Cool New Product

I ran into this cool new gadget at PMA this week. It's called the NuLOOQ and I really liked how it works with Photoshop. The darker gray around around the edge of the unit allow you to zoom in on your image by twisting it right or left and to scroll around your image by pushing it left/right or up/down. You also have five soft-buttons on top that you can assign many functions to (like undo or a tool change). The top also has a scroll wheel just like an iPod that allows you to change your brush size or other settings.

The device also comes with some nifty software that's called the NuLOOQ tooldial, which makes tool selection very fast. All you have to do is right-click with a tablet or mouse and a small circle will appear under your cursor (you can change how it's triggered). In this circle are eight slots that you can populate with various Photoshop tools or features (filters for instance) that can be activated with a single click. You can also set it up so that an outer ring of additional options appears so that you can choose from different filter or tool presets or other features.

This is the first device I've seen (other than a graphics tablet) that really has the potential to change the way you work in Photoshop. It can largely free you from the keyboard and make two handed Photoshopping a reality. Having said that, there are a few downsides, none of which are deal breakers for me:
1) It's Mac only at this point
2) It only supports a few applications right now (but Photoshop is one of them)
3) It costs $149.99 (I think $89 would be more in line price-wise).

Comments

[matt]

http://www.logickeyboard.com/shop/productinfo.asp?id=380 appears to be similar for PC.

[Matt]

Any thoughts on the keyboards, stickers for keyboards, and second keyboards like, http://www.xkeys.com/resources/photoshop.php that aid Photoshop users?

[Ben Willmore]

I've never worked with a keyboard like that one... but I have worked with a full-sized one that was custom designed for photoshop use and found it to not be helpful at all.

-Ben