I would like to hear from fellow members who have used a stylus in place of a mouse. There is so much information available, it becomes confusing.

I want to try one but because they can be rather expensive, I want to be reasonably certain I'm doing the right thing by getting one.

Have you tried one? Do you prefer it over a mouse? Why or why not?

I have used a Wacom-tablet of some variety for close to 20 years now and I'd say it's a great tool if you are interested in doing artwork on the computer. It's as important for photo-manipulation as it is for painting (which is what I use it for). If your main use is playing with filters it's probably less necessary (for making selections I still tend to prefer using a good-quality mouse since I can release the mouse and it doesn't go anywhere).

A tablet has a much higher precision than a mouse. It's usually run in absolute mode, which means that the surface of the tablet maps 1:1 to the ratio of your screen. So if you lift the pen away from the surface and put it down elsewhere the cursor will jump across the screen to that position immediately (contrary to a mouse where the cursor stays where you last left it). Tablets also usually have pressure sensitivity which you can map in various ways in your graphics program - common is that the harder you press the darker, denser or bigger the brush becomes. More advanced models can also detect things like tilt and rotation of the pen, but you won't need that as a tablet-newcomer. Pressure is more than enough.

I usually recommend that you get the cheapest and smallest Wacom tablet with pressure sensitivity that you can find. The physical size of the tablet does not matter much - this is what the zoom is for. The step-up from mouse to tablet is much greater than the differences between tablet models anyway.

Wacom is the market leader, needs no batteries and work great with Linux/Windows/Mac, GIMP and other open-source software (as well as with things like Photoshop of course). These days there are alternate and cheaper tablet brands to get too, so if the cheapest Wacom is out of your price range, those may be worth looking into. I can't comment on how good they are though; at least for Linux those off-brands have tended to be pretty weak so I've not bothered.
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Griatch

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