Wacom Inkling smart pen does drawing the old-fashioned way — kind of (video)

Wacom Has An Inkling

Today, Wacom® introduces Inkling, a brand new digital sketch pen that captures a digital likeness of your work once you sketch with its ballpoint tip on any sketchbook or standard piece of paper. Designed for rough concepting and inventive brainstorming, Inkling bridges the distance between paper sketching and digital drawing by giving users on the front end of the creative process the way to rough-out ideas with real ink on paper and capture their concepts digitally so that it will be later refined on their computer. Inkling even allows users to create layers within the digital file while sketching on paper within the following creative software applications: Adobe® Photoshop®, Adobe® Illustrator® and Autodesk® Sketchbook® Pro.
Spontaneous and Liberating

Virtually anyone who uses sketching to capture their creative ideas and needs to have their drawings in a digital format to e-mail, archive or further refine on their computer can get pleasure from Inkling. As an example, artists, illustrators, or story boarders who appreciate the benefit, speed and spontaneity of loosely sketching their ideas on paper could take advantage of the capabilities of Wacom’s Inkling digital sketch pen. In everyday use, a graphic designer could use Inkling to create rough concepts on paper for a brand new advertising campaign after which review and share these concepts at the computer with colleagues or clients. The pen and receiver store and recharge in a compact case making it easy to move Inkling between, home, office, hotel or any typical workspace.

“Inkling’s inspiration comes from a give artistic people the liberty to attract on paper and to give a great way to transition the drawings to digital media,” said Glenn Tsunekawa, Global Product Manager at Wacom.
Inkling Specifics

The Inkling digital sketch pen is made from both hardware and software components. Hardware includes both the pen and a wireless receiver that captures a likeness of the sketch and stores it digitally. The ballpoint pen uses Wacom’s pressure sensing technology (1024 levels of sensitivity) to detect how hard the pen is being pressed to the paper while sketching. These pressure variations will appear within the digital version of your drawing. “Through its pressure sensitivity, Inkling captures the numerous line weights created by the ink pen,” adds Tsunekawa.

The receiver may be clipped to the sting of normal paper or sketchbooks and the location may be adjusted for left or right handed users to offer the receiver with an uninterrupted line of sight with the pen tip. When sketching is complete, the receiver is attached to the user’s computer via USB to transfer the digital files. Files may be opened with the included Inkling Sketch Manager software to edit, delete or add layers in addition to to switch formats and transfer the files for adjustment and editing in creative software applications.

Inkling can store thousands of sketches and export layered files on to Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (CS3 or newer), in addition to Autodesk Sketchbook Pro (2011). Alternatively, files could be saved in JPG, BMP, TIFF, PNG, SVG and PDF formats to be used with other applications. In accordance with Tsunekawa, “Inkling’s support of raster based applications reminiscent of Adobe Photoshop, in addition to vector based applications similar to Illustrator and Autodesk Sketchbook Designer, will provide users with options for incorporating their preliminary sketches into further developed work”.
The perfect Companion for Intuos® and Cintiq®

Users of Wacom Intuos pen tablets and Cintiq interactive pen displays gain extra benefits by adding an Inkling to their creative toolbox. “For those working with our professional products, the pen is already their input tool of choice,” continued Tsunekawa. “Inkling can deliver a direct ROI to those users by delivering an accelerated and more mobile workflow leading to digital files that could easily and quickly be transferred to their home or office computer and redrawn using the Intuos or Cintiq pen.”