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This article is from August 31, 2011, and is no longer current.

New Wacom Pen Creates Vector Copies While You Draw on Regular Paper

There are all sorts of ways to create digital illustrations, but if you prefer to begin by sketching on paper, you need a scanner to go from ink to electrons. The result of that scan is a raster image, not vector. That’s just the way it is.
Or rather, that’s the way it was.
Wacom just introduced a new product, Inkling, that captures your work as you sketch on paper. The result is a completely digital vector file that can even have multiple layers and is editable in Photoshop, Illustrator, and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.

Inkling has two parts: a ballpoint pen and a receiver that stores the digital details. The receiver is wireless, and you can clip it to the top or side of your sketching surface. You have to be sure not to get in-between the tip of the pen and the receiver, or the signal won’t go through. Both parts come in a tidy little case that’s also a recharger.

You may have noticed that I’ve used the word “sketch” three times. That’s because Wacom emphasizes that Inkling is most suitable for “rough concepting and creative brainstorming”. Nevertheless, the pen can recognize and recreate 1,024 levels of sensitivity.
Inkling also comes with its own software, the Inkling Sketch Manager, in which you can do some basic editing, such as breaking sections of the sketching process into separate layers. For more extensive editing, Wacom recommends that you export your drawings to Illustrator or Photoshop (version CS3 or later) or to Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 2011. You can also save Inkling files as PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, SVG, or PDF.
Inkling costs $199 and will be for sale in the second half of September 2011.
For more information, watch the video below:

  • Anonymous says:

    we didn’t get to see an actual drawing file on screen?
    Way too much time spent on showing the concept which is easy to grasp and not a single actual file.
    This looks like something I would like but I’m a little concerned that they seemed to be hiding something.

  • Anonymous says:

    I would have liked to see a “live” example instead of these….

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