PC Based Photoshop Question

"Matt" wrote in message

We’re hiring a new person for Photoshop and I have to build them a computer… so I thought I’d get a little feedback from you as to what to look for in terms of a system…

The best PC is a Macintosh.

"Matt" wrote in message

We’re hiring a new person for Photoshop and I have to build them a computer… so I thought I’d get a little feedback from you as to what to look for in terms of a system… other than of course the absolute fastest processor and maximum ram. They’re using it primarily to edit stills from weddings and a few marketing projects we handle.
I’m looking for more HD, motherboard, graphics card type feedback, but I’ll read everything.

Have you talked with the person you’re hiring? PC’s are more bang for the buck, both in hardware and software.

Mac really love the Mac, and it’s not an overstatement to say that they make a religion out of it. If the person is more valuable than the machine, which is generally the case, then it is cruel to force a Mac person to work on a PC.

All that aside, yes, lots of CPU speed is essential for high throughput. Memory and disk capacity are not only crucial, but inexpensive.

I would add that monitor real-estate, and a means (spyder pro or eye 1 display) of calibrating the monitors to match one another will make your person more productive as well. A WACOM tablet will make retouch, dodge-burn, and paint operations more accurate and efficient.

Don’t worry too much about video hardware – Photoshop is not very demanding in that area, though you may want to drive your monitors using two video cards, so that they may be separately calibrated.

Will you do prints in-house, or send them out? Don’t go too nuts on printer calibration. It’s about where monitor calibration was five years ago. You can spend a thousand dollars or more, only to learn that this area is not very well developed yet.
—
Mike Russell – www.curvemeister.com

On Oct 9, 5:53 am, "Mike Russell" <
MOVE> wrote:

Don’t worry too much about video hardware – Photoshop is not very demanding in that area, though you may want to drive your monitors using two video cards, so that they may be separately calibrated.

Mike Russell -www.curvemeister.com

Hi Mike,
I don’t have any calibration hardware and I don’t really understand how all that works but how can it be true that a dual card video adapter can be limited to a single calibration? There is no common hardware until it hits the PCIe bus slot and that would be in common even with a separate card. My card offers separate channel gamma adjustments as well as separate H, S, B and contrast. Plus the profile manager allows for video profiles to be placed in startup or associated with an application. Are you sure about this?

Thanks,
Ron

"Mike Russell" wrote in message

"Matt" wrote in message

I’m looking for more HD, motherboard, graphics card type feedback, but I’ll read everything.

Have you talked with the person you’re hiring? PC’s are more bang for the buck, both in hardware and software.

Mac really love the Mac, and it’s not an overstatement to say that they make a religion out of it. If the person is more valuable than the machine, which is generally the case, then it is cruel to force a Mac person to work on a PC.

All that aside, yes, lots of CPU speed is essential for high throughput. Memory and disk capacity are not only crucial, but inexpensive.
I would add that monitor real-estate, and a means (spyder pro or eye 1 display) of calibrating the monitors to match one another will make your person more productive as well. A WACOM tablet will make retouch, dodge-burn, and paint operations more accurate and efficient.
Don’t worry too much about video hardware – Photoshop is not very demanding in that area, though you may want to drive your monitors using two video cards, so that they may be separately calibrated.
Will you do prints in-house, or send them out? Don’t go too nuts on printer calibration. It’s about where monitor calibration was five years ago. You can spend a thousand dollars or more, only to learn that this area is not very well developed yet.
—

Thanks for the info! The person being hired is comfortable on both Mac and PC and will be doing one other job that requres a PC and connection to our network. And All printing will be sent out.= for now.

Is there enough advantage in using a 10,000 rmp SATA drive over a 7200 one (especially the newer ones) to justify the reduced storage space and higher cost?

"Matt" wrote in message

Thanks for the info! The person being hired is comfortable on both Mac and PC and will be doing one other job that requres a PC and connection to our network. And All printing will be sent out.= for now.

We run over 8,000 PCs and about 1,500 Macs on the same network with compatibility. You can, too.

Matt said:
….

Thanks for the info! The person being hired is comfortable on both Mac and PC and will be doing one other job that requres a PC and connection to our network. And All printing will be sent out.= for now.

Is there enough advantage in using a 10,000 rmp SATA drive over a 7200 one (especially the newer ones) to justify the reduced storage space and higher cost?

I’d put fast disk a bit lower on the budget list, less important than memory or a large display. Heck, I’m just getting used to 7200 RPM disks. I do tend to be leery of new hardware, if only because the price is going to go down and the capacity up very sharply in the next year or so.

That said one arrangement might be to archive your photos on a server, it may pay to have an extremely fast local disk for processing raw files, color correcting individual images, etc. If the workstation is going to busy most of the time, cranking out jobs, then five or ten percent throughput can be quite important. OTOH, if the duty cycle is light, then it can sit in a corner cranking away at raw file conversions, with no impact on the number of jobs you can do.

Also think about how you will back up the drives. SOP these days is to archive each job to a DVD.
—
Mike Russell – www.curvemeister.com

wrote in message

On Oct 9, 5:53 am, "Mike Russell" <
MOVE> wrote:

Don’t worry too much about video hardware – Photoshop is not very demanding
in that area, though you may want to drive your monitors using two video cards, so that they may be separately calibrated.

Mike Russell -www.curvemeister.com

Hi Mike,
I don’t have any calibration hardware and I don’t really understand how all that works but how can it be true that a dual card video adapter can be limited to a single calibration?

It’s a windows OS software limitation. Color profiles are assigned by display device, and a dual monitor card is considered to be one device. So the work around is that you add a second PCI card, and assign the profile for your second display to it.

There is no common
hardware until it hits the PCIe bus slot and that would be in common even with a separate card. My card offers separate channel gamma adjustments as well as separate H, S, B and contrast. Plus the profile manager allows for video profiles to be placed in startup or associated with an application. Are you sure about this?

Ah – you’re using Vista, of which I’m still blissfully ignorant. If it allows separate profiles per monitor, then you only need one card. I’ll make a guess that neither the Spyder or Eye One work with Vista yet, though it should be possible to profile each monitor individually, as if it were the only monitor on the card, and then assign the profiles to each monitor separately.
—
Mike Russell – www.curvemeister.com

On Oct 9, 10:10 am, "Mike Russell" <
MOVE> wrote:

Ah – you’re using Vista, of which I’m still blissfully ignorant. If it allows separate profiles per monitor, then you only need one card. I’ll make a guess that neither the Spyder or Eye One work with Vista yet, though it should be possible to profile each monitor individually, as if it were the only monitor on the card, and then assign the profiles to each monitor separately.
—
Mike Russell -www.curvemeister.com

I am not using Vista on my computer – I have XP Pro. I have Vista on my Mom’s laptop but since I don’t want to make anyone unhappy I will not comment on it. The graphics card I am using is bundled with control software that has a profile manager with it. Here is a cap of how it looks. Notice that it has a tab for selecting which parts of each adapter is reconfigured, how it is activated and which applications are associated with each setting. This setup may be very new because I just got the card last month.

Thanks,
Ron

On Oct 9, 11:08 am, "" wrote:

On Oct 9, 10:10 am, "Mike Russell" <

MOVE> wrote:

Ah – you’re using Vista, of which I’m still blissfully ignorant. If it allows separate profiles per monitor, then you only need one card. I’ll make a guess that neither the Spyder or Eye One work with Vista yet, though it should be possible to profile each monitor individually, as if it were the only monitor on the card, and then assign the profiles to each monitor separately.
—
Mike Russell -www.curvemeister.com

I am not using Vista on my computer – I have XP Pro. I have Vista on my Mom’s laptop but since I don’t want to make anyone unhappy I will not comment on it. The graphics card I am using is bundled with control software that has a profile manager with it. Here is a cap of how it looks. Notice that it has a tab for selecting which parts of each adapter is reconfigured, how it is activated and which applications are associated with each setting. This setup may be very new because I just got the card last month.

Thanks,
Ron

Woops… Here it is.

http://picasaweb.google.com/ronviers/MayaQs/photo#5119366161 113129682

On Oct 9, 1:55 pm, "Matt" wrote:

"Mike Russell" wrote in message

"Matt" wrote in message

I’m looking for more HD, motherboard, graphics card type feedback, but I’ll read everything.

Have you talked with the person you’re hiring? PC’s are more bang for the buck, both in hardware and software.

Mac really love the Mac, and it’s not an overstatement to say that they make a religion out of it. If the person is more valuable than the machine, which is generally the case, then it is cruel to force a Mac person to work on a PC.

All that aside, yes, lots of CPU speed is essential for high throughput. Memory and disk capacity are not only crucial, but inexpensive.

I would add that monitor real-estate, and a means (spyder pro or eye 1 display) of calibrating the monitors to match one another will make your person more productive as well. A WACOM tablet will make retouch, dodge-burn, and paint operations more accurate and efficient.

Don’t worry too much about video hardware – Photoshop is not very demanding in that area, though you may want to drive your monitors using two video cards, so that they may be separately calibrated.

Will you do prints in-house, or send them out? Don’t go too nuts on printer calibration. It’s about where monitor calibration was five years ago. You can spend a thousand dollars or more, only to learn that this area is not very well developed yet.
—

Thanks for the info! The person being hired is comfortable on both Mac and PC and will be doing one other job that requres a PC and connection to our network. And All printing will be sent out.= for now.

Is there enough advantage in using a 10,000 rmp SATA drive over a 7200 one (especially the newer ones) to justify the reduced storage space and higher cost?- Hide quoted text –

– Show quoted text –

To be honest, it’d probably work out cheaper to go get a medium-to-top end Dell, and maybe tweak the spec a little yourself.
I build a lot of machines and it’s getting to the point where it’s not really worth it, except for ultra-high-end stuff that commands a huge premium.
Dell do very keen offers if you look out for them – in the UK I use www.dmxdimension.com.

I’d say go for Core2Duo, although don’t spend a fortune on the fastest one – save a bundle on the mid range ones.
Spend the money saved on RAM – Vista 32 bit won’t use more than 3GB of this, so don’t go overboard. Buy the ram from www.crucial.com. Disks – pick 2. Put PS scratch disk on separate one to your C drive. It’s not a lot more expensive to get 10k rpm disks so why not. For extra speed OR redundancy, you might consider RAID but if you’re not too comfortable with this I’d skip it.
Don’t skimp on the PSU – you don’t need massive watts, but you do want decent quality.
Graphics? You don’t need an expensive gaming card. You do want a decent 2D card – have a look at Matrox.
MONITOR: probably the most important part. CRTs still the best for colour accuracy AFAIK. Some people like 1x big monitor, some like 2x monitors with the image used on one, and the pallets etc on the other. Consider buying or borrowing a "spider" to calibrate whatever you end up with.
Input – Wacom pad probably pretty essential – your guy may have a preference.

Ric

"Mike Russell" wrote:

wrote in message

On Oct 9, 5:53 am, "Mike Russell" <
MOVE> wrote:

Don’t worry too much about video hardware – Photoshop is not very demanding
in that area, though you may want to drive your monitors using two video cards, so that they may be separately calibrated.

Mike Russell -www.curvemeister.com

Hi Mike,
I don’t have any calibration hardware and I don’t really understand how all that works but how can it be true that a dual card video adapter can be limited to a single calibration?

It’s a windows OS software limitation. Color profiles are assigned by display device, and a dual monitor card is considered to be one device. So the work around is that you add a second PCI card, and assign the profile for your second display to it.

Did you actually never hear of the Microsoft color control panel applet for XP?
You will find it here: http://tinyurl.com/286j59
With this little proggie it is possible to assign different profiles to different cards/monitors and even single cards with a dual head can have different profiles assigned for each head – if the hardware of the card supports this, as does my Matrox parhelia. And it adds another gimmick, a 3D representation of the actual color spaces of the monitors in relation to reference color spaces.

Peter

"ric" wrote in message

On Oct 9, 1:55 pm, "Matt" wrote:

"Mike Russell" wrote in message

"Matt" wrote in message

Disks – pick 2. Put PS scratch disk on separate one to your C drive. It’s not a lot more expensive to get 10k rpm disks so why not. For extra speed OR redundancy, you might consider RAID but if you’re not too comfortable with this I’d skip it.

Would it be ok to partition the OS drive and put the scratch disk on the partition or do I just need to keep it completely seperate?

From: "Peter Wollenberg"

[re profiling multiple monitors]

Did you actually never hear of the Microsoft color control panel applet for XP?

You flatter me, Peter. Hard to believe but there actually are some things I haven’t heard of yet – :LOL.

You will find it here: http://tinyurl.com/286j59
With this little proggie it is possible to assign different profiles to different cards/monitors and even single cards with a dual head can have different profiles assigned for each head – if the hardware of the card supports this, as does my Matrox parhelia. And it adds another gimmick, a 3D representation of the actual color spaces of the monitors in relation to reference color spaces.

Peter

Thanks, Peter. I’m installing it now and will give it a try. I had played with the the profile gamut viewing feature, but not realized that it would assign multiple display profiles.
—
Mike Russell – www.curvemeister.com

Matt wrote:

"ric" wrote in message

Disks – pick 2. Put PS scratch disk on separate one to your C drive. It’s not a lot more expensive to get 10k rpm disks so why not. For extra speed OR redundancy, you might consider RAID but if you’re not too comfortable with this I’d skip it.

Would it be ok to partition the OS drive and put the scratch disk on the partition or do I just need to keep it completely seperate?

You want the scratch disk to be a separate physical disk.

Maybe even something like
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/RAID-Flash-SSD,review-29665.ht ml if you’re feeling adventurous.

Andrew

"Andrew Morton" wrote in message

Maybe even something like
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/RAID-Flash-SSD,review-29665.ht ml if you’re feeling adventurous.

🙂 That’s coming Real Soon Now on the next generation of PCs and Macs. For starters, Boot will be on FLASH.

Reminds me of what we used to do around thirty years ago – put 5mb of RAM on a disc controller. Could fit the whole Micro$oft C compiler, libraries, everything on it! Norton saw it as a fixed drive with 32 platters.

….
Reminds me of what we used to do around thirty years ago – put 5mb of RAM on

a disc controller. Could fit the whole Micro$oft C compiler, libraries, everything on it! Norton saw it as a fixed drive with 32 platters.

Why, by cracky, we used to use a few sticks and some dried mud to do our calculations, and no one complained.
—
Mike Russell – www.curvemeister.com

"Mike Russell" wrote in message

…
Reminds me of what we used to do around thirty years ago – put 5mb of RAM on

a disc controller. Could fit the whole Micro$oft C compiler, libraries, everything on it! Norton saw it as a fixed drive with 32 platters.

Why, by cracky, we used to use a few sticks and some dried mud to do our calculations, and no one complained.

Why’d ya stop? Works for me.

"pico" <pico.pico.net> wrote in message

"Mike Russell" wrote in message

…
Reminds me of what we used to do around thirty years ago – put 5mb of RAM on

a disc controller. Could fit the whole Micro$oft C compiler, libraries, everything on it! Norton saw it as a fixed drive with 32 platters.

Why, by cracky, we used to use a few sticks and some dried mud to do our calculations, and no one complained.

Why’d ya stop? Works for me.

Couldn’t upgrade to the next version of DOS 🙁

"Mike Russell" wrote in message

"pico" <pico.pico.net> wrote in message

Why’d ya stop? Works for me.

Couldn’t upgrade to the next version of DOS 🙁

Mike, I’ve long wondered if you are the same Mike Russell of the early Apple development days. Are you?

"pico" wrote:
….

Mike, I’ve long wondered if you are the same Mike Russell of the early Apple development days. Are you?

Well, it’s conceivable, but probably not. I was a Mac developer for about 6 years starting in the mid to late 80’s, and did a number of networking related products for Novell, and for a small company called the ag group. Ironically, my graphics work was on hold during the time I worked on the Mac.

There are so many of us it’s getting crowded. Once, at a bus terminal, I responded to a page for Mike Russell, and two of us showed up. —
Mike Russell – www.curvemeister.com