Contour Design's Shuttle Pro and ShuttleXpress

by Josh Root, 2003

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Contour Design's Shuttle Pro and ShuttleXpress

Digital workflow wasn't ever something I thought about when I shot film. And why would I? I didn't work with enough digital files for it to matter. Even when I got my first dSLR, it wasn't that big of a deal, even though I had many more files to deal with. But since I've been shooting extreme sports with my Canon EOS 1d, I routinely go through 2000 files from each shooting session. So this review is part of my current quest to make my digital workflow faster, better, and more accurate.

I'll admit, I was first interested in the Contour Designs Shuttle devices because I like gadgets. And they looked like cool gadgets that might help speed up my Photoshop image processing without much work on my part. Well I was both right and wrong about that.

Both of the Contour Designs Shuttles attach to your computer's USB port and act somewhat like a second mouse. Both Windows (I tested on XP) and Macintosh (tested on OSX 10.3) are supported and they recognize the devices easily. But before you can do anything with the shuttles, you need to install Contour's driver "control panel" program.

(From here on out, my discussion will assume a Windows PC. The Mac versions are 95% the same. And the other differences are small and easy to figure out.)

The Contour control program (CCP) comes with preset button configurations for over 65 programs. Everything from Outlook Express to Unreal Tournament is supported straight out of the box. The list is heavy on video editing programs, with graphics/imaging programs running a close second. The two programs that will be of the most use to photo.net users are obviously going to be Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, and these will be my focus for this review. Though I'm sure that most everything is the same for both programs, I only use the full version of Photoshop.

Shuttle Pro

Along with the jog/shuttle dial on both models, the Shuttle Pro comes with a whopping 15 buttons! That's a lot of buttons to memorize the functions for. Thankfully, Contour was thoughtful enough to give the top nine buttons clear covers that can be removed so that you can place little labels under them. Contour provides a sheet of preprinted labels that have common commands on them, e.g. Save, Copy, Cut, etc., and also another sheet with blank labels for your own specific commands. I have no idea why they only did this with the top nine buttons. This leaves six buttons with no way to identify them other than by memory.

The Shuttle Pro is about the size of a large rollerball device, but it's only an inch or so high at its highest. I use a large keyboard tray and was able to place it next to the keyboard with no problems opening and closing the drawer.

ShuttleXpress

The Xpress is much smaller than its bigger brother. It's about the width of a roll of masking tape and again, only an inch at it's highest point. It only has five buttons to program. That makes memorizing their functions much easier. This is a good thing because there is no way to label them.

Other than size and buttons, the Xpress is mostly the same in function as the Pro.

Once the device is installed, the presets for a particular program are called up whenever you are working in that particular program. For example, I am writing this review in Microsoft Word. If I open up the CCP by clicking on the little Shuttle icon in my icon tray (by the clock), I see that it has chosen MS Word as the set of presets to use. This works quite well. I have various other programs minimized in my taskbar at all times (it comes from having an ADHD short attention span), and the CCP switches instantly whenever I reopen a different program's window.

The only problem that I found is that Photoshop 7 (PS) is the default version for the PS presets. And while I have PS7 on my Mac, I run PS6 on my Windows machine. So the shuttle wouldn't do anything when I opened it up. However, this is easily fixed. All you have to do is select PS7 from the drop down list of presets in the CCP. Then click on the "options" button that is to the right of the list. Choose "change target application" from the list, then use the file browser that pops up to select the version of PS that you have on your computer.

Once I got everything set up and I sat down for an editing session, I tried to work the Shuttle into my workflow. The typical way (for right handed folks) to use the Shuttle is to use the mouse with your right hand, and the shuttle with your left. The thinking is that you will have most of your frequently used keyboard actions assigned to the shuttles buttons. Thus removing the need for constant awkward "alt-shift-p" type keystrokes.

Well, I have to say that, initially, I was quite disappointed. It just didn't seem like a very helpful device. The presets were for things that I didn't use regularly, and because I didn't have the button's functions memorized, I was constantly afraid of hitting a "save" or "close" button and screwing up a file I was working on. So I set the Shuttle aside and ignored it for a while. Later, I found myself working on a PS project where I really was using the same few commands over and over again, and the commands I was using were annoying keyboard commands and tool switches that really slowed me down. So I decided to give the Shuttle another try.

This time I gave up on the presets and assigned my own actions to the buttons. This is done through the CCS. You can either edit the preset commands or create a whole new set. If you choose to edit the presets, you can always revert to the factory settings through the "options" menu. The range of keystrokes, actions, mouse-clicks, etc., that you can assign to the buttons is quite expansive. In fact, I only found one thing that I couldn't make it do. I wanted to assign a "zoom" function to the jog-dial. I wanted it to emulate clicking the mouse while using the Magnifying glass tool. That way I could spin the dial, and the image would zoom in on whatever I had my mouse hovering over. The keyboard command for this is Ctrl-Space-MouseClick. But, for some reason, "Spacebar" isn't one of the modifiers that you can assign to a "mouse-click" in the CCS. I had to settle for a regular Ctrl-+ zoom function. Which works fine, but zooms in on the center of the image with no regard to what section you are working on at that moment. I'll give $1 to the first person who can solve that problem for me.

Once I had tailored the buttons and dial to the commands I needed for the specific task at hand, my PS work sped up considerably. It took some time to get used to the feel of having both my hands on "mouse-like" devices, but within a half hour, I was chugging along.

Conclusion

Both of these devices are fairly useful. However, the Pro has just too many buttons for my feeble brain to memorize. The Xpress is much more usable. For one thing, some of the Xpress buttons are indented to help you know which button you are pressing without taking your eyes off the screen. After using it for an editing session, I found that I rarely had to look away from the screen. All of the Pro's buttons feel the same so I always looked down to make sure I was hitting the correct one. While I occasionally wished for a sixth or a seventh button on the Xpress, for the most part it strikes a fine balance between being useful and being too complicated. I did end up putting little pieces of tape under the buttons and labeling them in case I forgot their functions.

Since you can program the Shuttle's buttons to do almost any combination or keystrokes or commands, I have a feeling that the Xpress will have a more or less permanent place on my desk. I tried it on other programs, and while it works (even in Unreal Tournament), it doesn't have the advantage for me that it does in Photoshop or a video program like Final Cut Pro. I won't use it for PS 100% of the time, and I will likely reprogram the buttons depending on what specific project I do use it on. But having it definitely speeds up digital workflow for me.