Waccom Graphire 3 Digital Drawing Tablet: Product Review

The Waccom Graphire 3 Digital Drawing tablet is an excellent tool for anyone considering digital artwork. It is sold by Waccom, a producer of many good digital artwork tools, and is just one of their many types of digital drawing tablets. Waccom is a big name in the tablet industry, and for good reason, as their quality Graphire 3 shows. The tablet run around $100, and is available from the Waccom website, amongst other websites.

The Graphire 3 run on a simple USB plug in, and comes with several needed items, along with some additional bonus software. The tablet is shaped like a simple drawing pad (square), with a cord running from the top left side to the USB adapter. The front also includes an area to place the drawing pen, which attaches in side there for easy storage. The pen and the tablet are the main parts to this nifty tool, and function very well. You just plug the tablet into your PC's USB slot, install the drivers needed from the included CD, and then you can use the pen as a mouse.

You simply hold the pen like you would a normal pen, and move it across the top of the drawing pad. You can use it in place of a normal mouse, but it works best when used to replace the mouse for artwork. After all, the idea is take the idea of drawing with a real pen on paper to drawing with a tablet pen on a tablet, which then shows up on your drawing program, be it Photoshop, Open Canvas, or even MS Paint. It takes a little while to get used to using the pen, but once you pick up the hang of it, you will be able to create some incredible master pieces, thanks to the computer and the tablet.

A cordless mouse that runs on the drawing pad is also included, but I have not found it to be very useful. Perhaps it is good for switching from the pen to the mouse if you are in a hurry, but since I already have a wireless mouse, it doesn't help much. The included software on the CD is pretty amazing-there's a free version of Adobe Photoshop, called Photoshop Elements. While it's not the same as Photoshop, and doesn't include everything, it includes most of the functions as Photoshop, thus making it pretty useful.