Pressure on a graphics tablet

Plug in your tablet and draw with the pen tool. LivePen uses real pressure from the stylus, so stroke width follows how hard you press. There’s nothing to set up.

Tested hardware

LivePen has been measured against a Wacom Intuos Pro with a Pro Pen 3 on macOS. It reports the full pressure range, and the stylus is correctly recognised as a pen, so pressure works from the first stroke.

Other tablets that report pressure to macOS should work the same way, but they haven’t been tested.

How LivePen tells a pen from a mouse

macOS has a history of reporting some tablets as a mouse, which would throw the pressure data away. So LivePen doesn’t rely on that label alone:

• A stylus that identifies itself as a pen gets real pressure straight away.
• A stylus that doesn’t gets real pressure as soon as its pressure varies during a stroke. LivePen remembers that from then on.
• A mouse or trackpad reports a flat value that never varies, so it gets pressure simulated from your drawing speed instead.

What pressure affects

Pressure changes the width of pen strokes. The highlighter keeps an even width, and shapes, lines and straight arrows use the stroke weight from the toolbar.

Pen strokes thin out as you lift the pen off, instead of ending in a blob.

Tilt and rotation

Tilt is reported by the tablet but LivePen doesn’t use it yet. Barrel rotation isn’t reported by the tested pen at all.

For the pen’s buttons, see Pen buttons.