About Graphic Tablets

A graphics tablet (or digitizing tablet, graphics pad, drawing tablet) is a computer input device that allows one to hand-draw images and graphics, similar to the way one draws images with a pencil and paper. These tablets may also be used to capture data of handwritten signatures.

A graphics tablet (also called pen pad) consists of a flat surface upon which the user may "draw" an image using an attached stylus, a pen-like drawing apparatus. The image generally does not appear on the tablet itself but, rather, is displayed on the computer monitor. Some tablets however, come as a functioning secondary computer screen that you can interact with directly using the stylus.

Some tablets are intended as a general replacement for a mouse as the primary pointing and navigation device for desktop computers.

Graphics tablets, because of their stylus-based interface and ability to detect some or all of pressure, tilt, and other attributes of the stylus and its interaction with the tablet, are widely considered to offer a very natural way to create computer graphics, especially two-dimensional computer graphics. Indeed, many graphics packages (e.g. The GIMP, Corel Painter, Inkscape, Photoshop, Pixel image editor, Studio Artist, the Crosfield imaging system, Quantel Paintbox, and others) are able to make use of the pressure (and, in some cases, stylus tilt or rotation) information generated by a tablet, by modifying the brush size, shape, opacity, color, or other attributes based on data received from the graphics tablet.

In East Asia, graphics tablets, or pen tablets as they are known, are widely used in conjunction with input method editor software (IMEs) to write Chinese, Japanese, Korean characters (CJK). The technology is popular and inexpensive and offers a methodology for interacting with the computer in a more natural manner than typing on the keyboard, with the pen tablet supplanting the role of the computer mouse.

Tablets are also popular for technical drawings and CAD, as one can put a piece of paper on them without interfering with their function.

Many of the most successful webcomic artists use tablets, including Hawk of AppleGeeks, Jorge Cham of Piled Higher and Deeper, Tim of Ctrl+Alt+Del and Gabe of Penny Arcade, who uses a graphics tablet to color directly into the computer..

Finally, tablets are gaining popularity as a replacement for the computer mouse as a pointing device. They can be more intuitive to some users than the mouse, as the position of the pen on the tablet typically corresponds to the location of the pointer on the GUI shown on the computer screen. Those artists using the pen for graphics work will as a matter of convenience use the tablet and pen for standard computer operations rather than put down the pen and find the mouse.

Graphics tablets are available in various sizes and price ranges; A6-sized tablets being relatively inexpensive and A3-sized tablets being far more expensive. Modern tablets usually connect to the computer via a USB interface.