Starting a digital Darkroom

[ShutterGirl]

Ok. I've seen a post where some were talking about what they have. Right now I'm just using my old PC that is very slow and only has 9g and very little RAM. Been looking at a Dell. I've been doing research on what all I need but can anyone help me out?

[Trevor Ash]

Ok. I've seen a post where some were talking about what they have. Right now I'm just using my old PC that is very slow and only has 9g and very little RAM. Been looking at a Dell. I've been doing research on what all I need but can anyone help me out?

If you plan on spending a good amount of time on the computer editing images you may want to set your target right around:

* A "modern" name brand motherboard (ASUS is good!)
* 2GHz processor or better (Athlon's are a good deal)
* High Quality 1GB of RAM (1.5 is even better)
* A couple 7200 RPM hard drives of substantial size (one to back up the other)
* A 19 inch or larger high quality monitor.
* Adobe Photoshop (any version from 4.0 up)
* CD-ROM burner (multi format DVD burner would be even better!)
* Windows XP Pro or Home (doesn't matter which, just make sure you get XP)

It's important that you buy good quality fast hard drives because they will make more of a difference in your day to day activities than an extra 1G of ram or having a 3GHz processor.

I'm probably leaving some stuff out. Either way, maybe this will help you as a guideline. Your specific needs will help you further in your decision process.

[Franglais]

If you plan on spending a good amount of time on the computer editing images you may want to set your target right around:

* A "modern" name brand motherboard (ASUS is good!)
* 2GHz processor or better (Athlon's are a good deal)
* High Quality 1GB of RAM (1.5 is even better)
* A couple 7200 RPM hard drives of substantial size (one to back up the other)
* A 19 inch or larger high quality monitor.
* Adobe Photoshop (any version from 4.0 up)
* CD-ROM burner (multi format DVD burner would be even better!)
* Windows XP Pro or Home (doesn't matter which, just make sure you get XP)

It's important that you buy good quality fast hard drives because they will make more of a difference in your day to day activities than an extra 1G of ram or having a 3GHz processor.

I'm probably leaving some stuff out. Either way, maybe this will help you as a guideline. Your specific needs will help you further in your decision process.

You didn't mention the graphics card. You don't have to have the latest most powerful card because these are optimised for animating 3D images and your need is for static 2D images. Just make sure you have at least 32MB of memory on your graphics card so you can do at least 1280*1024 true colours on your 19" monitor.

BTW - if you want to be a real purist you take a CRT monitor not an LCD flat screen. The flat screens still aren't up to the classic monitors in terms of accuracy of colour.

If you go for DELL you can forget about ASUS motherboards and AMD processors because DELL doesn't do them. Buy DELL if you live out in the boondocks and you just want to have the lorry drop off your PC and you plug it in and have helpful telephone support with no problems. The other stuff is for the enthusiasts who have a PC integrator nearby so you can go in and choose what you want and mabe go back a couple of times because something isn't compatible (happened to me last month).

Charles

[David_M]

It's important that you buy good quality fast hard drives because they will make more of a difference in your day to day activities than an extra 1G of ram or having a 3GHz processor.

I totally disagree. You can instruct the operating system (some registry setting) to make full use of the memory and it'll make your OS lightning fast. It will cost you about 500MB though.
What do you consider day to day activities? Starting programs all the time (then you'll need a fast drive) or working for hours in programs like Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Internet Browser, 3D software, etc. Trust me, people rather like to have a 3.4 Ghz processor (I don't even mention dual processors) with fast 2GB ram to run programs like Photoshop and Cinema 4D than a fast drive.

You can even instruct the OS to use a larger memory cache (don't confuse with swap file!), which will speed up overall performance.

[Trevor Ash]

I totally disagree. You can instruct the operating system (some registry setting) to make full use of the memory and it'll make your OS lightning fast. It will cost you about 500MB though.
What do you consider day to day activities? Starting programs all the time (then you'll need a fast drive) or working for hours in programs like Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Internet Browser, 3D software, etc. Trust me, people rather like to have a 3.4 Ghz processor (I don't even mention dual processors) with fast 2GB ram to run programs like Photoshop and Cinema 4D than a fast drive.

You can even instruct the OS to use a larger memory cache (don't confuse with swap file!), which will speed up overall performance.

I also disagree with you, but using the same caveat you did ("What do you consider day to day activities?")

If working with large images and saving at a decent rate, it makes a difference. Having your ps swap on a fast drive makes a difference too. But as you said, so does RAM.

If you're running windows XP your computer can boot up soooooo much faster with fast hard drives.....I'm talking 10 seconds to desktop after your bios is loaded (depending on many other things of course).

Could you elaborate more about this comment:
"You can instruct the operating system (some registry setting) to make full use of the memory and it'll make your OS lightning fast"

What setting? What do you mean by lightning fast? How much faster is that than without the setting change?

"Trust me, people rather like to have a 3.4 Ghz processor (I don't even mention dual processors) with fast 2GB ram to run programs like Photoshop and Cinema 4D than a fast drive"

What tasks are they performing? Have they ever seen the diference that a hard drive makes in just day to day activities?

If the original poster is only using 10MB files then yah, the hard drive isn't going to matter much. But if the poster is working of multi layered 300MB files is makes a huge difference in opening writing, and ps operation due to the way photoshop uses disk cache. I agree that ram and processor make the biggest difference once you have the image loaded. But there are daily benefits to fast hard drives beyond the photo editing process (like booting up the os as described before). Another example is if you play games (which the poster probably doesn't do). Map based games will load MUCH quicker and generally perform better because the hard drive processing queue is always empty or near empty.

Remember, your system is only as fast as it's slowest component.

Here's some stuff I dug up at adobe about improving performance:
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/2a7d6.htm
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/12dde.htm

Note that in the second link is does in fact state: "The performance of Photoshop is affected most by available random-access memory (RAM) and computer processor speed. Other factors can also affect performance, such as the options you select, system configuration, and the built-in limitations of Photoshop."

[Trevor Ash]

BTW, I think I lost track of my own original point. Which was about day to day activities, not necessarily heavy duty photoshop or video editing. Oh well

[mjm]

ShutterGirl, how much money do you have to spend on a system? All this stuff these others guys are talking about is nice, but rather expensive. You can easily get by with less.

[ShutterGirl]

Right now I'm just trying to get an idea of what I need. Anything would be an improvement compared to what I have now. Most of the work I've done has been with a traditional B/W darkroom & very little on the pc. Well before I got a digital.

[remoteplaces]

If you have the $$'s think about a Mac. I don't want to start Mac vs PC wars. I use both. For everything I do in p'shop and with video, the Mac has always *seemed* faster with any manipulations. However, the Macs have often been slower (in OSX) opening apps. I guess I should mention which Macs and PCs I have been using right? Too many to mention, so I'm just talking generally, and I don;t have any comparison data. But I will share this with you: my dual 2gig G5 with 2 gig ram and serial ATA HDDs opens a 125 meg TIFF in about 3 secs. It will open the same file from a firewie drive in 5 secs. Although speed is not the only issues to think about. I probably do more than 50% of my stuff on a nice Mac laptop. Nothing like hanging out in a coffee shop with WiFi while working.

[kafin8ed]

I'll second the vote for Mac. I've used both PC and Mac, I'm not going to say one is better than the other, but I definitely prefer Macs, especially with OSX. I use a 867 Mhz powebook G4 to handle lots of raw processing of images from a Canon 10D camera for magazine publication. I works great, wireless internet is great, itunes is awesome, even with my small 12" screen I have no complaints plus I can take it with me everywhere if I want to. They now make iBooks with the G4 processor that are faster than my machine and still quite affordable. Do max out the RAM if you can and if you plan on shooting alot, plan for a back up or storage system (DVD burner or firewire hardrives). I have 60GB in my book (almost filled up) plus a 120, 80, and 60 GB external hard drives, and in addition to that I am looking into buying a pair of 200 GB hard drives for a mirrored RAID setup.

[remoteplaces]

One comment on RAM. I bought an inexpensive Compaqu PC from Costco, mostly for my wife to use. It's a no frills machine and out the box was: 2.1GHz Athlon, 160GB HDD, no graphic card (uses system RAM), 512 megs of RAM, CDRW, DVD, built in cardreader. But it has a lovely 17 inch plat panel monitor. Cost $899

I decided to add another 512 megs of RAM. This turned a "dog" into a rockship. I was shocked at the difference.

I did some timed taskes in p'shop (first number range in seconds is with 512 meg RAM, second number range in seconds is with an additional 512 megs, total 1 gig RAM)

Open p'shop 7: 10-12 vs 3-5
Open a 125 meg TIFF image: 4-8 vs 3-4
90degree roation of above image: 31-33 vs 2-8
Autolevels of above image: 12-15 vs 2
Autocolors of above image: 12-15 vs 2
16 to 8 bit conversion of above image: 10-12 vs 2
Radial blur of 8 bit image (30, spin, good): 106 vs 103

I'm still flawed at the speed of this no frills off the shelf machine with the extra RAM. In some cases I think it was faster than my dual 2GHZ G5. I am puzzled by the range of times in some tasks (although I did not restart the machine before each test), and thought it was interesting that the radial blur was almost unaffected by the extra RAM. Next upgrade is a graphic card.

For under $1000 it seems you can certainly start a home digital darkroom.

[kes]

Ok. I've seen a post where some were talking about what they have. Right now I'm just using my old PC that is very slow and only has 9g and very little RAM. Been looking at a Dell. I've been doing research on what all I need but can anyone help me out?

I have been studying the PC guides at www.sharkeyextreme.com. They offer three suggested configurations:
Value: $1,000
High: $2,500
Extreme: $4,000

They update configurations when new technology appears (for example, double-sided DVD) and when prices change significantly. True, this site is for gamers, but I figure that if I pick a configuration which is a little less capable than a gaming machine, I should have something which is more than adequate for digital imaging and video.

Does my comment prompt any thoughts from the experts?