Be Excellent To Each Other

Mrs P needs to do some art stuff, and it is outlining and drawing work mainly. She has a MacBook Pro, so would some kind of graphics tablet and drawing package help her? If so, which one?

Edit: Just to expand, she is currently drawing a design for a tattoo, Also, many of her designs are pen and ink and hand drawn. She is a complete Photoshop novice, she knows what she wants to do, but not how. She is also a quick learner. So maybe a graphics tablet will allow her to still "draw" naturally and still have the benefits of editing and changing things quickly.

What size of graphics tablet does she want, bearing in mind they're a lot bigger than their size labels (an A4 tablet will be 32 x 47.4 cm), and what's your budget? I'd probably go a size smaller for myself next time.

I only have experience of the Wacom tablets and, aside from some minor occasional driver pains, I can't fault them. They take a bit of getting used to, though.

Budget is irrelevant right now. It is more about finding the right thing and then seeing if we can afford it. I have no knowledge of tablets or their software, or whether they would be used with something like Photoshop or some vector drawing package? Illustrator?

Never got on with graphics tablets myself. I much prefer drawing naturally then scanning and editing/tracing in Photoshop & illustrator. A decent USB canon scanner can be had for less than £50.

Tablets are used just like a mouse really. The tablet size maps to the screen, the only other gain is pressure sensitivity that can adjust the weight of the strokes in your paint/photo app.

I use mine with both Photoshop and Illustrator, and both handle them excellently. Obviously they're both completely different programs, so it'd depend what exactly your wife's needs were; for outlining and general drawing work, I'd be tempted to suggest exploring vectors more than raster work. Unfortunately both programs are quite expensive, but there are 30-day unrestricted trials on the Adobe site for her to check out before deciding. I don't have experience with any other graphics suites, so I can't comment; the Adobe ones have done pretty much everything I need them to, bar a few niggles.

As far as telling whether or not she'd be happy with a tablet, she'd really need to try one out for a few hours, and I'm not sure there's any way of really doing that. They're hardly an impulse buy, given their price (the A5 Wacom Intuos4 is £300 new, for example). Does she have any friends with one she could try? I've never seen any in stores.

I do my graphics in Photoshop and using my laptop's trackpad because I am THAT crazy/stupid and for some reason meant to buy a mouse about 4 years ago but forgot.

I did see Wacom Bamboo tablets in Aldi, they're Mac & PC compatible but they're quite small and they didn't have a price on them.