Last week I had a power outage that created a power surge that fried my old G4 computer and other misc. appliances. The sparks were flying from the downed line in my backyard for 5 hours before help finally arrived.
So it's time to retire the old G4 and get a new computer. I'm looking at the new 24-inch 3.06GHz iMac. It will only be used to process photos with CS3 and Lightroom. Do any of you use an iMac to process photos? Is it powerful enough or do I need to spend the extra money and get a Mac Pro?
I've been using an almost 3-yr old iMac (2GHz) and have maxxed out the RAM at 2GB. It does alright with PS, but does even better when I upgraded to PS CS4. Not to get too technical, but CS4 will run natively on the Intel chips whereas all previous version will run emulated thus taking a performance hit. All that to say, I really don't think you'll see a big hit with the iMac you are looking at and will most likely do just fine as long as you aren't processing a ton of photos per day.
I have not owned an iMac but have used Macs since 1987; over the past few years trained a lot of photographers and designers using iMacs. (I've owned Mac towers, laptops etc. but somehow never an iMac... hmmm)
I would say that for the most part, for serious photo processing, they can do most everything you need. But don't expect the display to be super-accurate. And of course, not much in the way of expansion capability.
For the most bang for the buck, I really think you can't go wrong with a fully-loaded Mac Mini and pro-level NEC flat LCD display. I've been using a setup like this for all my studio work for the past two years and have been only rarely even slightly aggravated when processing multi-layer files over 1GB in size.
The key with any computer setup is to load it with as much hardware as you can afford, and keep the applications and system running lean and mean.
I've been running a 20 inch iMac for the last year and 1/2, I have it maxed out at 4GB of RAM and it really hums with CS3. The only time it slowed down a little was when I was processing a pano from 10 images-- over 100 megapixels -- and it only took a couple minutes. Regular images and processing run pretty fast, I never have to wait for the computer. As an aside, you can set up an iMac to run another monitor, so you could run 2 if you want.
Save your money on the Mac Pro, I currently have last years 24" IMac with only 2GB of ram, and it does just fine. I'm a web developer / server admin by day, and almost always am running at least 6 apps. The only time I have any issues is when I attempt to run both Parallels (Windows Virtual Machine) and Photoshop (CS3) at the same time, it slows down quite a bit, but it certainly keeps on chugging.
Discussion
5 repliesSo it's time to retire the old G4 and get a new computer. I'm looking at the new 24-inch 3.06GHz iMac. It will only be used to process photos with CS3 and Lightroom. Do any of you use an iMac to process photos? Is it powerful enough or do I need to spend the extra money and get a Mac Pro?
Thanks
I've been using an almost 3-yr old iMac (2GHz) and have maxxed out the RAM at 2GB. It does alright with PS, but does even better when I upgraded to PS CS4. Not to get too technical, but CS4 will run natively on the Intel chips whereas all previous version will run emulated thus taking a performance hit. All that to say, I really don't think you'll see a big hit with the iMac you are looking at and will most likely do just fine as long as you aren't processing a ton of photos per day.
I would say that for the most part, for serious photo processing, they can do most everything you need. But don't expect the display to be super-accurate. And of course, not much in the way of expansion capability.
For the most bang for the buck, I really think you can't go wrong with a fully-loaded Mac Mini and pro-level NEC flat LCD display. I've been using a setup like this for all my studio work for the past two years and have been only rarely even slightly aggravated
The key with any computer setup is to load it with as much hardware as you can afford, and keep the applications and system running lean and mean.
Save your money on the Mac Pro, I currently have last years 24" IMac with only 2GB of ram, and it does just fine. I'm a web developer / server admin by day, and almost always am running at least 6 apps. The only time I have any issues is when I attempt to run both Parallels (Windows Virtual Machine) and Photoshop (CS3) at the same time, it slows down quite a bit, but it certainly keeps on chugging.
Thanks
Wan
Ken