What's the minimum spec of computer for photo editing?

[Deleted Member I]

What spec of computer do you find as a minimum effective spec where you won't be waiting for ages for hourglass icon?

My own experience tells me a Mac with 1GB of RAM is far superior to a Windows machine with 1GB of RAM. And this is just doing basic computing tasks, of email, internet, some minor excel/powerpoint/word work.

Is a 2GB in a Macbook Pro sufficient for dealing with photos editing without forever waiting for the computer to process?

What spec for a Windows machine? What bits do you turn off on vista to make it run faster? Do you have to pick one with a dedicated graphics card? Is that the key?

My objective is to find the minimum spec (therefore minimum cost) that would give you an ok experience in photo editing. Don't have to have the highest spec but prepared to pay to make things work. My current laptop is just not up to it.

 

[ianf]

Tom, the monitor is far more important in getting a good result, budget accordingly and also for a calibration sensor like a spyder3pro.

Thought you had a decent iMac already?

 

[Loiq]

when you say photoediting what ssoftware are you using this will have a bearing on the PC or MAC, as it'll need minimum spec to run software...

My Mac book pro with 4 gig of RAM is fast enough but I use an extrernal drive on fire wire 800 to have the images on.

A PC well where do you start are you looking to run XP, Win 7 or that other peice of shit software.... the list goes on.

go to the exhibition in the design center and sit at the training desks... loads of info and the all want to sell kit....

PS they're all using MAC's.....

 

[Deleted Member I]

Looking at the base spec Macbook pro 13 and an external monitor. Base spec means 2.16ghz processor with 2gb ram

Would be running Lightroom or Capture one. Not full fat photoshop.

 

[ianf]

go to the exhibition in the design center and sit at the training desks...

Poo, is that the Canon Pro one I got a mail about a while ago. Stuck in madrid this week.

Shame he sold the proper camera

 

[Loiq]

Funny I have no idea who but canon are all over it, main sponsors I guess ....

We're only doing a few plasma screens, PA's and stuff but I'm going to have a look at the kit cos there's lots of cool stuff....to fiddle with.

they've got timeslice as a show and tell....

 

[Richie504]

Depends on what file sizes you will be using as well. If your using something like the Canon 5D with raw files you should be ok with that spec. But if you are using something like a raw file from a 5D mkii its going to be a bit slow.

 

[Deleted Member I]

Depends on what file sizes you will be using as well. If your using something like the Canon 5D with raw files you should be ok with that spec. But if you are using something like a raw file from a 5D mkii its going to be a bit slow.

My DNG files will be 10MB in size. I think that is significantly smaller than a 5D or 5DMKII file size.

Thanks for the prompt responses.

4GB seem to be a nice to have. My real dilemma is that I found the base spec model with 2GB being discounted, whilst the 4GB and more hard disk model not. So the jump up is around £300. Just not sure that £300 is worth it.

If you upgraded a new machines with crucial memory yourself .. I assume you will invalidate the warranty? Is there a cheaper route that won't invalidate the warranty?

 

[Rushy]

Its interesting this because I bought a 500D and my 1.86Ghz / 1GB of RAm piece of Dell shit wont play the videos either down loaded or hosted elsewhere so now i'm stuck becuase I dont really have the spare cash to invest in new PC hardware (especially as Apple is my preferred choice) and sticking an extra 1GB in made no difference at all. My old Apple iMAc is even slower with just 512MB so I've not even tried that.

 

[ianf]

Tom, changing ram and hd in a mac won't bust the warranty.

If it plays up, put the old back in and off to the store if it's still on the blink.

If you are nervous, I'll do it for you, it's trivial on a pre-unibody one, and there's documentation for the slightly trickier unibody.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1270

If you change the drive it'll obviously need to be imaged or installed from scratch.

 

[cookie]

i put 4gb from crucial into both my macs as soon as i got them.

 

[Sergeant Pluck]

There are too many variables to come up with 'the' answer. I'd say 2gig of ram minimum on 32bit machine, 4gig on a 64bit machine - the more you have the less the processor has to rely on the ( slower ) harddrive. Faster processor the better obviously - but I can remember back in my design-for-print days thinking that my over-clocked Celeron 333hx ( with 128 meg of ram IIRC! ) was fast, and I was dealing with files the same size as I do today - bigger in fact. It's all about what you are used to/prepared to put up with. If you are looking at a laptop - having dedicated GFX is obviously a good thing as it takes processing load away from the CPU - although the newest onboard GFX chips are pretty good. Even better - get a machine with both Don't get way-laid by the OS red-herring - if you prefer OSX, stick with it, and vica-versa. Identically specced machines running say Windows 7 and Snow Leopard will have negligable noticeable difference in performance once you are in the actual application - my experience is that OSX is probably a 'nicer' OS whilst workflow especially in Adobe products is noticeably faster in Windows on account of better provision for keyboard short-cutting. I'm running both those OS's on my Macbook Pro and can't tell the difference in pure speed whilst in Photoshop for instance, or whilst encoding video ( pure number-crunching ). The other thing to think about would be the hard-drive - faster the better for caching so SATA 7200rpm if you can ( fairly cheap these days ), and best of all worlds is SSD which speeds everything up significantly.

Edit - just re-read and seen you are looking at a Macbook Pro 13 after all that! If it's brand new it'll be 64bit, 5400rpm with DDR3 ram and one onboard GFX card - I reckon it will do the job for you but you'll be wanting to get more RAM sooner rather than later. My boss uses the same machine albeit with 4gig of ram and he thinks it's OK.

Pluck

 

[Deleted Member I]

There are too many variables to come up with 'the' answer. I'd say 2gig of ram minimum on 32bit machine, 4gig on a 64bit machine - the more you have the less the processor has to rely on the ( slower ) harddrive. Faster processor the better obviously - but I can remember back in my design-for-print days thinking that my over-clocked Celeron 333hx ( with 128 meg of ram IIRC! ) was fast, and I was dealing with files the same size as I do today - bigger in fact. It's all about what you are used to/prepared to put up with. If you are looking at a laptop - having dedicated GFX is obviously a good thing as it takes processing load away from the CPU - although the newest onboard GFX chips are pretty good. Even better - get a machine with both Don't get way-laid by the OS red-herring - if you prefer OSX, stick with it, and vica-versa. Identically specced machines running say Windows 7 and Snow Leopard will have negligable noticeable difference in performance once you are in the actual application - my experience is that OSX is probably a 'nicer' OS whilst workflow especially in Adobe products is noticeably faster in Windows on account of better provision for keyboard short-cutting. I'm running both those OS's on my Macbook Pro and can't tell the difference in pure speed whilst in Photoshop for instance, or whilst encoding video ( pure number-crunching ). The other thing to think about would be the hard-drive - faster the better for caching so SATA 7200rpm if you can ( fairly cheap these days ), and best of all worlds is SSD which speeds everything up significantly.

Edit - just re-read and seen you are looking at a Macbook Pro 13 after all that! If it's brand new it'll be 64bit, 5400rpm with DDR3 ram and one onboard GFX card - I reckon it will do the job for you but you'll be wanting to get more RAM sooner rather than later. My boss uses the same machine albeit with 4gig of ram and he thinks it's OK.

Pluck

Cheers

Lightroom or Capture One?

I see Lightroom is really popular and there are loads of ready made profiles to download (there is probably similar on capture one but I have not seen them so far )

However on a recent image, Capture one was able to sort something out called Moire that Lightroom just couldn't.

Is it just down to personal preference? If so .. which one is easier to learn?

 

[Sergeant Pluck]

Cheers

Lightroom or Capture One?

I see Lightroom is really popular and there are loads of ready made profiles to download (there is probably similar on capture one but I have not seen them so far )

However on a recent image, Capture one was able to sort something out called Moire that Lightroom just couldn't.

Is it just down to personal preference? If so .. which one is easier to learn?

No idea - sorry! I've never used either - I'm a died-in-the-wool Photoshop man myself, which might not be quite the right tool for you if you're mostly interested post-processing your photographs?

Pluck

 

[Deleted Member I]

No idea - sorry! I've never used either - I'm a died-in-the-wool Photoshop man myself, which might not be quite the right tool for you if you're mostly interested post-processing your photographs?

Pluck

How hard is it to learn Photoshop itself?

 

[Don El Eee]

Cheers

Lightroom or Capture One?

I see Lightroom is really popular and there are loads of ready made profiles to download (there is probably similar on capture one but I have not seen them so far )

However on a recent image, Capture one was able to sort something out called Moire that Lightroom just couldn't.

Is it just down to personal preference? If so .. which one is easier to learn?

Is there a reason why you've not included Aperture as an option?

Tim

 

[Steve the Kiwi]

I have Adobe elements and photoshop - I'm just learning but elements does occasionally slow my mid spec'ed laptop - 2 gb ram 1.6 ghz processor but over all it's quite useable.

As far as how hard or easy photoshop is.... the program is massive and there are so many things you can do with it. Elements is i gather a retards version of photoshop but there are some really good editing fuctions.

I started buying the uk photo mag "Digital Photo" they have brilliant little projects etc aimed at beginners to try but I'm going to look around for a couple of good books... it's not the sort of thing you just play with and badda bing two weeks later you know it all.

But it depends on what you want to do i guess. Do you want to use software to "develop" your photos or be more art minded or small play here and there

Here's an example of me playing around with popart very easy - once you know how.
My sister n law;

To this;

makes a really cool canvas print

 

[Sergeant Pluck]

It's a vast package and will have a much steeper learning curve than some of the more 'task-specific' software available like Lightroom and the others I guess, although it's not really about 'learning photoshop', it's more about getting familiar enough with it to be able to get what you want out of it. I started using it for work on about version 3 IIRC so it's just second-nature to me now - but there is still stuff in there that I don't know/use. You could start by learning just the bits you need to learn fairly easily, there are shit-loads of tutorials on the web covering every aspect of Photoshop, and then build up from there. There is a magazine called 'Computer Arts' which my designers get that has tutorials in it too. Or, if your only really interested in post-producing photographs ( for instance ), you'll only be using a fraction of the functionality available in PShop, so something like Lightroom might be a more appropriate tool - better at it's specific task, and cheaper. If you're going to pay for it that is ( Photoshop, or any of the CS bundles are fecking expensive ). Similarly, if it's only basic web graphics and animation you wanted to do - something like Fireworks would be a much better bet. Having said that, you can get PShop to configure itself toward different goals, which will make life easier to start with by hiding stuff you're unlikely to need - which'll make it less overwhelming - so jump in if your keen I reckon.

 

[cookie]

pixelmator seems to be very popular with non pro mac users. dunno how good it is myself, i never have the time to learn it, but it gets good reviews and is somewhat cheaper than photoshop.