Crappy tablet or crappy skills? (Wacom Intuos5)

[OffthePier]

Hello

I'm totally new on this forum and totally new in the world of drawing and art. Lately I had to do some design in photoshop for work, one thing let to oneother and now I want to draw and paint like a maniac.
I used to draw a lot during my childhood and teen years but stopped with it, did not draw for more then 10 years and now I want to take it to a next level.

My problem is following: I bought a Wacom Intuos5 tablet and I draw in photoshop but it seems I get some "artefacts". It seems like when stroking the tablet with my pen it sometimes feels like it's not really flat. I get some hickups or pixelshifts that seem like it should not do. In my picture you can see what I'm trying to explain.
In real life I know nobody who's into painting or uses a drawing tablet so I can't get some advice. Basicly what I'd like to know is, is this normal or is my tablet broken?

Bear in mind that I have no clue what pixel size I should be working. Pixel size for brush or for document. Am I drawing wrong?

When I draw on paper I get pretty good lines and circles but it's so damn hard on my tablet. Is this a normal learning curve?

I would really appreciate some help and hopefully I will be showing my work pretty soon.

[ilmenhin]

I think your post may be better suited posted in the Wacom subforum. Have you tried adjusting your wacom settings in the control panel / system preferences?

There's a fairly old but 2012-ish thread currently in the wacom subforum reporting of a sensitivity bug with the Intuos4/5. I don't know if there's a fix yet, since there was nothing of it being mentioned.

[Griffonnage]

If you take a ruler and the line end up like the one you show there, it's probably the tablet drivers :p

At all pixel size it's suppose to work, even with 1 px, the line should be a line, no jump should appear. So the question is : what is your OS, your photoshop version, the drivers you use and is this happening in other software ?

[OffthePier]

I tried adjusting the wacom settings without any success. I can't watch the video in the other thread atm, will watch it later.

Oh, I'm working on a PC running Windows 7, PS 6, latest wacom drivers. I haven't tried it in other software, except for paint I don't have any other. But I'm going to look into this if I can try it elsewhere. I'll have a look at it all when I'm home from work. Thanks already guys!

[OffthePier]

ok, I tried the ruler in photoshop and in gimp and both of them do the same thing, they shift the pixels like in my pic. I can't draw straight lines with it. I'll have to figure out if it's the drivers or a hardware issue

[Griffonnage]

Well, the next step would be to try installing older drivers...
Do you get any pression information if you try to push harder while drawing ? Before thinking of a faulty pen or faulty tablet, let's check all the possibilities

Also, intuos 5 tablet are suppose to have touch surface, right ? (I don't own one so I'm not quite sure) Is this touch-ability working ?

[hecartha]

I remember from Wacom some simple advices:
-avoid any magnetic fields around the tablet
-it is better to plug the tablet directly to your computer instead of plugging it to an USB Hub

[OffthePier]

pression sensitivity works, it's plugged in directly. I don't know wether I can change my setup to avoid magnetic fields. Don't know if there are any.

BUT I did found out my tablet was configured in "mouse-mode" and I changed it to "pen-mode" and now it's almost gone. Sometimes it still does this slightly but certainly not as much as before. It's workable.

I do though get the shoe-lace problem now but I can live with that. It's not that annoying.

[s12a]

For the shoelace problem you have to disable "Smoothing" under brush settings in Photoshop (F5 menu).
Despite appearances, Photoshop isn't the best application for drawing and painting, in my opinion.

[-j@y-]

Firstly, if you want to make nice straight lines or circles most programs have a means of doing that perfectly, like in gimp for instance, click, hold shift, click again, straight line. Also you could be working on a really small canvas, almost doing sprite sized work.