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RE: Image Editing - a few questions

Alpha Channel — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:28:49 GMT

i agree with Wiz, faster CPU and more RAM, monitor wise can be a bit tricky, expensive and a bit subjective. It very much depends on your budget (though I'd factor in a colour calibration kit in a budget, around £60, they can make a massive difference to some monitors).

At the top end of a reasonable budget - £420-ish (which is what I'd pay, I do a lot of graphic/video/photo work) there's the BenQ FP241W (good image quality/colour gradiants and a lot of connections - HDMI, DVI, VGA, S-video, Component, Composite, just like my Samsung 215TW) bottom end the Samsung 245B seems to be generally well regarded (though colour accuracy can be a bit hit and miss with banding on colour gradiants) or there's the Dell E248wfp (£300ish). With a money no object approach I'd be looking at either NEC's top end or the Samsung 245T both of which have excellent colour production (the 245T has a 97% colour gamut production, unique amongst TFTs) but are insanely expensive at around £600.

At any rate you're going to be looking at paying between £300-£400 for something with decent colour production and image quality.

RE: Image Editing - a few questions

-Wiz!- — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:05:44 GMT

Graphics cards make no difference as they are only being used to display a 2D image which any card can do. A faster processor would help speed things up as would more ram.

2Gb is ok but when it comes to editing large images the more that can be stored for quick use in ram the better. 3-3.5Gb is your limit though with a 32bit operating system. You may also want to look into a raid 0 configuration if you want even quicker access to your data.

Monitors I will let someone else pick...:)

Image Editing - a few questions

dov — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:58:55 GMT

Hi folks, a few questions concerning digital image editing - stills, not video.

I'm a keen digital photographer, and in the way of things, most of my time is spent at the computer editing my images.

I use Element 6, a 1.67 ghz pc, 2gb of ram, a rage 128 pro-ultra GL graphics card and a 19" Samsung syncmaster 193T.

I want to upgrade my kit, as I'm fed up with the sluggishness of things (i'm all up-to-date with anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. so that's not slowing me down).

So onto my questions:

1. Should I move to apple? Expensive, but are things that much better these days?

2. Assuming I stay with PC, what monitor should I get? I want a 24", but which one?

3. Does a fast graphics card make a difference when working with photoshop?

My budget could stretch to a Mac, but i don't really want to spend more than I need (who does?) - I was hoping for a PC about £500 + £3-400 for the screen.

I'm happy building the PC myself, and I don't really have to budget for software (at least if I stay PC), as I'm happy with XP, office 2000 and elements 6.

Any other comments, observations would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance, Dave