Wacom Press Release

Artists and Designers Get Exciting New Artistic Controls through the Combined Efforts of Wacom and Corel

Vancouver, WA, April 4, 2005 - Wacom® Technology Corporation, with the support of Corel®, has successfully developed a 6D Art Pen that gives artists and designers six dimensions of pen control in Corel Painter™ IX. Available immediately, the 6D Art Pen is supported on Wacom’s Intuos3 pen tablets and new Cintiq 21UX interactive pen display. The pen has a suggested retail price of $69.95.

State-of-the-Art Pen The 6D Art Pen builds on Wacom’s patented cordless, battery-free technology to offer artists and designers six dimensions of creative control:

1. X-axis (left and right)
2. Y-axis (up and down)
3. Pressure (force with which pen is applied to tablet)
4. Tilt (angle at which pen is tilted)
5. Bearing (direction in which pen is tilted)
6. Barrel Rotation (orientation of the pen around its long axis)

“Artists and designers will appreciate the intuitive nature of the 6D Art Pen and its ability to easily control brush attributes with barrel rotation,” said Mark Mehall, Senior Product Manager with Wacom Technology. “The sixth dimension of control provides a wonderful natural media experience in the digital environment.”

New Software Provides Artistic Control Corel worked closely with Wacom throughout the development of its Art Pen technology to create the Corel Painter IX Art Pen Brush Pack, a collection of five new brushes that greatly enhance the digital art experience and heighten the relationship between the designer and digital canvas.

“Never has technology so faithfully captured the traditional art experience,” said Sean Young, Product Manager for Corel Painter IX. “The combination of Wacom’s new 6D Art Pen with the new lifelike brushes in Painter IX enables artists to transcend the digital divide and explore a brave new world of creative freedom.”

Some of the leading software applications specifically designed to benefit from use with the 6D Art Pen are: Studio Artist by Synthetk, Body Paint by Maxon, and Studio and Symbolic Sound by Kyma. More graphics and design software companies intend to support the 6D Art Pen in the near future.

What the Experts are Saying Several well-known artists and industry leaders had the opportunity to use the 6D Art Pen and provide valuable feedback:

“My traditional brushes respond to pressure, and how I tilt the brush and rotate my hand while I’m painting. I never expected to be able to enjoy this same kind of control in my digital work. I’m stunned. With Painter IX and the new 6D Art Pen, I’m in digital painting heaven.”

- Cher Threinen-Pendarvis, Painter instructor and best-selling author The Photoshop and Painter Artist Tablet Book and Painter IX Wow Book!

“We’ve added extensive support for the new capabilities of the 6D Art Pen to our Studio Artist Paint Synthesizer. Pen rotation adds a new dimension of interactive control that is very intuitive for users to understand and operate. The 6D Art Pen is the most exciting new development in interactive control for computer generated art to appear in the last 10 years.”

- John Dalton, President, Synthetk Software and creator of Studio Artist

About Wacom
Wacom Technology Corporation is headquartered in Vancouver, WA and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wacom Company, Ltd. (JASDAQ: 6727). In 1989, Wacom revolutionized the nature of computer art when it introduced the world’s first cordless, battery-free, pressure-sensitive pen. Today, Wacom is the world’s leading manufacturer of pen tablets, and millions of artists, designers, and photographers of all levels enjoy its patented technology. For more information, visit www.wacom.com.