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Thread: Building a Photoshop engine for LF processing

  1. #1
    Mike Lewis
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
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    Florida Panhandle
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    83

    Building a Photoshop engine for LF processing

    I shoot 4x5 transparencies and negatives and have them developed commercially. My "digital darkroom" setup for printing consists of an Epson 4990 and a G4 PowerMac running Photoshop, with output to an HP DesignJet 130 printer. Right now I'm not happy with any of it, especially the Mac-- it just will not handle large (100's of megabytes) image files. I'm fed up and I want to try something else. I am considering building a machine using the 64-bit Opteron processor and loading Windows on it, then using the Windows version of Photoshop. Trouble is, I come from a Unix/Linux background and know little about Windows. I'd much rather stick with Linux but its digital photo tools (GIMP, etc.) are not as sophisticated as PS, and $#!!%! Adobe will not port PS to Linux. I'm loathe to buy a G5 Mac given my experience with this one. So I need advice.

    Is modern MS Windows stable, usable? I'm not worried about viruses as this machine will not be connected to the Internet. Is there a version of Windows for 64-bit processors such as Opteron and EM64T Xeon? Will PS on this architecture address 64-bit memory? Are the more desirable third-party PS plug-ins available for Windows? What about a RIP for the DesignJet printer (I realize this is another topic)? Am I swapping one set of problems (slow, noisy Mac) for another (Windows)?

    I realize this inquiry is only partially germaine to large format photography, but people who are dealing with very large image files are in this group and will know what to do. Thanks.
    Mike Lewis
    mikelewisimages.com

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Jun 2000
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    193

    Building a Photoshop engine for LF processing

    What kind of G4 do you have, what OS?, how many rams and hard disks do you have in there...? As of now, Adobe PS CS (1 and 2) is not in the 64-bit yet.....I work a lot with large files in multiple layers... let us know more to see if we can help....

  3. #3

    Building a Photoshop engine for LF processing

    Dan is on track. What OS are you using? How much RAM? You should be running Tiger with more than 1 GB of RAM to get the most out of CS. Also, do you have your scratch disk on a different drive than Photoshop is on? That will speed things up trememdously.

  4. #4
    Ted Harris's Avatar
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    Aug 2000
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    New Hampshire
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    3,465

    Building a Photoshop engine for LF processing

    Both Dan and Dean said it. Yoiur problem is likely all with RAM and you would have the same problem on a similarly configured PC. First, yiou need a 64 bit processor to install and address more than 2 GB (or is it 4 ... to late to be doing this) of RAM. That would be a G5 Powermac or one of the top end 64 bit PC's. Careful, G5 IMac's, the bottom end G5 Powermacs and some of the 64 bit PC's are not hardware configured to install more than 2 or 4 GB of RAM. Next, make sure you are funning PS CS2, the first version of the program that will adress more than 2 GB of RAM. As mentioned above, be sure you use a separate, dedicated physical (not partition of a disc) hard drive as a scratch disc. Do that and things will perk along very very well.

    I run a dual processor 2 GHz G5 with 5 GB of RAM; two separate internal drives ... each 250 GB and two external, one 160 GB and a 20 GB that I use as the scratch disk. I routinely process 1 GB and larger image files. Had three open at one time earlier today ....

  5. #5
    Doug Dolde
    Guest

    Building a Photoshop engine for LF processing

    I have an HP dual 3.2 Xeon with 3gb ram. It still chokes on 500mb scan files but digests them eventually.

    I am waiting to see what Apple comes up with to replace the current dual G5's. Not worth the upgrade to Apples current Power Macs.

  6. #6
    Mike Lewis
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Florida Panhandle
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    Building a Photoshop engine for LF processing

    Ted-- My G4 PowerMac is fully populated with 2GB of RAM. The Photoshop swap is on a drive separate from the drive holding the OS and the Photoshop application, but it is a partition of the drive that holds some of my image files. Hmm, I can see some contention there. I find your use of an external drive (presumably Firewire) as PS swap interesting. I think I'll try this, as it would be a relatively low-cost way of upgrading the machine before giving up on it. Thanks for the idea.
    Mike Lewis
    mikelewisimages.com

  7. #7

    Join Date
    Apr 2004
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    832

    Building a Photoshop engine for LF processing

    Even if you go with the Opteron, I suggest you run three, but better - four separate, fast drives/spindles. It truly helps!

    Here's something pertinent from Adobe.

    "To make the most of systems running 64-bit processors, Photoshop CS2 can now address more than 2 GB of RAM. Photoshop CS2 can address approximately 3.5 GB of RAM on a Power Macintosh G5 running Mac OS X, or on a Windows XP 64-bit Edition system running an Intel® Xeon™ processor with EM64T, or an AMD Athlon™ 64 or Opteron™ processor."

  8. #8
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
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    brooklyn, nyc
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    5,796

    Building a Photoshop engine for LF processing

    You guys are so bourgeois! I have an iMac from 1999, less than a gig of ram, and a G3 processor (I think these processors are being used in cigarette lighters now). I work on 800mb files every day. Sure, my white beard gets longer while the thing chugs away in the background ... but I wouldn't have all this time for spewing here on the LF board if I had a computer I didn't have to wait for.

  9. #9

    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    VA
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    113

    Building a Photoshop engine for LF processing

    RAM rules the day for PS.

    Imagine that its 1993 and you have a Quadra 960 with a whopping 256MB of RAM. In those days that was almost $50k. However due to the fact that Photoshop requires 3x the size of the Photo to support undo, a 150MB raw file from the drum scanner takes huge amounts of time to work on.

    I script the GIMP on the PC, the mac, and Linux to do things. It does everything I want to do, but I don't make digital prints all that often.

    Linux can support more than 2GB of RAM and fileseizes over 2GB with modern operating Systems.

    Mike

  10. #10

    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    Baton Rouge, LA
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    2,428

    Building a Photoshop engine for LF processing

    Paulr - 800 meg edited or 800 meg before editing? The problems I have, even with 2 gigs of ram, is that a 500 meg 48bit color file quickly grows into a multi-gig file if you are using layers that copy the background. So my 500 meg files becomes a 2 gig file and the computer chokes. One trick with windows is to use the /3GB switch in your windows boot file. This lets CS 2 use 3 gigs even on a 32 bit machine. It will slow you down a lot unless you have 4 gigs of ram because it will swap to disk, but it will let you use 2+ gig file without moving to Windows 64.

    Dual core machines are going to be the way to go, as will 64 bit systems. I have not been keeping track - are there 64 bit dual core machines out here? Of course in a year or so you will not have to choose - once macs switch to Intel chips, you will probably be able to dual boot.:-)

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