Drawing with Touchpad: How to Use Adobe Photoshop & Paint

[darkar]

How to draw using touchpad especially in Adobe Photoshop and paint ?

 

[z-component]

If you're having trouble with the touchpad, get a cheap OS/2 mouse from a computer store and plug it into the mouse port on your laptop.

 

[darkar]

Oh that's not the case.
My idea is that since the touchpad use touch sens to detect motion, can it like detect a pen and animate the drawing effect. Since it is a bit difficult to draw using mouse compare to hand drawing.

 

[equuslover]

A touchpad is an input device commonly used in laptop computers. They are used to move the cursor, using motions of the user's finger. They are a substitute for a computer mouse. Touchpads vary in size but are rarely made larger than 50 cm² (8 in²). They can also be found in PDAs.

Touchpads commonly operate by sensing the capacitance of a finger, or the capacitance between sensors. Capacitive sensors are laid out along the horizontal and vertical axis of the touchpad. The location of the finger is determined from the pattern of capacitance from these sensors. This is why they will not sense the tip of a pencil or other similar implement. Gloved fingers may be problematic (such as in a cleanroom environment) but can sometimes work. Moist or sweaty fingers can be problematic for those touchpads that rely on measuring the capacitance between the sensors.

Touchpads are relative motion devices. That is, there is no isomorphism from the screen to the touchpad. Instead, relative motion of the user's fingers causes relative motion of the cursor. The buttons below or above the pad serve as standard mouse buttons. Depending on the model of touchpad and drivers behind it, you may also click by tapping your finger on the touchpad, and drag with a tap following by a continuous pointing motion (a click-and-a-half).

Some touchpads also have "hotspots": locations on the touchpad that indicate user intentions other than pointing. For example, on certain touchpads, moving your finger along the right edge of the touch pad will control the scrollbar and scroll the window that has the focus vertically. Moving the finger on the bottom of the touchpad often scrolls in horizontal direction.

Some touchpads can emulate multiple mouse buttons by either tapping in a special corner of the pad, or by tapping with two or more fingers.

Touchpads are primarily used in portable laptop computers, because the usual mouse device requires a flat table adjacent to the keyboard not always available away from the office. But touchpads have some advantages over the mouse, particularly that the pad's position is fixed relative to the keyboard, and very short finger movements are required to move the cursor across the display screen. Some computer users prefer them for such reasons, and desktop keyboards with built-in touchpads are available from specialist manufacturers.

Touchpads have also recently appeared in Apple's iPod. The main control interface for menu navigation in all of the currently produced iPods (except the Shuffle) is a touchpad (at first by Synaptics; Apple now manufactures that component itself). Creative Labs also uses a touchpad in their Nomad Jukebox Zen line with the Zen Touch, Zen Sleek (Photo) and Zen Micro (Photo).

The "trackpad" is Apple Computer's name for the touchpad. It was introduced in 1994 in the PowerBook 500 series, the first Apple laptop ever to carry such a device, and replaced the trackball of previous PowerBook models. Late generation PowerBooks and iBooks have two finger sensing capabilities, as well as the current MacBook and MacBook Pro model lines.

In 1989 Psion introduced their first full size laptop (Psion MC 200/400/600/WORD series) with a new mouse-replacing touch-pad. Although the Psion's was a tap-to-point design that did not catch on, however, the Apple stroke-to-point design did, so the Psion's system wasn't really a touchpad in term of how we know it today.

 

[slider142]

A touchpad is not recommended for any type of graphical work. Mice are pretty bad as well. For drawing/pen emulation, either purchase a tablet (you can get cheap ones on eBay), or purchase a tablet or touchscreen PC. Tablets and their pens have advantages such as pressure sensitivity, angle sensitivity, easy erasure, and different types of nibs, as well as having a more natural canvas interface.

 

[junglebeast]

As slider said a tablet is the way to go -- and wacom is the brand of choice. I don't recommend a tablet PC as these tend to have lower processing power that makes them not as good for drawing large images smoothly in photoshop, and they won't have as high quality recognition on the drawing surface either. The only real decision to make is what size you want.

 

[dreamer95969]

i realize this is kind of an old post but i figured i would try this for myself and found something that works

take a size 8 paint brush moisten it and run your fingers over it to drain all the excess water out run it over your touchpad and wala you have a paint brush that should interact with your touchpad now i use a sony vaio on windows 7 don't know if it will work on others but ill try it on as many as i can to see