Photo Retouching - - Your evaluation please

albatrosss · #1 03-08-2008, 10:16 AM

Decided that now is the time to buy a new computer but I just want to get your opinions and recommendations.

I use Photoshop strickly as a hobby so I would not want to buy a computer that is too powerful for my needs. I use Photoshop daily and would consider myself as having intermediate skills.

I am planing to buy a Dell 530 with an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 4MB with 3 GB of DDR2 SDRAM at 667 MZ, a 320 GB Hard Drive and a Radeon ATI 2600 XT 256MB Video Card. I plan to use dual monitors.

In your opinion is this too much, or not enough . I'm not looking to spend more than necessary but since, in all likelihood, this will be my last computer purchase I don't want to skimp either.

Thanks

kona · #2 03-10-2008, 01:43 PM

Honestly when it comes to computers and photoshop I don't know that there is truly a "too much". Your setup looks pretty good, the only thing I would do is have a minimum of two harddrives for scratch disc space.

albatrosss · #3 03-10-2008, 01:50 PM

Thank you for your input. Appreciated

kona · #4 03-10-2008, 01:53 PM

No problem, the scratch disc will help photoshop run more efficiently and smoothly. Are you planning on getting vista as your O.S and if so what series? Vista is a memory hog!

subxaero · #5 03-10-2008, 04:06 PM

setup looks pretty smooth. ps can't allocate more memory, so no need for more. all i would remark is the following:

buy more disc space

go for at least 2x500GB
they don't cost much any more and when you put them into RAID0, you will have 1tb of fast access space.
and trust me. as soon as you start shooting images with an slr your hdd will just burst. i have to buy myself an extern drive to cope with all the photos AND of course the large psd files AND the files PS and bridge are creating without you being able to control them efficiently.

so.

buy more space!

LQQKER · #6 03-10-2008, 05:36 PM

Although a raid 0 setup is somewhat faster it can be a real pain if you have a problem with either one of the hard drives. If one of the drives crash (which they all do eventually), you've lost everything on both because you were dividing (striping) the data between the two raid drives. So. . .you'd need a "third" hard drive just to save and protect your data. That said, I would agree with the two 500gb drives . . .just not using Raid 0.

subxaero · #7 03-10-2008, 06:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LQQKER

Although a raid 0 setup is somewhat faster it can be a real pain if you have a problem with either one of the hard drives. If one of the drives crash (which they all do eventually), you've lost everything on both because you were dividing (striping) the data between the two raid drives. So. . .you'd need a "third" hard drive just to save and protect your data. That said, I would agree with the two 500gb drives . . .just not using Raid 0.

well...youre right....but if you only have one drive and it fails, you lose, too

so if you have it (and you just should), go for 3 drives

CaptainHook · #8 03-10-2008, 06:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by subxaero

Photoshop can't allocate more memory, so no need for more.

From the adobe support site:

"When you run Photoshop CS3 on a computer with a 64-bit processor (such as a, Intel Xeon processor with EM64T, AMD Athlon 64, or Opteron processor) running a 64-bit version of the operating system (Windows XP Professional x64 Edition or Windows Vista 64-bit) and with 4 GB or more of RAM, Photoshop will use 3 GB for it's image data. You can see the actual amount of RAM Photoshop can use in the Let Photoshop Use number when you set the Let Photoshop Use slider in the Performance preference to 100%. The RAM above the 100% used by Photoshop, which is from approximately 3 GB to 3.7 GB, can be used directly by Photoshop plug-ins (some plug-ins need large chunks of contiguous RAM), filters, or actions. If you have more than 4 GB (to 6 GB), then the RAM above 4 GB is used by the operating system as a cache for the Photoshop scratch disk data. Data that previously was written directly to the hard disk by Photoshop is now cached in this high RAM before being written to the hard disk by the operating system. If you are working with files large enough to take advantage of these extra 2 GB of RAM, the RAM cache can speed performance of Photoshop. Additionally, in Windows Vista 64-bit, processing very large images is much faster if your computer has large amounts of RAM (6-8 GB).

The default RAM allocation setting is 55%. This setting should be optimal for most users. To get the ideal RAM allocation setting for your system, change the RAM allocation in 5% increments and watch the performance of Photoshop in the Performance Monitor. You must quit and restart Photoshop after each change to see the change take effect.

The available RAM shown in the Performance preference automatically deducts an amount that is reserved for the operating system from the total RAM in your computer. You shouldn't set the percentage of RAM to be used by Photoshop to 100% because other applications which run at the same time as Photoshop (for example, Adobe Bridge) need a share of the available RAM. Some applications use more RAM than you might expect. For example, web browsers can use 20-30 MB of RAM, and music players can use 20-50 MB RAM. Watch the Performance Monitor to view the RAM allocations on your computer.

Watch your efficiency indicator while you work in Photoshop to determine the amount of RAM you'll need to keep your images in RAM. The efficiency indicator is available from the pop-up menu (choose Show > Efficiency) on the status bar of your image and from the Palette Options on the Info Palette pop-up menu. When the efficiency indicator goes below 95-100%, you are using the scratch disk. If the efficiency is around 60%, you'll see a large performance increase by changing your RAM allocation or adding RAM."

subxaero · #9 03-11-2008, 05:43 AM

meeeeh crappy 32bit...but i don't like xp64

i'm in a 32bit environment and windows can only take care of 2,8gigs (of my 4) and even if i give photoshop 93% or all my RAM i still don't get past an efficiency of 86%

(btw - in another thread someoone was cmplaining about a huuuuge photoshop file...as large as 60mbegs....

)

albatrosss · #10 03-12-2008, 06:30 PM

Thanks for your thoughts. Some of the discussion too technical for me since I use Photoshop strictly as a hobby and as a means of entertainment.

Will go with what I outlined in the post.

Thanks again.

kona · #11 03-13-2008, 08:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by albatrosss

Thanks for your thoughts. Some of the discussion too technical for me since I use Photoshop strictly as a hobby and as a means of entertainment.

Will go with what I outlined in the post.

Thanks again.

The one thing that photoshop benefits from is a second hard drive, instead of it eating up all your ram, which it will do quickly, it can put some of the temporary info on your second drive which will allow photoshop to run more smoothly. If you go into Preferences and go into the plugins and scratch disc section you'll see pull downs offering options on what drives you want to use for this function. Having your C: drive as your scratch disc isn't efficient because of all the other "stuff" like your operating system on there, your scratch disc should be set to a second hard drive. I used to run one drive when I first started into PS when I went to a second drive for all the temporary info PS likes to write I noticed a dramatic improvement in performance and less slow downs in PS.

albatrosss · #12 03-13-2008, 12:16 PM

When I went to Preferences I noticed that my external hard drive was listed as a possible choice.

Could this external drive be used as the "scratch" drive? Would it be wise to do so if this were possible?

CaptainHook · #13 03-13-2008, 04:55 PM

Yes.
But if you start photoshop another time and it's not mounted, you'll have to reselect it again.
It becomes a pain in the ass, believe me.