On Jan 31, 2005, at 6:07 AM, Steve Pearson wrote:
I thought I would tap into your experience again. I know these are some of the minimum requirements for Photoshop CS:
1) Intel� Pentium� III or 4 processor
Or equivalent. Get something reasonably fast. I'd pay more attention to the memory speed than the processor speed.
2) Microsoft� Windows� 2000 with Service Pack 3 or Windows XP
I thought it was XP only due to the product activation "feature". One thing I like about the Mac version is that you don't need to activate it.
3) 192MB of RAM (256MB recommended)
If I were any less sober I'd have fallen off my chair. Start at 1Gb and work your way up from there. FWIW I edit 350Mb 16-bit files comfortably in 3Gb. Try to keep a couple of memory slots free for future upgrades if you anticipate filesizes growing. Bear in mind that 1Gb modules tend to cost more than a pair of 512Mb sticks.
I'd be inclined to believe that the 192Mb quoted is on top of the OS which will need 128Mb to run bearably or 256Mb to run well. Hence my recommendation to start at 1Gb as any less than that is going to risk big performance penalties as the system swaps data to disk.
4) 280MB of available hard-disk space
Considering the size of modern drives, especially when you want to have somewhere to put your files, I don't think this is much of a concern :) Get a second drive and set it up as your Photoshop scratch drive.
5) Color monitor with 16-bit color or greater video card
Anything halfway modern can do this. Avoid anything that uses system RAM for video... but if you're looking at that end of the market I doubt you'd be serious about PS :)
BTW you will want 24-bit video as an absolute minimum. I run 16-bit colour at work where the PC is quite old and where desktop size is more important to me than colour fidelity. There is just no way I'd edit photographs on that. There is no such thing as tonality at 16-bit :)
6) 1,024x768 or greater monitor resolution
For really serious users I'd recommend two 19" or 21" screens and a big desk to put them on, but that's only because I have such a system and would never go back. If you don't want to buy a HD Cinema Display, you should get a good CRT which you can then calibrate and profile. Some monitors (eg Barco, LaCie, Sony Artisan) come with calibration devices in the box. For the rest of us there are third-party calibrators such as the Spyder and the Eye One which are relatively inexpensive (and absolutely necessary, IMHO: don't rely on manufacturer-preset colour temperatures being accurate).
The LCD revolution has caused the bottom to fall out of the CRT market so really good ones can be had for quite reasonable money. I've heard that the Artisan is a great buy if you can get one (not available at all in NZ, much to the disappointment of a friend of mine). Good (seriously good) LCD screens are few and expensive.
FWIW I have run Photoshop at 1024x768. These days I can barely even browse the web at that res :( I need to go back to that old 640x480 screen for a while.
I'm thinking of purchasing a new desktop sometime soon and would like to hear from user of Photoshop CS. What type of a "system" would you build today to work with with Photoshop CS?
Realistic or fantasy?
I was in this exact position just over a year ago. At the time, all I was prepared to afford was a single 1.6GHz G5. It had to be a Mac as Windows XP was not an option, especially with the prospect of Longhorn. No way.
About all I'd like at the moment is a dual-processor workstation. But the machine I have is perfectly capable of working on some huge files without really getting in the way. All that bothers me right now is the performance of the Healing Brush tool with large files. The bigger your file the slower it is - I have no idea why. But with high-res film scans the clone tool is just as good for 95% of the work I do.
What type of system do you have to backup your work?
First backup is the original (film is still good for something). Next is CD. After that I guess it's time to get the crayons out and try to remember what I saw in the viewfinder :)
Also, is $299 a good deal for Photoshop CS?
To me, yes. To purchase it legally costs a bit more than double that much down here, and we've been helped by a very strong exchange rate.
My only other recommendation for a Photoshop user is to buy a tablet if you don't already have one. You'd wonder how you were able to live without pressure-sensitive control.
Cheers,
- Dave (oh no, the US price-drop of the 23" Cinema Display has finally made it to NZ.... must.... resist....)
http://www.digistar.com/~dmann/
