Are you a budding photographer? Or perhaps you are someone that has been taking photographs in a fairly serious fashion for some time? Someone who has just decided to splash out and have moved to their first SLR? Or maybe you got your first digital camera last Christmas and have really caught the bug? However you started in Photography, if you are doing it in anything close to a serious manner you will soon realise that, firstly you are collecting an awful lot of photographs and secondly you’re going to need some way to touch up or manipulate your images.

Photoshop

Most people in this situation will normally will buy image software such as Adobe Photoshop CS3, perhaps starting with the entry level Adobe Photoshop Elements or even one of the free or online image manipulation applications first to see how things go prior to forking out the admittedly large amount of cash required for Photoshop.

Mice or Tablets
Unfortunately when you have used these applications for a while, especially the image manipulation applications, you (well at least I do) begin to find that the mouse gets a bit unwieldy. Have you ever tried drawing any sort of line thats not straight with a mouse and getting the results you wanted? Or delicately touching up the colour in a small area? Doing these things with a mouse can be frustrating to say the least and there has to be a better way. There is, it is called a graphics tablet, and while there is certainly a learning curve to overcome as you retrain yourself off your mouse, a tablet is what the majority of professionals use. If you are finding your mouse a pain it might be worth giving a tablet a go and while they can be expensive there are plenty of good value versions available. The well rated Wacom Bamboo Tablet for instance would be well worth a look. It is supported on both the PC and Macs and often comes with a software bundle as well and shouldn’t break the bank.

Do you use a tablet for your image manipulation?