Tools for tablets

I've been experimenting with various graphics/drawing tools recently, to find out which is the best program for doing my random sketching etc. with the tablet.

So far I've used Paint, Photoshop CS 2, Painter IX and Sketchbook Pro.


Paint is great for quick things. It's just so simple and if you don't mind rough lines, it's kinda fun too.


Photoshop is a good all-around tool. Although for some reason I don't really like to just plain draw stuff in it, especially when I could use Painter.


Painter.. now that's something different. I believe it's purprose-made for tablets. It's great for drawing things and painting. The brushes, pens and everything work really well and quite realistically too. Definitely worth trying out. There's a trial-version available at http://apps.corel.com/painterix/home/index.html

Here's something I've made in Painter. It's incomplete and I suck.. so..


I've just recently downloaded the trial of Sketchbook Pro so I haven't had lots of time to experiment with it... but it seems quite good. The interface is "optimized" for tables (or something) and it's easy to use. It does seem to lack advanced features like in Photoshop and brush/pen "simulation" like in Painter, but for the purprose of sketching and just drawing things, it seems quite good. You can get a trial of Sketchbook Pro from http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=6848332&siteID=123112

I drew HG in Sketchbook Pro


There's also a program by Xara which is quite good for vector-based drawing. I used it earlier to draw with the mouse... but I can't quite grasp the name. It was probably one of the easiest and the most intuitive vector drawing programs though.


That's all for now. No programming stuff... darn.
And here's something fun (weird?).