Wacom Graphic Tablets at Infocomm
June 14, 2012, Infocomm, Las Vegas—We talked with Michael Marcum from Wacom about their graphical input tablets. Wacom is one of the pioneers in graphical input devices, and graphical input tablets are a necessary part of the content creation supply-chain.
The company focus is on adapting natural pen technologies into graphical input devices for use with various computer systems. They have a number of tools and applications ranging from artistic graphics to collaborative classroom white boards. The devices are supported with extensive software and interfaces to common graphics applications.
In the smaller tablets, 16 inch and 22 inch, the basic tools include a pressure sensitive pen with user selectable point sizes and various types of erasers. The professional models are the Intuos5 family with multi-touch capabilities, and the Cintiq family with an integrated LCD screen. They also have large-scale input tablets and replace drafting boards.
For the home or office, the Bamboo line offers a different way to work on your computer. These graphical input tablets provide options for activities like photography, art and sketching, digital inking, and general navigation using multi-touch gestures.
In larger interactive displays, they have created a classroom collaboration app that allows a mixture of media display and interactive annotations of those displays. The whiteboard software tracks the wireless pen and places the pen movements in an overlay on top of the displayed content. This application is not restricted to educational activities, but is also good for group discussions and annotations of documents in a conference room.
The pen and the accompanying software are also available as accessories for an iPad or Android tablet, to convert the tablet into a high-resolution input device. The pen and associated app can capture drawings and handwriting, or any other content you can generate by hand and use the whole tablet as a capture device.
