I generally don't play with building computers anymore. I don't see the point when you can buy such amazing performance for so little money nowadays. If you like doing it as your hobby or if it's part of the fun you have in doing image processing, that's fine. But here's my processing upgrade story:
I'd been running on a 2012 edition Mac mini updated with 1T SSD and max (16G) RAM since it was new until last December. It proved sufficiently robust performance-wise to satisfy my needs until I started playing with the Light L16 50Mpixel image files. Since I ordered the Hasselblad 907x Special Edition last Summer, I figured that these 50Mpixel image files might be slow processing too much on the old mini for my comfort. So I upgraded the mini to the 2018-2019 Mac mini outfitted with the 3.2Ghz 6-core processor, 32G RAM, and 1T internal SSD. I bought a new USB-3.1 compatible hub for my array of working and archive disks, and reused my existing keyboard and trackpad (all current edition Apple models), USB-3 disk enclosures, and my Apple Thunderbolt 27" display. It cost me on the order of $2000 total. I upgraded to Catalina and moved on to Lightroom Classic from v6.14 since, after testing five different alternatives, I haven't found anything that does what I want/need as well just yet … and I had some work that I wanted to get done. Disk read/write performance has improved by about 25-30% roughly, image processing throughput with 50Mpixel Hasselblad raw files using LR now matches the performance I used to see with the old mini and Olympus/Pentax/Leica 10-16 Mpixel raw files. The Light L16 "Lumen" software remains a sluggish performer … It's just not written in an optimal way for macOS, it seems. No big deal. Hasselblad's own Phocus application performs very well albeit that I'm just learning how to use it (it's not quite as slick in use as LR Classic, but 15 years of LR experience do weigh in on that). I've done a couple of small videos with this system now using trial versions of Final Cut and other software: It's MUCH more facile than the old mini. Everything else I use the computer for has sped up by a noticeable increment and remains as reliable as ever. :) Far as I'm concerned, this was a good trade off between time spent figuring out how to improve my image processing system, how to transition with minimal disruption to my existing stuff, and overall performance at a reasonable cost. I'm sure there are other solutions that might fit what you want better. It's just what I did in the circumstance of needing an upgrade, and it's worked out very nicely. G — No matter where you go, there you are. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
