Before I purchased this model I had been using an older Intuos 3. The older model does seems to be a little more solidly built. And the surface of the older model was a little more “glossy” than this one. But it took all of 10 minutes to get used to the new textured surface of this tablet. (The texture is pretty similar to the texture of the casing on my Apple MacBook Pro) Yes, this new tablet is more lightweight, but that’s not really a bad thing in my book. This tablet also functions as a track pad, which is awesome! I can use the pen to retouch photos, then just turn my wrist and it’s my mouse!

First of all I compared prices on every web site I could find for this product. Amazon.com was the least expensive by over $100.00. Activation of this suite was very simple and fast. Go to Adobe.com, Give them your name, address,and product serial number and schools e-mail address that’s ends with .edu. Adobe will send the activation key to the edu address right away.

When we look on amazon.com for the best selling book on Photoshop, it’s usually “Adobe Photoshop Classroom in a Book” (CIB). There’s a reason for that. Both entry level users and top creative professionals look to CIB as a key resource.

We are amongst the latter. This studio goes back to Photoshop 2.0 with a serial number which ended in something like 00101. For us, CIB is a foundational list of everything a creative professional must master, going beyond what appears on its pages. So, like many of the Photoshop masters, we never missed a Photoshop CIB going back Photoshop 4. (By the way, Photoshop (Ps) CS6 is Photoshop 13.)

I was kind of worried when I bought this, because I had read the reviews that stated no downloads were included for the practice lessons. I guess Amazon or Adobe have fixed this problem, because on the very last page they give a web address, which is also a link to the files. I went to the address on my laptop where the Illustrator program is installed and had no problems downloading all the necessary files. Now I can read the book on the Kindle while following the steps on the laptop. Very useful. It is quite a lot of material however, and is not learned in just a few sittings.

I’m a bit of a pen fanatic and love to have a wide assortment of colors and types for different purposes. I got all the different sets I could find of the Sakura brand, and was very happy with them. This set includes #005 (.20mm), #01 (.25mm), #02 (.30mm), #03 (.35mm), #05 (.45mm), #08 (.50mm), #1 (1.0 Pigma graphic), and BR (Pigma brush). I recently visited a Hobby Lobby near me and these pens were sold individually at a much higher price. If you like the versatility of having different thicknesses for your artwork, it makes sense to buy this set.

I’ve been using this pen for several years now and swear by it for inking comics. The pen itself is durable and looks beautiful (it’s at least as pretty in its design as some Pelikan fountain pens), and the ink is not only very solid black but also smear- and bleed-proof on every paper I’ve tried so far.

One minor quibble with the pen is that I’d sometimes have too much flow of ink to the brush – especially if a new cartridge had just been installed. But I learned to control and compensate for this in time. Even with this occasional issue, it still earns an easy five starts in my book.

I love these. I’m able to build a value sketch in the french greys and then use colored pencil or watercolor over them. These markers have a beautiful variance of shades all in the warm, french gray family. They blend well and leave no marker streaks on most surfaces (as long as the surface is not too soft).

I absolutely love these Prism color markers! So I purchased a set and thanks to these markers this was a condition i never regretted. What I really love about them is the kind of clean water color effect they have and the control you get when rendering, because these markers are double tip at both ends they present you with more flexibility and I like the fact that unlike other media types with these you can get a lot of color down quickly which means you save time rendering. The quality of the markers are exactly as i had hoped: the different shades of grey and the different sizes of ends are awesome, easy and fun to use.