2013.07.05 - New Laptop!

So I finally received my new laptop - a Lenovo Helix. I'm gonna post a wee bit about my experiences with it here, just in case any of you are curious about tablet PCs.

It's an ultrabook/tablet hybrid with wacom tech in the screen, so I was pretty excited to see how it'd handle a trip down Photoshop block. I'm glad to say that it did pretty well.

Most brushes work pretty smoothly, though the really complex dual-brush-plus-texture will undoubtedly lag when the brush size rises above 100. Unfortunately, there is a significant problem - regarding Photoshop, at least. With a resolution of 1080p on a screen that is only 11.6", the buttons are so goddamn tiny, and around the edges the wacom digitizer gets kind of imprecise, so changing settings on brushes and colour picking can be a chore. If you're painting with the laptop folded over the keyboard, you don't have access to hotkeys, so that can be a real problem. I bought a gaming keypad for just that purpose, which does help a lot, but also means carrying an extra device. I'm still looking for Photoshop extensions that might make life easier. I *guess* I could always decrease the resolution of the screen, but I'm not particularly keen on that.

I did try doodling in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, which was *awesome*. I wouldn't really use it for painting, but for drawing it feels like the program was made for exactly this kind of advice. Ran super smooth, and all the controls were right at my fingertips without cluttering my screen.

I have Painter 12 lying around somewhere, but I haven't gotten around to trying it out.

Here's the few doodles I did tonight, just to get used to drawing on the screen.