
Adobe's New Pen and Ruler - jasonlmk
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3032040/adobes-new-pen-and-ruler-tease-the-future-of-digital-creativity
======
prawn
Adobe's Ink and Slide page is here: [https://www.adobe.com/products/ink-and-
slide.html](https://www.adobe.com/products/ink-and-slide.html)

Coincidental timing as I have been looking at getting a stylus or Wacom tablet
for sketching layouts and quick notes while at my desk. My Jot Pro with
Penultimate has been a bit average, unfortunately.

At that <$250ish pricepoint, Wacom's main offerings appear to be the Intuos
stylus or their non-pro touch surface line. In the case of the former, you're
drawing on your iPad and your stylus is hitting the same surface as your
"ink". Another benefit is being able to easily sketch on the iPad on the couch
or wherever. Issue for me with this one is that it needs Bluetooth 4 and my
iPad 2 doesn't cut it.

With the pen and touch line, you're anchored or near your laptop/screen and
sketching is detached from the "ink" on screen. But everything drawn is right
there where I'll likely want it in Photoshop, etc.

Not sure that this Adobe Slide ruler would be all that useful and the pen
would come down to app support and responsiveness. From Adobe's video, it's
hard to see what the lag on the pen is like. Ink requires a more recent iPad
too.

Anyone got a current solution they're happy with? I'm thinking that I might
need to upgrade my iPad at least.

~~~
hobofan
In my personal experience a pure Wacom tablet always beats a tablet + stylus
combo. In past 5(?) years since I've bought a Wacom Bamboo, none of the
tablets I tried even came close, and I tried most of them, including the ones
with a wacom stylus. The problem all of them have, is that the surface is far
to slippery and only the best I've tried came close in precision. The main
downside with a Wacom is that you don't have the display directly underneath
the drawing area (but you get used to it very quickly) and that that the area
is quite small (I'd at least go with a Intuos now). I can't really see Adobes
new product solving any problems in the tablet + stylus field.

In the end you obviously should try both and decide what suits you best, but I
would choose my 5year old $70 Wacom over any tablet+stylus solution any day.

~~~
drglitch
Having been using Graphires (now called Intuous Pro?) for better half of past
decade, there is no going back once you've tried a screen + stylus combo.
Wacom also makes one - the Cintiq, although it was ridiculously expensive
until recently.

It may be subjective, but the advantage of drawing directly on screen is
tremendous - it truly feels like paper, as opposed of drawing "blind" while
looking up at a screen.

I went to the adobe launch event in NYC yesterday and was blown away by the
demos and by how simple and intuitive the device is. So far, i'm very pleased
with it - lets see what a week of use will bring...

~~~
egypturnash
Pro artist here.

I find that there's a pretty big split between people who really love the
Cintiq and its ilk, and people who would vastly prefer to draw on a separate
tablet. I'm in the latter camp: the lag is more perceptible when my hand is
right there, plus slight inaccuracies in location really throw me off, and the
real dealbreaker is that I'm a righty, and my hand is not transparent. Also
ergonomics - I don't have to hunch over my "drawing table" any more, I can
have the screen at the perfect height to keep my neck happy, and the tablet at
just the right place to keep my arm happy.

I mean obviously if you're using this new Adobe tool you're not going to have
the "hand obscuring menus" issue, as it's a UI designed for touch - but then
again you're also using a simple art tool, rather than a giant toolbox like PS
or AI. Which is fine if that simple tool happens to cover all your needs. Not
so fine if it doesn't.

I know pros who love their screen tablets, I know pros who have no interest in
them despite easily having the cashflow for one.

Oh yes: Graphire was the entry level brand, it's been replaced by Bamboo.
Intuos has always been the pro line. The tech has advanced over time, I think
a Bamboo today is better than an Intuos of five years ago. The Cintiq tends to
use the better quality of digitizers found in the Intuos.

------
egypturnash
“When a musician plays, if they have to constantly look through dropdown menus
to find the next chord, the music would not be very good. It’s farfetched and
maybe not possible, but we’d love for, some day, artists to play Photoshop, to
stay in flow, to be expressive without interruption.”

I've been using Illustrator for a decade. I've fiddled with the key commands
to make the tools I like to use a quick key press away. I've recorded macros
and assigned keystrokes to them (and am currently swearing a lot because a
recent update broke some of them). I've written little scripts.

And yeah, all this helps the flow. I work a lot faster then I did when I was
first using AI.

I have been thinking about this lately, and want to survey my artist friends
to see how many of them have also extensively customized the interface of
their favorite art tools. I have an intuition that it's one of the signs of
being a pro: you've explored enough of the deep set of tools within a modern
art program that you can say "this is an important part of my process" and
make it more accessible.

------
higherpurpose
I wish Google put more focus on better supporting highly accurate pens in
_all_ Android versions. Right now only Samsung does that, pretty much, and
even they have started losing interest a bit, I think, and they've made their
latest Note tablets very expensive, too.

I was hoping Nvidia would launch another Tegra Note tablet with its cheap but
very accurate stylus, but at 10", and for $300 or less, but it should've
arrived by now, and it hasn't.

There's also Qualcomm's Snapdragon 805 processor, which promises "ultrasound
inking" [1] of some sort, that seems like a pretty cool technology, but might
also be supported only by a few devices, at most. So I think it's ultimately
up to Google to make a bigger push for this, but unfortunately I think Google
has _zero_ interest in this.

[1] - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9w2oEWZ-
mY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9w2oEWZ-mY)

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jljljl
I guess this is the result of Adobe's Might & Napoleon experiment:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULKXTKZor3A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULKXTKZor3A)

Too bad about the name change, I thought the name Napoleon (because it's a
short ruler) was charmingly clever.

~~~
justinator
But, Napoleon wasn't short, compared to his contemporaries.

~~~
hornetblack
Napoleon wasn't short by most measures. The myth comes from two issues:
Napoleon used tall soldiers in his personal guard, and British people said it
to make fun of him.

------
eggy
I'll stick with my windows tablet and Sketchbook Pro. It already has compass,
ruler, French curve and perspective available with the stylus or my finger.
The whole point of an iPad is portability, not add-on gadgets. The software
interface looks cool though.

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joezydeco
There will be a flood of products that take advantage of the touch "pressure"
that iOS8 will allow developers to access.

This stylus from FiftyThree also looks promising:
[http://vimeo.com/98146708](http://vimeo.com/98146708)

~~~
i_am_ralpht
It's really interesting to me that most of these are just Bluetooth-connected
buttons. There's no pressure or angle sensitivity in the FiftyThree Pencil,
it's just a button.

I tried to find the "pressure" API in iOS 8, but I just found a new
majorRadius field (with an error tolerance). Android supports a bunch of
information (including "pressure" and radius) -- I bet you get pretty rich
data on devices with dedicated stylus support.

I was able to connect to the Pencil from Android via BTLE and observe the tip
being pressed and released (though not the eraser for some reason; maybe I
have to write some value out for that characteristic to come alive?) -- maybe
later this summer I'll try to make a basic Pencil-compatible Android drawing
app :).

~~~
tritchey
FWIW, the Ink is a lot more than that, including accelerometer data, and
pressure sensitivity.

~~~
i_am_ralpht
That's cool; thanks for sharing.

So you could use the accelerometer independently of the touchscreen for
gestures like flicking ink blots or swishing the "brush" in "water" \-- or
maybe you can do some fancy things on the screen like tapping on the same spot
for stippling (using the accelerometer to approximate height and velocity,
independent of the final pressure on the tip). There's so much fun stuff to do
here!

~~~
tritchey
Definitely, that is what we hope developers will start using it for. We expose
the accelerometer data in the SDK, so developers can get access to the data.
We also use the relative pen position to the iPad to sort out some offset
issues to make sure the line appears to be coming from the tip itself.

~~~
lsaferite
Does it also include a gyro sensor?

------
drcode
I would marginally be considered a "professional artist" and I am salivating
about these devices after seeing them in action. For me, the combination of
accurate stylus, retina display, and that slider thingy are a dream come true!

Sure, the iPad software that accompanies these programs is pretty wimpy, but I
can easily work around these limitations with some post processing. However,
every artist's workflow is different, so other people might have more
difficulty working around the limitations.

~~~
baby
> "professional artist"

I understand the novelty of drawing on an iPad. But I've tried it many times
and it's just not accurate at all. You just have to look at the tip of those
pens to understand that. IMO Cintiq is the only way to go if you're serious
about "art". On the other side, if you use that kind of things for notes and
rapid prototyping, why not.

~~~
zachrose
Still though: if it's good enough for David Hockney, it's quite good.

[http://www.annelyjudafineart.co.uk/exhibitions/david-
hockney](http://www.annelyjudafineart.co.uk/exhibitions/david-hockney)

~~~
coldtea
Well, it's not like he does any detailed drawing. So his needs are simpler
(for Mondrian, even more so, lol).

But check my other comment for Procreate (iPad app). It's impressive what
people have done in it, even in 4K resolution.

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lettergram
I don't really like the feel of using these. I would much rather just tap two
points draw a line and drag it where I want it. Why not use an entirely new
design to make use of the technology?

~~~
emp
When sketching concepts, line weight is created in various ways and used to
bring a sketch to life, conveying information such as 3d depth, important
areas, material strength, motion, mood, as well as the designer's particular
style. I don't think this is intended for CAD and vector drawings.

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thisjepisje
Would be great if it worked with Wacom tablets.

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dsplatonov
i wish i have such devices integrated with sketch

~~~
lgmspb
I'm wondering why sketch is not yet acquired by Adobe...

~~~
dsplatonov
I'm wondering why Adobe is not yet acquired by Adobe - this is a real question

