The newest iMacs - suitable for Photoshop work?

[Henry Ambrose]

Thanks Dominique!

Very useful information.

Now all I need is for you to go buy a brand new iMac and test that one for me.
; >)

Seriously it is great to see this kind of comparison. Thanks again for sharing this.

The newest iMac screen specifications are changed for the better from the older versions, same for the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. I'm surprised that there's not a test like yours out there on the web somewhere of all the new Mac screens.

[Dominique Labrosse]

Thanks Dominique!
I'm surprised that there's not a test like yours out there on the web somewhere of all the new Mac screens.

That would be just too convenient. ;-) You're right, I'm quite surprised that this info is not on the web somewhere.

[Dominique Labrosse]

Well Henry I went ahead and purchased a new 20" Core 2 Duo iMac (I was going to anyways, my 15" flat panel iMac was getting very long-in-the-tooth) and after getting the thing running smoothly I finally had a chance to profile it last night.

In short, the profile is almost identical to the 23" Apple Cinema Display I use at work. There is almost no point posting the graph as they are vitually identical - but I will just so that you'll believe me :-)

This means that the iMac is now a legitimate Photoshop machine. The one caveat is that it only supports 3GB of RAM. The 24" is rated as brighter so odds are it has an even fatter gamut.

Regards
Dominique

[Henry Ambrose]

Dominique, That's great to know. I'm still wavering between the 24" iMac and a MacPro. The extra expandability of the MacPro may be worthwhile in the long run and I can just plug it up to my current CRT monitors. But that iMac sure is tempting and even more so now.

Thanks for following up on this.

[Marko]

Henry,

Keep in mind that MacPro is much more prone to heating. I have both the iMac and MacPro, both maxed out on memory and MacPro can heat up significantly within a couple of hours or so, especially with CPU- and disk-intensive applications such as Photoshop.

I've had no such problems with iMac. If you can't justify one of the desktops, don't mind the memory limitations, and don't need to take it on the road, I think you'd be much better off with an iMac as your main machine.

[Dominique Labrosse]

Henry,

Keep in mind that MacPro is much more prone to heating. I have both the iMac and MacPro, both maxed out on memory and MacPro can heat up significantly within a couple of hours or so, especially with CPU- and disk-intensive applications such as Photoshop.

Marko,
Just to be certain are you talking about the MacBookPro (notebook) or the MacPro (tower)?

Henry,
The MacPro (tower) is definitely a more capable machine than the iMac. I would have bought one if I could have afforded it. But to be honest I am very happy with the performance of my new 20" Core 2 Duo iMac. Even more so now that I see the gamut of the monitor.

[Marko]

Marko,
Just to be certain are you talking about the MacBookPro (notebook) or the MacPro (tower)?

Henry,
The MacPro (tower) is definitely a more capable machine than the iMac. I would have bought one if I could have afforded it. But to be honest I am very happy with the performance of my new 20" Core 2 Duo iMac. Even more so now that I see the gamut of the monitor.

My bad, I'm not very good with all the marketing lingo. I was talking about the MacBookPro, the notebook. MacPro, the destkop, is defnitely top of the line, and neither the laptop nor the iMac can really compare if portability and/or price are not the issue.

[Mike Lewis]

At home I use my Mac dual G4 tower w/ "only" 2Gb of RAM (but with 1 terabyte of eSATA online storage, RAID 0 scratch disk, and 1 terabyte of offline storage). No problems at all opening/editing/saving 1GB Photoshop files.

If you see a pattern here it is this: IMHO, hard disk space trumps CPU speed and/or RAM. Personally, I think many people make the mistake of biasing "speed" over storage space and redundancy.

Mr. Sullivan:

I also have a Mac G4 with 2GB of RAM, but unlike you I am very disappointed with its Photoshop performance. I recently purchased a network attached storage device (NAS) with 1 TB of disk. How did you configure your eSATA box: RAID0, RAID5, or something else? And how many internal disks on your Mac are you striping for RAID0 swap? If your configuration works for you with large image files, it will work for me.

thanks,

[Henry Ambrose]

Dominique and Marko,

I was referring to the MacPro tower not the MacBookPro. I did a little test on my old G4, a MacPro 3GHZ, a 24" IMac and a MacBookPro. I sampled down a big 4x5 scan to 80 MB and wrote it to disk. My G4 took 24 seconds to open it in Preview. :>( I picked this method since all machines run Preview natively so it was as even as I could get it. And its not a bad test of the system performance.

So off to the Apple Store with the file on CD. In each instance I copied the file to the hard drive of the subject machines, quit everything, started Preview and dragged the image file icon onto the Preview icon. The MacBookPro 17 " 2GB RAM took 14 seconds, the iMac 24" 2GB RAM only 6 seconds and the MacPro 3GHZ , 4GB RAM 3 seconds (or less - it was hard to time). So while the MacBookPro may be the most super notebook its still not that super compared to a tower/desktop machine with fast drives and all that maximum speediness. Mighty nice notebook though.

What really got me was that the MacPro was hooked to a 30" Apple Display. As wonderful as the 24" iMac is - its still not 30"! Otherwise looking at my very well known file at 100% I know I'd be satisfied with either machine. Man, that was a great viewing experience on both those big screens.

So, I'm kinda holding out, counting pennies for a MacPro and all the expandibility. I'd just use it with my old monitors for while before making the move up to the 30". Or I might bite on the iMac 24. Or just wait for the next round of introductions and maybe get a deal on a just discontinued model. Or maybe just go buy something tomorrow. It depends on which day you ask me........... But its no longer a question about the iMac screen capability.

[Dominique Labrosse]

Henry,

The 30" ACD is a huge and beautiful disaplay, but if you want that kind of real estate twin 20" ACDs are a much more cost effective solution. It would be fairly easy to match them colour wise using EyeOne Match and a EyeOne Display. Then you'd have 40" of display at 2/3 of the cost of a single 30".

Regards,
DL