Favorite Drawing Tools?
in [Tablet PC]
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From: Ron Jeffries on 17 May 2006 21:48 I'm working on a book with lots of freehand drawings in it. So far, I've drawn things in OneNote, Word, Alias Sketchpad, ArtRage, and Journal. The book itself, I'm doing in Word for now. None of the drawing tools seems to do everything I'd like to have -- which includes the ability to use typed text as part of a drawing, among other things. What Tablet PC drawing tools do folks here like ... and what do you like about them? Thanks! -- Ron Jeffries www.XProgramming.com I'm giving the best advice I have. You get to decide if it's true for you.
From: Ron Jeffries on 21 May 2006 20:00 On Wed, 17 May 2006 21:48:42 -0400, Ron Jeffries <ronjeffries(a)acm.org> wrote: >I'm working on a book with lots of freehand drawings in it. So far, I've drawn >things in OneNote, Word, Alias Sketchpad, ArtRage, and Journal. The book itself, >I'm doing in Word for now. > >None of the drawing tools seems to do everything I'd like to have -- which >includes the ability to use typed text as part of a drawing, among other things. > >What Tablet PC drawing tools do folks here like ... and what do you like about >them? > >Thanks! Bump. Does no one actually use their tablet to draw? Little help here, please! -- Ron Jeffries www.XProgramming.com I'm giving the best advice I have. You get to decide if it's true for you.
From: Mickey Segal on 21 May 2006 20:33 My favorite for the functionality you describe is a discontinued Microsoft program called PhotoDraw. Other good ones are programs that have long supported drawing tablets but also work on Tablet PCs such as procreate Painter and Adobe Photoshop, each of which have low cost versions. ArtRage and Alias Sketchpad are very oriented towards drawing on a Tablet but do not have the wide functionality of the other products. "Ron Jeffries" <ronjeffries(a)acm.org> wrote in message news:ddkn62lplppps7e8bveuag4bcnjb35sdjf(a)4ax.com... > I'm working on a book with lots of freehand drawings in it. So far, I've > drawn > things in OneNote, Word, Alias Sketchpad, ArtRage, and Journal. The book > itself, > I'm doing in Word for now. > > None of the drawing tools seems to do everything I'd like to have -- which > includes the ability to use typed text as part of a drawing, among other > things.
From: Mickey Segal on 21 May 2006 20:59 Also check out http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/
From: a.jones on 22 May 2006 05:27
Ron Jeffries wrote: > On Wed, 17 May 2006 21:48:42 -0400, Ron Jeffries <ronjeffries(a)acm.org> wrote: > > Bump. Does no one actually use their tablet to draw? Little help here, please! I do. I sometimes need to sketch simple drawings with a few annotations for teaching material. This material goes through several drafts, so there is no point my spending a lot of time on each drawing. The material changes from draft to draft, and when the material is finally approved, my sketches will be redrawn by a professional artist. My requirement therefore is for something that allows me to create simple sketches and to incorporate them into a Word document. Probably the simplest way to achieve my objective is to sketch the diagram on paper and scan it as a 1-bit black-and-white image. That ensures that the file is not too big, even as a bmp file, and the line work is nice and crisp (because there's no grey, just black and white). It's easy then to import the image, which is saved as a bmp file, into Word. You'd think that with a tablet PC there would be a simple way to achieve the same result, but I have yet to find it. The closest I can get is using Journal. I use a blank template, and do the sketch. I have have the pressure sensitivity on the pen turned off. This makes all the lines solid black (or whatever colour). When I'm satisfied that the sketch is adequate, I select the whole drawing, and copy it into Paintshop Pro. Here I can do some simple operations, such as resizing, adding legible annotation (instead of my illegible handwriting), converting the colour depth to 1 bit, and saving as a bmp file. I then insert the bmp file into the Word document. During revisions of the draft, if I need to change the diagram, I can usually do whatever changes are necessary in Paintshop. I have tried using Onenote for this kind of work, and I have to say I have not found it suitable. Onenote is designed for the creation of Onenote documents, but that's not really what I want from my Tablet PC. What I want from it is a way of creating text and diagrams in Word using pen entry, which is a different matter. I can expand further on any of these points if necessary. Allan |