Something I never thought I needed until I got one

For my birthday, I decided to get myself a small, consumer-grade graphics pad, what with me doing a significant amount of photography. I thought it would be fun to play around with, and for less than $100, not a horrible thing if I were to have happened to spend a bit more money on nothing good.

Turns out that the Wacom Bamboo pad that I bought is one of those things that I just didn't realize I need until I got to playing with it some. It took a bit of time to get used to how things worked with the pad. In "pen mode," it behaves in a fashion that a spot on the pad corresponds directly to a spot on the monitor. It's a bit counter-intuitive when one is used to how a mouse pad works. It didn't take a great deal of time to get used to it, though.

On the other hand, the fact that I had a device that was sensitive to where I was clicking and how hard I pressed on the pad made all the difference. Suddenly, making a slight change to an image was much easier, as I felt that a slight brush or doodle on a photograph suddenly made the image more "workable."

In short, anybody who does graphics work needs a graphics pad of some sort. I have a feeling that I need something more professional grade now that I've got the consumer version.