 Cindy |
Purchasing computer and photographic software I am in the market for a new computer and trying to ease in to digital photography. I would like to know which features I should try and get on a new computer that would be useful in digital photography. Is there any special minimum requirements for handling large picture files. The computer I have now, creeps along and can't stand it much longer. Also, should I consider a lap top instead of the desk, so I can have it on location or is that necessary.
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Trista |
I would reccomend getting a Mac with Photoshop CS. Mac's also have a lot of other capabilities with digital photography. You can make digital videos with your pictures. Laptops are nice if you would use it on location. I do most of my work at the desk. I use the LCD monitor to preview my pictures on location. I also have extra memory cards to store more pictures.
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Dave Kone |
This is a real open ended question. What kind of editing are you doing? Do you edit a lot? Need some more info. David
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Cindy |
I believe I will be editing alot. Have tried it and really like it but my computer is so slow it almost makes me cry. I intend on getting photo shop cs and use it to enhance my pictures into artwork. Need to be able to have the finished product fine enough to be printed into large pictures. I use 35mm camera right now and intend on getting a professional digital before long and would like to have a computer that is capable of what I will be needing. Thanks for your responses.
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Dave Kone |
The more you spend the faster it will go, to an extent. You reach a point where going 1% faster costs a lot more, be careful. Not sure of your budget if any but here are some thoughts. A PC with two hard drives would be ideal. I would make my operating system drive a 10,000 RPM Serial ATA. Western Digital makes them, they are called Raptors. These drives are more money and not huge, but they will give you a lot of speed where its needed. I would then get a second hard drive to store photos on. A nice big 250-300 gig Western Digital 7200rpm 8 meg buffer Serial ATA or IDE drive. You also want to put your photoshop scratch file on the second drive. If you’re a real speed freak you can add a 3rd hard drive to put the swap file on. If you have an endless pocket of money SCSI would be faster, but the expense and noise are not worth it in my opinion. A Pentium 4 processor with Hyper Threading would be ideal. Don’t buy the fastest one out there GHZ wise. You pay a premium for the fastest chip to gain an ounce of speed. Buy one that is 1 or two steps behind the fastest. For instance a P4 3.4 ghz might add $450 to the system, but a 3.2ghz might only be $240. You would barely see if at all the difference between 3.2 and 3.4 ghz. So why pay twice as much for a hair more speed? 1 Gig of ram is ideal. The more the better especially if you plan on doing serious editing. Get a simple Video card. An ATI 8XXX or 9XXX series card of any sort will do. You don’t need an expensive fast 3d QUAD pipe blah blah blah video card for PhotoShop. Get one that supports two monitors. Down the road if you decide to add one it will be easy. Two monitors are a dream to work with, I’d get it right off the bat! A DVD recorder is in order. You need a way to backup the photos and store them offsite. Some decent companies to buy from that let you pick the hardware you want and have pre-configured editing machines are: http://www.alienware.com Dell is also a decent vendor but you cant customize them very much and your stuck using whatever hardware they are using. I could go on, but this should get you started. To run Photoshop you don't need a lot of computer. But if you want things to zing along very quickly, just reach into your pocket. :)
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