Old Laptop to try Color 4x5

Hello! I have been using a 3 year old Dell Inspiron 5100 P4 with 1 gig of RAM for B&W, printing 8x10 with MIS inks on an Epson R220 with glossy paper and sending out for larger prints when I want them. My main purchase will be a better scanner in the coming months.

I have been curious about color. I am reading through Real World Color Management by Fraser, Murphy, and Bunting. My head is spinning. To do justice to a color workflow means a new scanner, but also a new computer, monitor, printer, as well as a host of profiling materials.

I don't think I'll be popular in the house if I purchase all this at once.

I have read that the half lives of LCDs is about 18 months, so I am way down on the curve with my laptop. Is this true, or can I get reasonable results and a longer life span of the laptop's monitor with frequent profiling? Best regards.

Mike

Unfortunately it is true. Moreover, unless you have a relatively recent higher-end laptop with a good video card, it is near pointless to profile it since it won't be stable enough to hold the profile in the first place.

Your "old" P4 system may be perfectly adequate by updating to a decent video card and getting a new LCD, especially if you don't mind waiting for processes to complete, but the sad fact is that is just throwing good money into a marginal system.

Unfortunately, Jack is right on. You will be able to workbut it will go slow. Look at it this way just for one issue; 1 Gig of RAM ... assume you need nearly half of that to run your OS, maybe you can get away with say 300 or 350 ... let's say 350 which leaves you 650 ... so your new scanner will allow you to scan 4x5 at 1800 or 2400 ... giving you a file in the range of 350 MB .... PS itself takes some of the RAM so the little that is left isn't going to be enough to do any processing ... you are going to be swapping bits in and out using virtual RAM ...

Having said that I still think you are making the right move by purchasing a new scanner next. After that get a new computer, you don't need to get a new one and there are some very good buys in one or two year old machines that will serve you ok. Fact is that for reallllllly good color workflow you want to make a larger investment in RAM than you are likely to want to make in the entire system. I am currently running 5 Gigs of RAM and when I replace my G5 with an Intel based machine I will bump that to at least 8 and likely more.

Don't be discouraged, just go at it slow and have patience while PS churns through your files. BTW, are you using PS CS2 or Elements or lightZone or ???

Hello! I am using Elements 2.0 with "Hidden Power" currrently.

I like Light Zone. I passed on the 1.5 version since it lacked a clone tool that was easy to use to spot photos. They told me that they plan on having 2.0 out in a month or to, and I intend to move to that.

Best regards.

Mike

Mike, I think LightZone is an excellent tool with one caveat. Currently, their sharpening algorithms are not that sophisticated (but Lars has mentioned that they are working on that). If you are going to use LightZone you may want to consider some other sharpening tools as well.