New computer for photo editing

[Bill Clark]

Just a thought, have you run the "disk utility" "repair disk permissions."

My Mac stuff is from 2006 and they all still work just fine. I only have 1 gig of RAM but I only work on a few photos at a time. Still use Tiger OS.

I use CS-4 and it does what I desire. I do mt the cache folder for bridge, every so often, as it can become quite full of stuff.

Another thought, has the cooling fan become constricted?

Hope this info helps you.

 

[Godfrey]

I use 2013 MacBook Pro 13", 2014 MacBook Pro 15", and 2012 Mac mini, all stuffed with RAM and disk space, on an Apple Thunderbolt Display 27". I run the latest Yosemite and use Lightroom, Photoshop, Flare 2, and dozens of other apps. I use an i1 Display Pro for calibration. I've got a hodgepodge array of seven drives, some up to a decade old, chained to it via USB2, USB3, and FW800; most assembled of bare drives and independently purchased enclosures. I use Nikon Coolscan 9000, Coolscan V, and Epson 2450 scanners, as well as Epson R2400 and HP E710 multifunction printers, multiple trackpads and graphics tablets. All systems are up to date with the latest OS X Yosemite.

It all works perfectly for my image processing and every other need. Not a single problem with any of this stuff.

G

 

[Dwig]

...

Another thought, has the cooling fan become constricted?

Hope this info helps you.

+1, when a machine that used to run fine and not over heat begins to over heat late in life the #1 thing to do is open the case and vacuum out all the dust that it has sucked in over the years. I've "fixed" several balky CPUs and other devices including a plotter that way over the years.

The other big culprit is a failing HD. OSs and HD drivers generally attempt a number of reads/writes before telling the UI there is an error. Often the 3rd or 10th try works fine and the OS simply seems slow.

 

[View Range]

Apple must be on the verge of releasing a 5k Retina Thunderbolt monitor. Yosemite 10.10.3 just added the capability to drive a 5k monitor. Apple certainly didn't do that so we could use a Dell UP2715k or an HP Z27q. As far as I can tell, these are the world's only 5k monitors. (The iMac Retina 5k is not a monitor by my definition since you can't connect it to other computers, such as a MacPro Late 2013.)

If you go to an Apple store and compare an iMac Retina 5k side-by-side with a 27" Thunderbolt monitor, you will see that the Thunderbolt monitor is indeed 4 year old technology.

Who needs 5k? The high resolution DSLRs and MF cameras exceed 5k and you still need screen real estate for the photo software tools.

 

[anerjee]

Thanks for this.

Right now my macbook air is a stop gap, with my iMac being used as a display.

I agree with the some of the posts above that display tech is now ahead of the computing power in most notebooks. My approach is wait till the mid-summer updates for the 15 inch macbook pro is available. Then I will decide between the macbook pro and the Retina iMac.

Hi,

I just thought I pitch in since I have been running a 4K monitor for quite a while now, and recently tested a newer model as well.

What you need to keep in mind is, that your computer will have to work 4 times as hard as before (assuming you had an "HD" display, 1920x1080), since you will now be editing your image on four times the resolution (3840x2160).

I have a MacBook Pro 13" with the Retina display, and when I ran it on a 4K screen (actually a "Cinema 4K", the LG 31MU97), I noticed quite a difference in performance.

Another thing to keep in mind is, that a 31" 4K screen is quite big. This means that you may have trouble with color-shifts, bleeding etc. when viewing just slightly from the edge. The LG monitor I tested was so bad, even looking at it straight on was not producing an evenly lit image. You don't notice this so much with bright images, but anything dark will be annoying.

So my suggestion is, if you want to go for 4K, make sure you have a very powerful computer to run it, especially with lots of memory as was mentioned in this thread already.

And when you buy a monitor, be sure to test them before you buy, or at least make sure you have a 30 day satisfaction guarantee.

I have been running an IBM T221 since a few years; it's a dinosaur, it was rather an experimental monitor and does certainly not have amazing color and brightness as the newer models today. Nevertheless, I decided to stick with it until Eizo comes out with their 24" 4K monitor (for which I will also have to sell a few cameras...).

My observation was, that images look fantastic on the IBM due to the high DPI. At 22 inches, the DPI is 204, which is in my opinion quite a noticeable difference when compared to the LG, which is 31" and has about 150 DPI.

Having said that, the iMac 27" Retina may be just right for you—more than 200 DPI, lots of power etc. I have however heard some photographers complain about it's color accuracy, so I would definitely spend some time at the Apple store with some of your own images to test it out thoroughly.

And last but not least, Just in case you became curious about the IBM monitor, forget about running it on Windows, I spent countless hours trying to configure it. I doubt it will run on Mac, unless you have one with four monitor outputs. I am running Linux since many years, and got it to work there perfectly. It was not an easy task however...