Huion DWH69 Review (Part 1)

Newegg had a great deal on the Huion DWH69 Wireless graphics tablet I purchased one and received it yesterday. . I have a small Bamboo tablet, but never got used to it (for sale, comment if interested).

Seems that lately some of the Asian companies have spent a little more time and effort on packaging. Huion is no different. The tablet came in a sturdy two piece box. Inside, it was cleverly arranged in various compartments. A very nice presentation.

I began with my laptop. I downloaded and installed the latest driver for the unit from Huion's website. I like the way they set that up to. They use OneDrive and share the driver files. If you have a OneDrive account you can copy the file to your storage area, or you can just download it. Pretty cool.

After installing the driver I attached the unit via USB cable and immediately the tablet/pen combination behaved as a mouse. I don't have Photoshop on my laptop so I opened Krita. Sure enough, you can draw with the pen! I am not a big Krita user (yet) so I don't know much about it or what you can do with it. Huion says it does not support Krita. I guess this means that the pen pressure functionality doesn't work among other things. This appeared to be the case. But I could draw.

It will take some time to get used to the two buttons on the pen which function as the two buttons on a typical mouse. They worked as expected. The pen is quite comfy to use.

That's as far as I got on Day 1. Next I will install the tablet on my desktop and give it a try with Photoshop.

Free Fonts, Layouts, Textures and other Stuff

As I said in my previous post, I like free stuff, especially when it is useful. I have found the fonts and textures which are free on DealJumbo.com are of high quality. I use them in photoshop for composites made from my photos. You can have a look here. DealJumbo also has some incredible deals on paid for items. Give them a look.

Point and Shoot Photo Enhancement Using Photoshop CS6 Iris Blur

P&S cameras, with their small sensors, are great for getting closeup macro shots. However, even using the widest aperture, the background doesn't have the nice blur/bokeh you can achieve with some DSLR lens. Photoshop CS6 has a new blur filter called Iris Blur which allows you to blur the background while keeping the selected circular region in focus. This can be used to simulate a shallow DOF. The process is this: 1) Choose your focal point 2) Expand or contract the circle of focus 3) Adjust the blur strength, color, and lighting. It works pretty good. Below are some before and after pictures of a sensitive briar flower taken with a Fujifilm F505 in the macro mode.

After

Before

Mandala made from Tulip photo and Photoshop

I made this mandala from a tulip photo manipulated in photoshop. I really like how it turned out.

Some photography books...

Below are a few of the photography/photoshop books I would recommend:

1. Creative Digital Monochrome Effects by Joe Farace - Includes sections on in camera black&white, post production b&w, and all sorts of interesting effects. Includes lots of how-to and links.
   
2. The Creative Digital Darkroom by Katrin Eismann and Sean Duggan - Shows you how to create many of the effects you see in photographs today. Written for photoshop and lightroom users. Lots of information and details.
   
3. Magic Lantern Guides - Olympus Evolt E510 by David Schloss - More in depth than the Oly manual. I got the DVD as well. I put page tabs in mine and refer to it as needed.
   
4. The Photographer's Eye by Michael Freeman - gives you instruction on how to develop the ability to compose good photographs. Filled with examples, showing the scene, and explaining how the best shot was accomplished. A worthy read.