My scratch disk is on an external firewire drive. A Maxtor 300 gig,
7200 rpm. I don't use a lot of adjustment layers. I tend to work on the
background layer unless I'm uncertain about a given procedure. I keep
70 layers of history, so there's usually no problem stepping back if I
must. I do some BW conversion, but only about 10% or so.
On Oct 19, 2005, at 8:26 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote:
On Oct 19, 2005, at 5:01 PM, Paul Stenquist wrote:
I've read that the stair-step method can be destructive. It
introduces more opportunity for error.
In some cases it can be, but not all. Just like in some cases doing
upsampling in the RAW converter is the right solution.. :-)
My system has no problems with the 144 megabyte files (although it's
only a G4, dual 1.25), so that hasn't really entered into my
thinking. I do use a fast and large scratch disk. That seems to be
the most important factor when it comes to working with large files.
And, unless I'm doing a lot of retouching, my work is almost finished
by the time I convert.
A dual-processor G4 is significantly faster than what I'm using at
present ... much faster bus and IO. Fast and large scratch disks are
definitely an issue as well ... are they external or internal?
External ones are gated by the speed of FireWire, internal can be
faster too. I have a reasonably fast, FireWire 250G external drive for
scratch space.
I think I do more editing in Photoshop post-raw-conversion than you do
as I do about 80% B&W work too. Adjustment Layers add a lot of
overhead and I use them extensively.
Godfrey
