who would have thought a game controller?

[Duane]

Hey everyone, I’m not sure if this is an acceptable post for this area of the forum. I wasn’t sure where else to put it and it has to do with Photoshop so I figured it would be OK.

Anyway I wanted to give a Photoshop tip that I thought of a few weeks back. I’ve been using this since I first thought of it and love every minute of it. I know there are several members here anyway that use Photoshop but this will work for any graphics program and it will save tons of time! Oh yes, what is it? Well it’s a very cheap and yet powerful design controller. It’s actually not a design controller at all. It’s the Belkin n52te game controller! I have been using a Logitech NuLOOQ Navigator for a couple of years now and love it. Lately I’ve been feeling like I need something more. Something that could use MACROS for more customizing. I got to thinking about what was out there that was able to do this without breaking the bank. My NuLOOQ cost me $100. When I purchased it a couple of years back, and it still sells for anywhere from $50 to $100. Today.

What can this thing do? Well it has up to 15 programmable buttons and up to 3 different profiles to switch between. That is a total of 45 programmable buttons but there is more! If you are creative you can get even more out of it. For example there is an 8 directional thumb controller which is only counted as one programmable button, but you can program each of the eight directions as one function each! That could be 8 different Photoshop tools controlled by your thumb alone . It has a scroll wheel which is the same as you’d find on your mouse. This can be used as a scroll wheel obviously or you can program it as another three different buttons/functions. So for example if you scroll up, you’d get one action and down would be another and if you push down on the scroll wheel, that would be yet another. I use the scroll wheel for zooming in and out because I usually am holding my tablet pen in the other hand. Now this thing looks great and feels great as well. It does have an adjustable hand rest for those with large or small hands. I still use my NuLOOQ, just not for Photoshop anymore. The bonus is that I bought this thing for $50. Brand new. Now this thing is a lot more powerful of a tool than my NuLOOQ because you can program MACROS. Another very large bonus is that it has built in memory! so once you program it, you can switch between different computers without having to instal any software and programing it again on that computer. You just plug it in and go! That for me is a very big feature because I Photoshop on 3 different computers. I have my main Photoshop workstation, and my everyday do everything desktop and my laptop. I've only installed the software for this on my Workstation and I plug it into either of my other two computers without a hassle.

Now the Belkin n52te is great but there are other game type controllers out there that would also make great design controllers and even better than the n52te. I just thought that for those that have thought about a design controllers, this could be another option. It is much more inexpensive than most design controllers out there. It may be called a game controller but it is what you make of it . It works for literally every program that makes use of keyboard shortcuts.

Well I hope that might have helped someone. I’m a huge fan of design controllers and the way they enable you to work more effortlessly and much more quickly. It really feels good to be able to bring up virtually any window or tool in Photoshop, as well as adjust a tools attributes with a touch of a button. They are also designed so that every button can be reached effortlessly with your hand and without having to look down at your keyboard. If you are a big keyboard shortcut user than I’m sure you’d love a good design controller. In this case a game controller .

In case you missed the link in the thread, you can find it HERE

So there’s my Photoshop tip and a very long read!

[Marko]

That's really cool Duane - thanks for sharing!