For a very long time, I thought graphic tablets were a fad when it came to retouching photos. I know illustrators who use graphic tablets and it definitely makes their workflow better by eliminating the need to transfer their designs from paper onto a computer screen. However, when it came to retouching photos I didn’t see it being more efficient than a mouse. It just felt like photographers were justifying why they should buy one more piece of gear when they talked about graphic tablets.

Recently I decided to give graphic tablets another try. I was looking for a way to speed up my workflow especially since I’ve been shooting and retouching photos from back-to-back assignments. No, I didn’t buy one, I borrowed one – from my wife. I watched a few videos to reintroduce myself to the idea of using the graphic tablet and within 3 days of practicing it stuck but I still didn’t see how it improved my retouching workflow.

Of all the videos I watched no one was able to say definitively if the graphics tablet cut their photo retouching by “x” amount of time. The key selling point of most of the videos was how intuitive the graphic tablets were because it was like using a pen and paper. I just didn’t get it. Why? Because I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop from 2000 and the mouse has been more intuitive to me.

In an attempt to prove all these photographers and retouchers wrong I decided to time how long it took to retouch an image using a mouse versus using a graphic tablet.

Here is what I found …

Sara Lawrence

The graphic tablet allowed me to retouch the photo above in 1 hr 25 mins 58 secs. The same image edited with a mouse took me 1 hr 43 min 8 secs. Approximately 20 mins less than with a mouse. What!? I was surprised.

How is this possible? Well, I customized the buttons on the graphic tablet I was using, a Wacom Intuos Pro M – 5 of the 8 buttons had shortcut keys assigned (the touch ring not included). This meant I didn’t need to use my keyboard as much.

What I also found is that I was able to use my brush, clone and lasso tools more efficiently, getting into every nook and cranny. I had precision at my fingertips due to fact that I was using a pen and not a mouse.

Since this experiment, I’m looking into getting a smaller graphic tablet to implement in my workflow. I’m going smaller because of my desk space. But I will admit that I was wrong to think that graphic tablets are a fad.