Am I allowed to ask this?

[jimfrostis]

Hi

Don't know if this a sin mentioning computers here? I assume not as using a digital camera involves using a computer, couldn't see another suitable section to mention them - if it is though my apologies!

Can anyone advise me on what level of desktop Mac I'm going to need to run photoshop reasonably comfortably?

I'm using my girlfriends ibook at the moment (without photoshop) but am aware of the need to upgrade if I'm going to run something like photoshop.

I'm not a total computer novice but admit my knowledge of macs and what makes a good one is a bit lacking?

Thanks!

[John_Reed]

Hi

Don't know if this a sin mentioning computers here? I assume not as using a digital camera involves using a computer, couldn't see another suitable section to mention them - if it is though my apologies!

Can anyone advise me on what level of desktop Mac I'm going to need to run photoshop reasonably comfortably?

I'm using my girlfriends ibook at the moment (without photoshop) but am aware of the need to upgrade if I'm going to run something like photoshop.

I'm not a total computer novice but admit my knowledge of macs and what makes a good one is a bit lacking?

Thanks!
...that Photoshop will run comfortably on your girlfriend's iBook. I used it for years on a 667MHz PowerBook, ran fine. It runs well on any Mac having at least 512MB of DRAM, and the later the "OS X" operating system, the better. If you're thinking of getting a new Mac, the "Mini Macs" are fine little machines that aren't too expensive; the latest use the Intel chip as well.

[jimfrostis]

Hi

Thanks for your advice.

But just out of interest have you seen the recommended specs for Apple's Aperature software, they're pretty hard core, does Photoshop require so much less power?


Power Mac G5 with dual 2GHz (or faster) Power Mac G5; or Macintosh with 2GHz (or faster) Intel Core Duo Processor
2GB of RAM
One of the following graphics cards: ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition; ATI Radeon X1600; ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro; NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL; NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT; NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 5GB of disk space for application, templates, and tutorial DVD drive for installation Mac OS X v10.4.6 or later

[John_Reed]

Hi

Thanks for your advice.

But just out of interest have you seen the recommended specs for Apple's Aperature software, they're pretty hard core, does Photoshop require so much less power?


Power Mac G5 with dual 2GHz (or faster) Power Mac G5; or Macintosh with 2GHz (or faster) Intel Core Duo Processor
2GB of RAM
One of the following graphics cards: ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition; ATI Radeon X1600; ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro; NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL; NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT; NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 5GB of disk space for application, templates, and tutorial DVD drive for installation Mac OS X v10.4.6 or later
Aperture is a RAW-based program, where images are generally imported, edited, and saved in RAW format. So, its memory/processing needs are pretty strong. Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) used for processing normal people's JPG images doesn't work the host computer nearly so hard as that. If you're just starting out, you probably won't be pushing the limits very soon, I would think.

[jimfrostis]

Yep I'm not dealing in RAW files yet - thanks for your help!

[Rhys]

I never realised that Aperture saved to RAW. It saves edits to the digital negatives. I thought that was a sin.

[John_Reed]

I never realised that Aperture saved to RAW. It saves edits to the digital negatives. I thought that was a sin.Rhys, I think that Aperture saves all images in RAW. If you want to generate a JPG, it will do that as an object file, while still retaining the source in RAW. It can also generate DNG files, but again, I believe it maintains the original "gold standard" in RAW.

[aparmley]

Rhys, I think that Aperture saves all images in RAW. If you want to generate a JPG, it will do that as an object file, while still retaining the source in RAW. It can also generate DNG files, but again, I believe it maintains the original "gold standard" in RAW.

I don't believe any software application has the ability to create a RAW file. Aperture does not write to RAW files - if you make any edits it saves these settings to a temporary type of file, probably sometihng like .rws. Aperture and other RAW editors never touch the RAW file and are only used to convert RAW to some other managable or archival format.

To the OP - From my understanding Adobe has not yet released a native intel version to run on the Macs - so you'll either have to use rosetta - which is so slow its not worth it or run boat camp and buy the windows version to run on your mac. I'd wait til Adobe releases a native intel mac based version of the software.

[John_Reed]

I don't believe any software application has the ability to create a RAW file. Aperture does not write to RAW files - if you make any edits it saves these settings to a temporary type of file, probably sometihng like .rws. Aperture and other RAW editors never touch the RAW file and are only used to convert RAW to some other managable or archival format.
My belief is that yes, Aperture doesn't change the RAW file; how could it, since each RAW file is specific to a different camera? But what changes it does make are stored as a set of procedures, based on the original, unedited, untouched RAW file. Is that right?

[Clyde]

Hi

Can anyone advise me on what level of desktop Mac I'm going to need to run photoshop reasonably comfortably?

I'm using my girlfriends ibook at the moment (without photoshop) but am aware of the need to upgrade if I'm going to run something like photoshop.

Thanks!

Photoshop 7 runs fine on a box stock 1.2 ghz iBook G4. I would expect CS 2 to run almost as well. You probably want to have as much RAM as possible. Photoshop is incredibly powerful, and a joy to use after you get over the hump of the learning curve.

Good luck,

Clyde

[mclaugh]

To the OP - From my understanding Adobe has not yet released a native intel version to run on the Macs - so you'll either have to use rosetta - which is so slow its not worth it or run boat camp and buy the windows version to run on your mac. I'd wait til Adobe releases a native intel mac based version of the software.

Gotta disagree with you. I run CS2 on a Macbook Pro via Rosetta, and it runs rings around my 1.2 ghz G4 ibook.

[cwphoto]

My belief is that yes, Aperture doesn't change the RAW file; how could it, since each RAW file is specific to a different camera? But what changes it does make are stored as a set of procedures, based on the original, unedited, untouched RAW file. Is that right?

Yeah - commonly called the 'recipe'.

[John_Reed]

Gotta disagree with you. I run CS2 on a Macbook Pro via Rosetta, and it runs rings around my 1.2 ghz G4 ibook.And I run the whole Creative Suite 2 on my MBP. However, I'm pretty sure it's not written in "Universal" code, and hence Rosetta is in use automatically, or it wouldn't run at all. It may be the different clock rate that's good for the improvement you see, and you'd see even more improvement if Adobe were to release new "Universal" code for the programs. I talked to an Adobe tech support guy a couple of months ago, and he said it would be merely "coincidence" if CS2 ran on the MacBook, however I am getting functionality, especially with the new 10.4.7 upgrade to OS X. Before that, I couldn't get Acrobat 7 to work at all on my MBP, now it works fine.

[jimfrostis]

Hi

This is all really interesting - although quite alot to take in. Not surprisingly quite a bit is going over my head.

I'm confused, what does this mean?

"talked to an Adobe tech support guy a couple of months ago, and he said it would be merely "coincidence" if CS2 ran on the MacBook"

This is probably incredibly stupid, but why is there a question over whether Photoshop would run on your Mac, surely Photoshop for Macs runs on Macs, or is that way to obvious? Is this something that needs to concern me, or are we talking about technical issues that shouldn't worry the average person in the street.

While we're at it if anyone wants to explain to me what exactly digital negatives are that would be great, I've seen them mentioned as the gold format to keep photos. Is this rubbish, or I am totally misunderstanding?

Thanks!

[MindBender]

"talked to an Adobe tech support guy a couple of months ago, and he said it would be merely "coincidence" if CS2 ran on the MacBook"

This is probably an incredibly stupid, but why is there a question over whether Photoshop would run on your Mac, surely Photoshop for Macs runs on Macs, or is that way to obvious? Is this something that needs to concern me, or are we talking about technical issues that shouldn't worry the average person in the street.


The newer intel macs like the MacBook run on intel processors unlike the old Motorola or IBM processors before them (upto and including the G5). Because of that, to run software made for the PowerPC processor you need to translate the code using some kind of software ... "rosetta". So for an older software which isn't written specifically for intel and ppc (ie. universal binary) like photoshop... it must run in a pseudo emulated mode... which is slower and not always 100% effective. This doesn't mean a lot to a new user, as you surmised. It will run, just a little slower than a universal binary. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Photoshop CS3 is a Universal binary... they'd be crazy not to do that. The same thing happened when we switched from OS9 to OSX. Because of the change in the core programming, applications had to be emulated. eg... classic mode. They usually run fine, so it's mostly not a problem that concerns the end user.

As for getting a computer to run Photoshop and deal with digital files. Basically any mac you buy today that is new will do the trick. I've used Photoshop since 1993 on macs and windows machines. It's always been able to run on whatever is available. If you plan on running the latest version of Photoshop, I'd make sure you at least have a G4 with a lot of RAM. Minimum 1GB of RAM for decent editing. You can do it with less, but it's not as smooth a process. Something over about 300-400 MHz will run Photoshop fine also. The faster the better, but it depends on your budget. Personally, for the budget concious, I would either recommend an iMac duocore or a mac mini. We're making the switch to intel chips... might as well get on the bandwagon. You could also find a good deal on a use mac or refurbished mac I'm sure. A MDD G4 or a G5 tower would run Photoshop beautifully. Mac age well... so even a used one is going to be fairly good and able to keep up with the times pretty well.

$0.02

[jimfrostis]

I think I gether which but just out of interest which does everybody think would be better out of the 2 options below:

iMac 17" 1.83GHz intel Core Duo/512/160/SD/ATIX16000-128MB/BT/AP

or

iMac G5 20" 2.1GHZ G5/512/250/sd/ATIX600-128MB/BT/AP

The 2nd option is £75 more expensive.

[coldrain]

The intel chip one will not be as fast with software that has not been made for both processor architectures, but it will be faster with new games for instance. The 20" screen of course may be a big reason to choose the older G5 one.

[jimfrostis]

Thanks.

Is not having Intel chips going to be a problem in the future though?

[Clyde]

Thanks.

Is not having Intel chips going to be a problem in the future though?

Macs do age well, as a previous poster said. However, they do age, and software is written to take advantage of new hardware.

The intel chip will 'age' more slowly and gracefully than the G5.

The short answer, then, is: Yes.

Clyde

[McManus]

How much speed you need is entirely up to your patience. :)

I use Aperture and Photoshop CS on my PowerBook. CS runs arguably faster than Aperture (which is a slow resource hog, not to mention I have the lowest system they allow), but that is because of the nature of Aperture: it is a "workflow" application.

In Aperture, you import your RAW images (which _never_ get modified), and whenever you make an edit, it exports the incremental change and applies it to whatever it is that you see, so what you really get is RAW + layered effect + layered effect + etc. So every time you look at a picture, it's got to load the RAW and then apply each effect, etc. _Only_when_you_export_ does it actually write a file out with all of the effects applied (not including temporary caching, however).

Bottom line, Photoshop should run "fine" but a newer system will definitely help.