Steam Deck as a Drawing Tablet - Something Entirely New

[@sergiosarmiento4233]

I got named? I GOT NAMED!!!

[@sergiosarmiento4233]

Thanks so much for the pin And at this point you really have me sold on the Steam Deck. lol

[@MyAcer20]

@@sergiosarmiento4233 na cancell it so i can have mine faster 😆 🤣

[@teighan7829]

@@MyAcer20 You as well! I want mine asap 😩

[@Vegatablez]

@@sergiosarmiento4233 if you even want something similar to the deck with native pen support, the gpd win max 2 will have native pen support, along with the one-netbook from the people that make the onexplayer.

[@DragonPixels]

@@teighan7829 yo cancel yours, mine is coming in October and idk if I can wait that long 🙃

[@tccraig]

You should try this again with the new Steam Deck OLED. The display supports HDR, the pixel refresh rate is 90hz instead of 60hz, and most importantly, the touch panel is now 180hz instead of 30hz

[@TheFoxstory]

agre, would love to see another video about it

[@forever-and-a-day2043]

Dang, for such a small chanel you put a phenomenal amount of effort into your videos, and I've never seen a video from you that wasn't interesting. Keep it up!

[@ogwarfthedawf]

Woah! I wasn't expecting interviews - interesting people! I love how you made use of the touch pads. Really cool video!

[@plumenth]

this was so fun, thanks for having me!! (let me try this out soon)

[@DarkFoxKirin]

Holy shit YES!!! This was one of the main things I wanted to try out when I got my steam deck! I’m an artist that loves to play games, so I was hoping, PRAYING, that I would be able to use this with an art tablet and not have to get an $800+ computer and I am soooooo happy that you have verified my wishes!! LET’S GO ARTIST GAMERS!!!

[@johndough8115]

You should have spent your money on a cheap used Ipad pro instead. Or a Huion drawing tablet, hooked to a cheap PC. The fact is, if you cant draw on the screen itself... the drawing process is simply Horrible. Ive been an artist, ever since I was a child. While I could always draw well with a pencil... No matter how hard I tried to use my non-lcd drawing tablet... I could NEVER come close to anything that looked like my pencil works. As such... I had to scan in my pencil drawings... and just use the tablet to "Color" it in. One day I happened to find a PC repair shop that had a Fujitsu Tablet PC. You can draw directly on its screen, and it has pressure sensitivity, all with a battery-free stylus... using wacom technology. It was an older model, running windows Xp... but it was also cheap.. so I picked it up. MY G0D... What a MASSIVE difference !!! I was able to create incredible drawings, with pure Ease and delight... that looked virtually Identical to my pencil drawings. Perfect pressure and fine line control. And drawings that were precise and very detailed. My former non-lcd table, was put away, never to be seen again... despite it having superior pressure and pen-tilt functionality. It simply was unusable, compared to drawing directly on the screen. Here is the reason: Stand up, find a spot in the room about 30 ft away, and place a post-it note on the floor. Go back to the original spot. Take a quick glance at where the destination Post-It is... and then, look directly at your FEET. Do NOT look anywhere but your feet... as you try to walk to where you "Think" that post-it is. Since you can only see where you are stepping.. but CANT see where the destination is... you cant know if your are even a small amount "off-course". You might get lucky.. once in every 30 tries... but most of the time... you will not reach the spot, accurately, as intended. Now, try the same method... on paper. Draw two dots about 8 inches apart. As you are about to draw the line... visualize a line connecting the two dots together... and as you draw the line... you are looking at the line and the destination... able to keep your hands path steady, on-course, and accurately make them connect with a perfectly straight line. While you can see the line as you draw with a tablet on the monitor... what you CANT SEE... if your actual hand... and so.. you cant really gauge how to move your hand accurately from point to point. At best... you can make straighter lines.. if you have developed some level of hand and arm control... but even at your best... you will often end up missing the endpoint.. and or messing up the lines as you intended. ESPECIALLY if you are trying to make Curved lines.

[@submarinecat]

A lot of painters I know that work in game production like the standard pen tablet form factor. I prefer a pen display myself. It's all preference.

[@DarkFoxKirin]

@@johndough8115 Oh, don't worry, I have a Ipad air that works beautifully. I just wanted a desktop computer (or the equivalent of) for the PC only art programs. I plan on getting an art tablet with a screen on it and using the Steam Deck basically as a desktop computer (for this at least). That was the plan the whole time, to download Clip Paint Studio Pro or Paint Tool Sai, to get an art tablet with a screen that's compatible with Linux, and boom, large screen with great pen sensitivity on a PC. I wasn't sure if it would work until I saw this video, that's why I was so excited. I've been drawing since I was a child as well. I used pencil and paper thr longest, but I sometimes ventured into using crayons, gel pens, and colored pencils. Then I saw Copic markers and how they looked like you had done it digitally, and I immediately got a pack of some cheaper alcohol markers and I loved them! I used them for a few years before I heard about the IPad and the Apple Pencil amd Procreate, then I saved my pennies to get them and IT. WAS. AMAZING!! Finally I was drawing digitally! (Took me 23 years! Lol) It took some getting used to, but I think after a few short years, I think I've gotten the hang of it enough to upgrade to the more beefy PC art programs and a bigger screen. I'd use Procreate forever if the issue of layer amounts and sizes wasn't dependent on the storage size. And that's another thing, I keep running out of space on my Ipad and when I tried to use an adapter to get an external hard drive working for it, it wouldn't work, so I gave up and I had to upload my artwork onto the cloud which I didn't like doing. (I hate subscriptions.) So yeah, drawing on an art tablet with no screen (which I did try out but I also hated it), is horrible, I don't understand how some people can use it long term. I just wanted something beefy enough to handle these art programs and the screened art tablet I'll be getting, without it costing me an arm, leg, and a bit of my soul.

[@BroskiPlays]

Amazing to see the guy who worked on character models for skyrim and fallout in your video. That's a experienced artist.

[@DelbyDank]

This channel is so refreshing from the typical look what game runs on the stream deck. I’m gonna be finding very obscure things to do with mine, (in the mail now)

[@shawnjernigan7017]

i feel like your channel has become a haven for all people who have become obsessed with how amazing this device is for how small it is and the price it sits at

[@BitReaper]

Surprised at the lower sub count, i like the production quality. And answered my question pretty thoroughly. Plus cats at the end. Nice.

[@Oretal]

Colorslive does have a windows version as a beta for steam. It feels pretty responsive and the devs are making it with the steamdeck in mind.

[@ZephyrusAsmodeus]

'But then.. I had a stroke' lol This was awesome, I'm definitely going to try this out with mine, I swear the more I watch videos and read stuff online the more this thing feels like a Swiss Army Tech Knife

[@Skipti_LLC]

Just wait until next week. The video I'm currently working on has me convinced that the Deck is the ultimate Jack-of-all-trades

[@TheWax70]

I was able to get the 2014 version of Adobe Illustrator to work on Steam Deck via Bottles. Overall it worked out pretty well.

[@Gibstack]

This video was really useful just for showing me what to do with my capacitive stylus I bought for my Steam Deck. I saw it recommended in a couple of videos as an accessory to buy, and I was disappointed today when I got it and it didn't seem to work at all with the touch screen. I didn't even consider using it with the trackpads, and now I can see that with some configuration skill, the stylus could definitely be useful. I'm still disappointed there seems to be no way at all to draw on the screen directly, but, it's certainly not a waste in this case.

[@thecyb1rd]

I happen to be left handed, so I can imagine this working very well for me since I can basically reverse your setup, plus I'd have access to the face buttons for even more commands.

[@FilipeAguiarCarvalho]

The deck never stop to amaze me. I'm glad I bought one as a main computer.

[@RivRavs]

Thank you for creating this video and uploading it to KZbin. You answered quite a few questions I had about this very topic!

[@RichardServello]

I use Teradici for work and installed it on my deck and it runs PERFECTLY on my 4K display! So COOL!

[@sph_smn_xxiv]

ghadammnn, your channel is criminally underrated!

[@LadyFluffsAtelier]

I have that color sonar pen thing. Now I wanna try it on my steam deck.

[@LeftyPencil]

How'd it go (weird he didn't mention it's name)? Wonder if it works in Waydroid (Android)..

[@animspirationist17]

Don't even care about drawing, but the video was so detailed, it was a pleasure to watch!

[@mrwoodcat]

this is my first visit to this channel and damn what a hidden gem. definitely subscribed.

[@brylidan]

Finally was waiting for someone doing this.

[@cagethelonewolf]

Love that the steam deck is just a mini pc. It makes me wanna buy the most expensive one just for the storage speed

[@Tommy-the-coffee-addict]

probably not something i would do,but these sorts of edge-cases are always cool to see. also krita is made by the same people who made the desktop for steamOS,so giving them some cash for all this free stuff wouldn't hurt (open source devs like the KDE team who give this stuff for free need to eat too). and wacom does have official open source drivers (something that makes me want to recommend them),though idk if it would be easy to install on deck (though if you use a linux PC,it shouldn't be too hard),so wacom users are in luck,especially if they prefer open source

[@therealmutso]

I wish i could get my hands on a deck Since Huion has been making drivers for Linux now, I believe the express keys and even the screen of a kamvas would make this thing really nice for a portable art station

[@Quagula]

i use the deck as a workstation. its a really great bang for your buck. and if youre willing top open it yourself and add some better cooling components and more memory you just cant beat it

[@adrianalcomendras6754]

you know I'd be interested to know if the steamdeck can be used with a display tablet like the wacom one or the huion kamvas 13 that has a usb c cable connection. also I'd wanna see if you can use zbrush with this and use it as a portable 3d sculpting workstation

[@Πυροφάνις]

If there is a flatpak for it you surely can Wacom has its linux drivers built in in the kernel Blender and krita work great through flatpak

[@TackerTacker]

Finally someone answered that question for me. Thank you. I hoped the touch screen was at least usable for some simple drawing though🥲

[@Bee_LZ_Bub]

I would love to see the deck get SonarPen support. Maybe optimize some stuff for better touchscreen control? It'd be really cool to be able to get touch sensitivity direct on the screen without having to connect an external tablet. If they can get it working pretty well on the switch they're sure to be able to get it working on the deck as well.

[@sergiosarmiento4233]

I wonder if it would make sense for the Steam Deck 2 or Switch 2 to release with integrated styluses. I miss the fun of using my DS to make little art projects

[@Skipti_LLC]

I think with a better display, Steam Deck 2 is likely to have a larger set of third party accessories. Better pens and maybe a folio case with a place to store a stylus would be great

[@zacharysamenfeld2487]

This is firmly genius, keep it up dude

[@ZombieOfun]

What a novel idea. Now I'm curious if I could get my huion drawing tablet working with the deck. I'm not even sure if it has drivers for Linux or not

[@razlad2523]

No it does not, I tried many years ago, only wacom is officially supported on linux. BUT you can use some sneaky xrandr scripts to make your steam deck think your new monitor is a touchpad, the stylus should have a battery for it to work

[@cali6662]

you could test with opentabletdriver, it's a neat program with support for a lot of tablets, but i didn't check for huion support

[@derram0k]

Huion drawing pads work out of the box, not sure about their display tablets. If you do have trouble with the pad, there is an open source driver that works with a lot of their pads, but is a pain to install. Xp-pen has native linux drivers for their display tablets that have improved quite a bit over the past couple years and now works great, but the tablets can work out of the box with a lil xrandr and xinput set up.

[@joeblack7262]

Damn you put a lot of work in this. I can’t believe you tried to dram on the touchpads lol

[@TackerTacker]

I have my Steam Deck now and I can get up to 450Hz on that "skill test" website if I enable native touch in the controller settings and use multiple fingers at the same time. Did you use native touch for your tests or simulated mouse input? To active native touch you can go into controller settings > Edit Layout > Action Sets > click on the cogwheel next to Default > Add Always-On command > click on Add command next to Always On Command > at the top select the SYSTEM tab > click Touchscreen Native Support ...done, you can now press the B button a couple times to get back. I would like to hear an update if this improved anythings in drawing apps, and if it would be worth it to buy a stylus or not.

[@TackerTacker]

Also in Krita at the top right there is the tab Tool Options, if you select None in the Brush Smoothing drop down menu, it will no longer lag behind so much which is mostly a feature only meant for drawing with a mouse. With these couple tweaks the drawing experience isn't actually that bad even with just my fingers, thanks to setting it to native touch I can even rotate and zoom in on the canvas with 2 fingers.

[@SaturnDahlia]

Thank you for this video :) I was wondering the same thing but obviously iPad is the way to go for portable art making

[@aaaskeleton4485]

Alright I/m subbing especially for that last part.

[@aaaskeleton4485]

I'm *

[@dbweb.creative]

yooo try light brush, it's a web painting tool that runs in a browser

[@JhamYT]

Great video man!

[@Skipti_LLC]

Glad you liked it!

[@applehazeva2739]

Thats funny enough one of the first ideas i had when it was announced :D

[@sergiosarmiento4233]

I’ve always used a laptop and galaxy note phone for digital art, so I also immediately had the thought as soon as I heard about the Deck.

[@ScarySkele]

Q3 July-September I will be ordering & recieving my Steam Deck. Definitely will test this out! 😎👍🏻

[@MADSLAYER47]

Krita on Deck! Now I want to try a drawing setup with my Deck.

[@dzibanart8521]

wacom tablets have worked without drivers installation needed on linux long before any other tablets did (mid 2000s I think), the drivers are part of the kernel I think.

[@TackerTacker]

I wonder if the touchscreen would be capable of a faster pull rate and they just throttle it for longer battery live? 🤔

[@adrianastro1]

Goes to show that the Steam Deck can be so many things for so many people besides being a handheld console.

[@pulkitsharma6313]

Incredible video

[@Linkman247]

I have the pen from colors live. I definitely want to give this a try.

[@FeniksGaming]

I would love similar video but for pixel art and see if you can get by without any peripherals. I would like to see how something like Aseprite used with controller would perform.

[@reignandbongao9497]

Being a portable digital art workstation that can game is what I wanted to do with a deck if I got one. but.... now can you see how it will fair for maker work? Fusion 360, Autocad?

[@strelokzero1179]

Wacom works just fine out of the box with pressure sensitivity. It even has native plasma and gnome integrations.

[@blank_percentage]

Steam Deck in not only a Workstation,Console-like and pc its the ultimate machine !

[@austin.rojers]

You can also use inkscape, which is a great vector based graphics app

[@ItsOnlyLogixal]

Liked and subbed. Thanks for this info, great quality video.

[@elsigma4_h3re71]

Id use a screenless drawing tablet with the deck.

[@kuyajp5244]

dose clip studio work on it?

[@submarinecat]

Wacom has the most support in the kernel. XP have their own official Linux drivers. It's usually us Huion users that have to slum it out with the 3rd party digimend kernel driver.

[@unlimitedslash]

I would like to see Wacom make a Portable Studio with the custom AMD chip found in the deck, with the size of a PS you could cool it way better than in the deck and therefore up the frequencies and improve performance by a lot, and you could fit a massive battery in it so that you could do an entire day of work without having to plug it in, i honestly don't know why Wacom still keeps forcing itself to go with intel+nvidia when in terms of portability and power consumption lose when compared to the versatility of a cpu like a 6800U or the chip found in the Deck.

[@VD-cc4hx]

2:52 i was wondering why typing fast had missed inputs. using the deck in desktop mode to type things into google is slow and awkward.

[@moana_skellington]

OLED has a different touch screen and there is some active pens that power the pen to make it more conductive... Please revisit this video with OLED and powered pen

[@Beryesa.]

14:46 a little correction, actually wacom is the best supported brand on Linux and thanks to the nature of open source, that xp-pen plug-and-play pressure sensitivity experience is just it using the wacom drivers built into the kernel (via digimend) 😁 Xp-pen while providing official (but proprietary) driver, it is really lacking behind and not usable with new technologies like Wayland unlike wacom. You can donate to project digimend, making non-wacom tablets work with the wacom driver linux kernel has. An xp-pen owner here, suffered a lot from my model's pad buttons not getting recognized :'D

[@Skipti_LLC]

That's awesome! I want to pin this but I can't have multiple, can I copy this into the description of the video?

[@Beryesa.]

@@Skipti_LLC of course, while watching, i should also add that "single click open" is not Valve's optimization, it's the default of KDE plasma desktop environment. You can also change that to double click in settings. :)

[@Cyromantik]

I use a small WiFi XP Deco for drawing on my Galaxy using the Ibis Pro app, naturally I'm interested in seeing if I can do something similar with the Steamdeck, though I suppose its USB expandability should have already been my answer, but I was indeed wondering if the poling rate would work for direct screen drawing. Too bad about that, huh?

[@CharmedReally7]

did this man just asked me to slide my keys across the screen...?

[@Skipti_LLC]

DO IT, YOU WON'T

[@DillsArtThing]

My pipe dream is someone making a steam deck like device with built in active pen support but the more realistic approach is something like the colors live pen but with either a USB or Bluetooth connection and fine tuned for the capacitive sensitivity of the deck and with the new oled model having a 180hz polling rate it should give a much better drawing experience.

[@sagepirotess6312]

Actually there is another way I use my Samsung note pen. But to use it on the deck, I backed a kickstarter project that's like a vice grip. It can attach to any monitor or screen. Then its bluetooth and software do the rest.

[@ImmersiveGamer83]

In all honesty, plug in a wacom bamboo and that is a great entry level digital art creation device

[@kultur-vultur]

As an artist, a gamer, and musician, being able to do all 3 on 1 device is why PC rules for me so that said... Can the Steam Deck be used as a DAW?

[@OmegaPhlare]

I bought one of those stylus with a clear disc thinking it might let me play some games that rely on using a mouse to select things and navigate menus, for example a city building or tycoon game. I'm sad that it doesn't work it's inaccurate and anything dragged will drop. Valve really dropped the ball on this.

[@Skipti_LLC]

Like I said, these are the kinds of things Valve cheaped out on

[@branconan2678]

Pretty interesting. if you have to travel it may be an option but at home it doesnt make sense to use it like that since you can plug a tablet to the deck...

[@mryoyo1234]

Fyi, The onexplayer 2 has a detachable 8.4 inch screen and has a stylus with 4096 levels or sensitivity.

[@shawnjernigan7017]

this is awesome

[@jillc2700]

…so off topic, did you make the pottery mugs on your desk? I took several semesters back in the day and it was fun! Interesting also to see that this somewhat works but I think I’ll stick with using my 10 year old mac for digital drawing, as it’s one thing it does decently. I’m putting off buying a new computer by having a steam deck (eventually) is my excuse. 😅

[@Skipti_LLC]

We did make the mugs, thanks for noticing! The blue one is Hopes and the brown one is mine. And I think if you're gonna upgrade, a Steam Deck is an excellent choice!

[@tastemyhammer2757]

Amazing! I'm Q3 Can't even draw a stick figure. But I might try once it comes in. Thanks

[@KRISIS1451]

Have you tried using an active capacitive stylus?

[@lithon01]

great video

[@Quagula]

which drivers did you download for the steamdeck. talking about the xp pen

[@frothydv]

I'd love to see your take on steam deck with Geforce Now. How does it work in Steam OS vs Windows. On the display vs external displays? 3080 tier work okay on a 1440p monitor? I bet there's other cool use cases to test as well.

[@Skipti_LLC]

I actually have a planned video looking at every streaming service (Geforce Now, Stadia, Steam Link, Parsec, Xbox Cloud, PSN) and seeing how well the Steam Deck's controller can be used with them and how good the video decoding software is on the Deck.

[@frothydv]

@@Skipti_LLC Look forward to it! Hoping the deck can handle 1440p to a monitor from GFN. I doubt I'll be subscribed to that tier constantly, but maybe when a shiney new AAA comes out that I want to experience in full RTX glory.

[@anominon]

Ah damn, shame the touchscreen didn't work very well, I was hoping it'd be good as a screen tablet.

[@masoodreyhani4769]

Cool video

[@shodanargie1574]

Can you draw with the touch screen?

[@seraaron]

I think it would be a lot easier to just plug a wacom tablet in and go from there...

[@sleepymushroom9403]

Can you try a digital tablet with it?

[@leeroy4022]

Hey Bro all the links to the items only goes to the kickstand.

[@Skipti_LLC]

Ooops! That's why you don't stay up until 2:00am finalizing a video! Fixed now, sorry!

[@leeroy4022]

@@Skipti_LLC its all good dude i like your video

[@groovyshrimp]

Could you connect a wacom to it?

[@Skipti_LLC]

From what I've seen in the comments, yes you can!

[@lego_minifig]

Krita is better than gimp as a free option imo. Thinking abt switching from Photoshop to Krita when it comes to drawing and painting.

[@razorx2024]

what is that female statue Jonah has in the background, i feel like i've seen it somewhere before but can't remember where

[@BroskiPlays]

Isnt it from Skyrim?

[@shell_the_in_ghost]

👏

[@ImmersiveGamer83]

RGB mics do not sound better then, huh who'd have thought

[@Skipti_LLC]

Levi's audio was my fault, I had my mixer set incorrectly and it was echoing lol

[@Kiddzad]

Bruh, use the steamdeck on a dock to a drawing tablet with display and put windows on it and that can be your pc

[@ESGamingCentral]

all you needed to do was connect a Wacom tablet to the device.

[@tastemyhammer2757]

Woa

[@NataNeverrain]

The biggest problem is: Why the f do you run microsoft edge on a linux device? It's not preinstalled.

[@Skipti_LLC]

I used it on my old computer so it has my passwords saved😂

[@Spiritstage]

I mean if the steam deck can actually be used as a portable digital drawing computer then we could probably pull off sculpting and drawing at the same time through digital Apple you’re gonna be fucked in the future with your iPads watch out there’s a new portable system on the market

[@johndough8115]

You would have a MUCH better experience on a cheap used Ipad pro instead. Or a Huion LCD drawing tablet, hooked to a cheap PC. The fact is, if you cant draw on the screen itself... the drawing process is simply Horrible. Ive been an artist, ever since I was a child. While I could always draw well with a pencil... No matter how hard I tried to use my non-lcd drawing tablet... I could NEVER come close to anything that looked like my pencil works. As such... I had to scan in my pencil drawings... and just use the tablet to "Color" it in. One day I happened to find a PC repair shop that had a Fujitsu Tablet PC. You can draw directly on its screen, and it has pressure sensitivity, all with a battery-free stylus... using wacom technology. It was an older model, running windows Xp... but it was also cheap.. so I picked it up. MY G0D... What a MASSIVE difference !!! I was able to create incredible drawings, with pure Ease and delight... that looked virtually Identical to my pencil drawings. Perfect pressure and fine line control. And drawings that were precise and very detailed. My former non-lcd table, was put away, never to be seen again... despite it having superior pressure and pen-tilt functionality. It simply was unusable, compared to drawing directly on the screen. Here is the reason: Stand up, find a spot in the room about 30 ft away, and place a post-it note on the floor. Go back to the original spot. Take a quick glance at where the destination Post-It is... and then, look directly at your FEET. Do NOT look anywhere but your feet... as you try to walk to where you "Think" that post-it is. Since you can only see where you are stepping.. but CANT see where the destination is... you cant know if your are even a small amount "off-course". You might get lucky.. once in every 30 tries... but most of the time... you will not reach the end spot, accurately, as intended. Now, try this on paper: Draw two dots about 6 inches apart. As you are about to draw the line... visualize a line connecting the two dots together... and as you draw the line... you are looking at the line and the destination, and where your hand / pencil tip is... able to keep your hands path steady, on-course, and accurately make them connect with a perfectly straight line. While you can see the line FORMING as you draw with a non-LCD tablet on the PC monitor... what you CANT SEE... is your actual hand/stylus movement... and so.. you cant really gauge how to move your hand accurately from point to point. At best... you can make straighter lines.. if you have developed some level of hand and arm control... but even at your best... you will often end up missing the endpoint.. and or messing up the lines as you intended. Its about 1000x worse... when you are trying to make Curved lines, and Circles. As such... Take my advice as an Artist. If you do Not want to spend countless hours hitting UNDO as you keep re-drawing the same lines over and over again... then Stay away from Non-Display Tablets. They are OK for coloring an already drawn image... but as for doing fine Line Drawing... save up and get a tablet that you can actually draw on the display screen. You will have a much better experience. I also highly suggest that if your display tablet has a glossy slick surface... that you get a Matte screen protector film for it. This will add some frictional texture to the surface, allowing you to control your stylus much better. Otherwise... its like trying to draw on a block of Ice. Your stylus ends up slipping beyond your intended stopping spots... and it also makes it harder to maintain your line works.

[@lettumaino]

Goodbye, wacom!

[@griftgfx]

If you really need a cheap but effective drawing tablet just get the cheapest Pencil compatible iPad you can find. Really no comparison between that and a cheap capacitive touch display.

[@CikguHayat]

Its all about talk and no solution at all .. 😢😢😢