Pen pressure curve
Last updated
Last updated
Before you read this section it would be good for you to read: pen pressure response. This document won't make a lot of sense without you understanding clearly what a pen pressure response is.
A pressure curve is essentially a little bit of math that transforms a pressure response to another pressure response. In more everyday terms a pressure curve creates a new pressure behavior for the pen.
Most often, we see the results of this transformation shown to us visually in driver or application UI.
For example in the Wacom Tablet Properties app it looks like this:
The X axis labelled as "Pen pressure" is the logical input pressure
The Y axis lavelled as "Output" is hte output logical pressure
This particular curve bends down a little. But many other shapes are possible. Each shape has their uses.
It is important to distinguish the pressure curve from the pressure response because they describe different things completely.
A pressure response describes the pressure behavior of a pen - and this is a description of physically happens in the world. It relates physical pen pressure to logical pen pressure.
A pressure curve is an abstract mathematical entity that transforms logical pressure values. A pressure curve is completely arbitrary and does not describe a relationship in the physical world. It is a purely logical construct.
So often in documents and YouTube videos you might encounter people describe the pressure curve as the pressure behavior of the pen. This is completely inaccurate. The pressure curve describes how the pressure behavior (the pressure response) is being modified. You cannot look at a pressure curve and understand the pressure behavior of your pen. The only way for you to understand the pressure behavior of pen is to physically measure it with the scale and start mapping physical pressure values to logical pressure values.
There are a variety of pressure curve shapes - each of which can solve some problem or achieve some visual effect.
To see which drivers and apps support witch shapes see this: Curve support in applications
Details on specific shapes
