If you want a more efficient program, and are willing to use the notion of masks, rather than layers, Pictue Window Pro is great for large format. I use it to downsample my files because photoshop is so slow. I have used it for years and interchange it with Photoshop.
Ed Richards
http://www.epr-art.com
I'm with paulr: at home I'm on G3/300Mhz with 768 MB RAM, OS X 10.2.8, PS CS1, in studio G4/867Mhz, 1.1GB RAM OS X 10.4.2, PS CS2. And I can work. And I'm working... 250+MB scans with multiple layers, sometimes 16bit per channel. It isn't the fastest possible, but is waaaaaaaay faster than was my PM7200, Q700, LC, Plus... yes, the last one mentioned is still here with PhotoShop 1.0 ;-)) When I need absolute power, I go to prepress department and I occupy some dual G5... but that is maybe once every second month. But there, I can see some Macs (particularly G4) struggling with PS. Disable Suitcase and whole system runs faster. Do check you system optimization - look for some MUG guru if you are not that good in Macs - they will all like to help... somehow similar community to this one ;-))
Before you run out and get a new machine, more RAM, more disk drives, etc. one thing you can do is downsize your images to a more reasonable size, *before* performing all the adjustments, layers, etc. Unless you intend to print your images at huge size, there is not need to hang on to all those redundant pixels.
That will go a long way to speed things up.
(Of course, when you're working in Photoshop, make sure all your other applications are shut down. Free up as much RAM as you can).
If you perform all the adjustments on layers, you can apply them to the original again, any time you like, by simply dragging them over.
Does the GIMP support printer profiles and color spaces the way that Photoshop does ? If not, then there is no point using it. In my humble opinion, that is.
In a similar vein, if your printer hasn't been profiled, then there's no point printing to it. Ditto for the monitor: if you don't have a calibration tool for it, and use it from time to time, then at this point, you're rather lucky to have gotten anything you like.
j.e. said And John, the price of Tri-X in 1988 was $44.57 for 100 sheets in 1988 - at least at Wolf Camera on 14th Street in Atlanta.
Now that's darned interesting. Thanks. The price has just about doubled; not bad in the light of so many other things. You made my day! What's left of it.
IMO, Ken offers good advice, though I think he's a bit pessimistic on calibration. Maybe it's luck, but I'm pretty happy using the factory supplied profiles for my monitor and printer, and have no calibration tools at all, unless eyes count.
Let's be specific here. I want to know how long some of the operations you all do, take. My system is very modest, under $1k for a Athlon64 (3500+) and 2G of RAM. Windows XP Media, SP2. In the spirit of economy, I run Paint Shop Pro 9.whatever. PSP9 takes 7 seconds to load, if nothing is cached. If I've been using it, the load time is under 2 seconds. If I scan a 6x6 neg, a typical file would be 9978 x 8028, 24 bit (16 million colors). That's a 244MB file and PSP9 loads that file in under 5 seconds, even with my common PATA drive. Doing a USM on same takes 41 seconds. Doing a digital noise reduction takes forever because the computer crashes due to lack of memory (I assume, unless it's a bug). Reducing the file size to 7000 x 5432 (115Mb) allows the noise reduction, but it takes 3 minutes and 36 seconds. Everything else, color corrections, cropping, curves, etc., takes a few seconds and isn't worth worrying about. Obviously, the times go up with more layers.
I can see vastly more number crunching and data moving horsepower is needed to run larger programs with high res scans from 4x5 negs, not to mention as much RAM as possible. Ok, I've bared my low budget processing soul- tell me how long various operations take with your high horsepower machines and big files.
"No Paul... this not a matter of "bourgeois"... this is a matter of using of available material if one can afford it...."
a joke, my friend. by all means, go get a faster computer than me unless you're currently eating beans out of a can with a stick.
It kind of makes sense that if you are going to shoot and scan high res from 8x10 chromes - at $100 or more per pop - that you wouldn't skimp on your digital hardware. There are guys on this forum going out with 8x10 Arcas and a rack of the latest Rodenstocks that cost as much as a car, as well as spending hundreds on drum scans and much more on prints -- and then they expect things to work ducky on a $1500 Dell box or a three year old G4?
Hmm... I wonder what PC Clifford Ross uses? Afterall, he is scanning the world's largest images, at least according to his PR. And we already established he has endless gobs of $.
Bill G asked for a "road map"... well there is none for a specific computer or specific OS (applied for Mac or PC) but in short I think this:
- 2 Gig of ram over max. of Photoshop which means 4Gb for CS1 and 6 Gig for CS2
- one empty hard drive for scratch disk
- not running CPU intensive application concurrently with Photoshop
- hard disk must be internal, not external
anyone have anything to add...?
Dan, what about dual processors? I assume CS2 is taking advantage of them?
Unless you use FW 800 (which is not available on some G4s) it is not a good idea to use a FW drive for scratch, since they would have half the transfer rate of internal IDE drives. The G5 represents a considerable speed-up compared to the G4. However after the first 2.0GHz release, progress has been slow, due to IBM inability to supply faster chips. Curiously, soon after the annoucement of the switch to Intel, IBM announced dual core processors (as well as mobile processors). It is rumored that a new revision with those dual-core IBM processors will come out before the switch to Intel processors. This switch is scheduled to take place towards end of 2006, beginning of 2007 for the high-end desktops. Drawing from the usual product cycle, the current G5 are certainly due for an upgrade soon.
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