and controls. Now I have it and a mouse on the desk and freely interchange between them depending on what I am doing.

I have no experience with illustrator so I cant comment on what it is like to work with in that.