Controlling photoshop with hand gestures using this weird wearable device

This has to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. But it’s also kinda cool. It’s the Tap Strap 2, and it claims to be “the plug & play, all-in-one, wearable keyboard, mouse and air gesture controller”. It’s designed for use primarily in VR where using a real keyboard and mouse while wearing a headset becomes somewhat tricky.

But that’s apparently not all it’s good for. The manufacturer says that it can be used to control your tablet, smartphone, TV or your whole computer. Unmesh Dinda at PiXimperfect got his hands on one and decided to take it for a spin to see how well it works in Photoshop. And, well, it looks surprisingly good.

Unmesh gives us a quick run-through of some features it can perform in Photoshop and then spends about 10 minutes or so talking about how to set the whole thing up. If you want to get back into the Photoshop after you’ve watched the intro, skip ahead to a little 14 minutes in where he shows the various tap functions working in conjunction with mouse mode.

It’s a very interesting looking device. I don’t know if it’s $200 worth of interesting (or even $150 worth, as it currently seems to be on sale), but it’s an interesting device and technology nonetheless.

It will be interesting to see how this tech develops over the coming years. If a company specific to the photography and graphic design industries – like Wacom – were to pursue a device like this, I could easily see it eventually replacing the tablets that currently take up huge chunks of our desk space.

I still think we’re a couple of years away from it being that capable, but yeah, it’s pretty cool.