Apple, PC, notebook, iMac .. ?

**Frank Petronio** · 13-May-2008, 21:14

1. Why even bother to calibrate a laptop?

2. Unless you're Jeff Wall or somebody rich and famous making giant prints for expensive galleries, why does anyone need 400 mb files of anything?

**Ed Richards** · 14-May-2008, 08:14

Frank,

An 1800 DPI scan of 4x5 black and white gets you to 90 megs, before you do anything. Add some layers, and a dup background for sharpening, and you are at 160-180 megs. Move to color and you are at triple that. Get a decent drum scan at 2800 DPI in color as a reference scan, and that is nearly one gig before you do anything.

**jpkirk** · 16-May-2008, 11:01

Yup, big prints. I like big prints. I get about 2500dpi scans, run about 300MB at 8bit, 600mb at 16bit, add some layers and.. well.. 1gig comes quickly.

jim

**Donald Miller** · 16-May-2008, 15:25

I just built a new machine. dual quad processors, 12 GB of ECC ram (upgradeable to 32 GB), dual esata 500 GB drives in a mirrored raid configuration, 1.5 terrabytes of external storage and ATI 880 graphics card running on 64 bit Vista Ultimate.

My previous 2GB of ram with a single processor on XP was just not cutting it when I processed large files.

**Kirk Gittings** · 16-May-2008, 15:47

[QUOTE=Frank Petronio;348936]1. Why even bother to calibrate a laptop?

I have very picky clients that are on site. They used to accept any old crap on a Polaroid and accept my "oh don't worry about it, its only a Polaroid, the film will look great", but with files, a file is the file. Or so they think......they have gotten much pickier.

The one time I shot for Dwell they wanted the laptop image to have that "a little off Dwell look" (the "someone didn't quite get the dynamic range just right in the CMYK conversion look"), but I didn't know how to do it.

**Matus Kalisky** · 19-May-2008, 00:48

Thanks for all you replies and opinions. It seems that iMac could be a reasonable solution. I guess I will have to make it with max 4 GB of RAM as the machines that can accept more are beyond the budget. I just hope that if I get a 24" iMac with 4 GB of RAM in half a year, than a CS4 will not come out a few months later and will need 8 GB to run fluently ...

**Marko** · 19-May-2008, 07:20

Matus,

I bought my 20" iMac more than two years ago - it was the first Intel Mac to come out - and I had the same thought about Photoshop CS3. Well, two OS X versions and one-and-a-half Photoshop version (CS3 Extended) later, it is running quite fine, no problems whatsoever. And this is a 2 MB max. model. It is also running Flash, Illustrator and the rest of the CS3 suite equally well. I plan to run it for at least another year, more likely two before upgrading and even when I do, it will still have work to do for a few more years. Things like web browsing, email and such.

The nicest thing about Macs, aside from their design and stability, is that they can run forever. Unlike Windows boxes, they seem to become faster and more stable with each new OS upgrade.

No matter which computer you buy, you'll always need to upgrade it, sooner or later. So, don't worry, go ahead and buy the computer you need now and worry about upgrades later, when their time comes.

**Ken Lee** · 19-May-2008, 09:00

Speaking of slavery to upgrades, does anyone know what is in the pipeline for Photoshop ? I would be very happy to not upgrade for a few releases.

I presume they are working on better ways to ease the strain of digital shooters who need to perform non-destructive bulk color corrections, upon millions of... snapshots.

**kipdent** · 26-May-2008, 21:05

Another thought---I just tested a 400 MB scan in PS3 on the newest 3.06 GHz 24-inch iMac and the 8-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro desktop. I guess this is no surprise, but the Mac Pro desktop BLEW AWAY the iMac on every function in PS I could think of throwing at it. It was maddening since I wanted a less expensive "solution," but now I realize I really want the Mac Pro desktop. Three times faster on most processes was just too impressive for me.

**Matus Kalisky** · 27-May-2008, 05:34

Originally Posted by kipdent

Another thought---I just tested a 400 MB scan in PS3 on the newest 3.06 GHz 24-inch iMac and the 8-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro desktop. I guess this is no surprise, but the Mac Pro desktop BLEW AWAY the iMac on every function in PS I could think of throwing at it.

and it should, right? It is also quite a bit more expensive. I am not a pro and I am also looking for a mashine that does not take too much place but still allows for a reasonable monitor callibration. And I keep mentioning a used high end flatbed scanner (Cezanne, Eversmart ...) in from of my girlfriend that will also be some investment ...