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First looks: Wacom Intuos Pro (2017) Paper Edition lets you digitize paper drawings

By Alvin Soon - 24 May 2017

First looks: Wacom Intuos Pro (2017) Paper Edition lets you digitize paper drawings

Wacom’s Intuos Pro 2017 tablet comes with a few improvements, like a smaller footprint and built-in wireless via Bluetooth. But the biggest change is the optional Paper Edition, which lets you draw on paper that’s clipped to the tablet and save the drawings digitally.

I tried the medium-sized Intuos Pro, which is slimmer and smaller but still has the same-sized active area. There’s a dedicated power button and on/off switch for touch controls on the side. The tablet connects via USB-C and Bluetooth, so you can use it wired or wirelessly.

The eight ExpressKeys and Touch Ring should be familiar to you if you’ve used the older Intuos Pro. The new one also uses the same Pro Pen 2, which supports 8,192 levels of pressure and 60 degrees of tilt recognition.

I had some problems pairing the tablet with my iMac, with intermittent connections via Bluetooth. You should know that you’ll need an internet connection to set up the Intuos Pro, there’s no software in the box and hardly any instructions. You’ll need to go online to download drivers and watch the setup videos.

Touch controls and pen use worked most of the time, but they would occasionally drop or lag. Hovering the pen above the tablet’s surface lets you control the mouse pointer, but I wished there was a way to customize how far away the pen can be before the tablet detects it. Sometimes I held the pen in my hand as I used touch controls and I think the tablet got confused which input was actually dominant.

The Paper Edition comes with a digital and ink pen that uses electromagnetic resonance tech to operate without cords or batteries, a clip to fasten drawing paper to the tablet, and a nice carrying bag for both.

The Finetip pen lets you draw on the paper with ink, and transfer the drawings or writing to your PC afterward using Wacom’s Inkspace app. It’s a little magical, actually. You can draw away from the desk and sync later — the tablet can capture up to 200 pages with unlimited layers.

For some reason, if you don’t sign up with a Wacom Inkspace account, you can only do basic things with the digitized scribblings, like export to JPEG. Registering for a free basic account unlocks more advanced options, like exporting your drawing to a PSD layer or to an SVG file.

By exporting my initial crappy ink drawing (left) to SVG (right), I could select individual lines as vectors and either edit them or delete them.

I wondered why you’d want to use the Paper Edition when you can simply scan your drawings, but the ability to transform ink into vectors was eye-opening. I could select, change and delete individual lines in the digitized file, something that I couldn’t do with a scanned drawing. 

My original bad handwriting (left), where I wrote, “I sense it coming. I sense it coming now.” And the tablet’s valiant attempt to transcribe it (right) was actually quite decent.

You can also export writing to text, and the Inkspace software did a decent job transcribing my terrible handwriting.

Today, Wacom remains the name in tablets and digital pens today because it’s the dominant player in the scene. If you’re a designer working on a PC and need a tablet, you’re getting a Wacom. Even Dell’s Active Pen, Samsung’s S Pen and Microsoft’s Surface Pen use some form of Wacom technology. But Apple has hinted that they may develop the iPad Pro and Pencil and make “them work well together”, which will heat up the competition some — whenever that happens.

The new Intuos Pro is available in Singapore now. The Intuos Pro Medium (13.2 x 8.5 inches) retails at S$499, the Large (16.8 x 11.2 inches) costs S$709. The Intuos Pro Paper Edition Medium (13.2 x 8.5 inches) retails at S$579, and the Large (16.8 x 11.2 inches) at S$799.

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