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Thread: New iMac

  1. #11
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    Re: New iMac



    sorry to jump on this thread, but thinking of getting an imac this summer.


    freelanceshots - are you using either lightroom or aperture? i

  2. #12
    Senior Member freelanceshots's Avatar
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    Re: New iMac



    I do not use aperture or lightroom rusty. DDP has done everything I've ever wanted as far as image browsing and RAW processing and its free with a canon camera. If I do anything with a photograph its through photoshop. No need to spend more money on things that I've already got covered. LR and AP might be better in some areas but I just don't think I use the additional features to justify the added cost. Once I got my iMac I try and do as little work on a PC as possible as its just that much nicer and easier to use. Any upgrades that a person does or extra processing speed that one adds to these computers is just an extra benefit as they run well even as a base model. I didn't notice a big difference on how my imac ran after I upgraded to the higher level of memory but I'm sure it improved on some level. I feel that with the additional money that you spend on the higher level models you will see small difference/gains that may or may not be noticed. As long as my computer turns on fast, wakes up from sleep mode quickly and open programs quickly I'm going to be a pretty happy user plus the need not to have to buy/load malware software and update that all the time. When I searched online about the actual difference between the i3 and the i7 processor (Youtube for example) with the parameters i mentioned there were very small differences between the 2. The only item that I think would make a bigger difference in speed would be to add a solid state hard drive for the programs and for general short term storage and access. Firewire 800 harddrives and a FW 800 card reader are a decent upgrade and that's where I'd spend the extra money. Maybe they will come out with a Firewire 1200 in the short future.


    One idea would be to save your extra money for the insane price of gas, utilities and groceries which is only going to get higher before this years end. How much higher, we will have to see.

  3. #13
    Senior Member neuroanatomist's Avatar
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    Re: New iMac



    Quote Originally Posted by freelanceshots
    DDP has done everything I've ever wanted as far as ... RAW processing

    I thought that as well...then I tried DxO Optics Pro, and I must say that it does a much better job at noise reduction and lens correction than DPP (and better than Aperture at NR; Aperture doesn't offer lens corrections).


    Quote Originally Posted by freelanceshots
    Any upgrades that a person does or extra processing speed that one adds to these computers is just an extra benefit as they run well even as a base model.

    Agreed. A processor upgrade will buy about 6 extra months of real-world computer lifespan (in terms of technology advancements), and a relatively small amount of real-world performance gain.


    Quote Originally Posted by freelanceshots
    I didn't notice a big difference on how my imac ran after I upgraded to the higher level of memory but I'm sure it improved on some level.

    Or not... Actually, Mac OS X does an excellent job at memory allocation and management, much better than Windows, IMO. It's really hard to get a current Mac to be RAM-limited (as judged by the amount of memory actually in use and the ratio of PageIns to PageOuts). Honestly, the only situation in which I think more than 4 GB of RAM is currently necessary is if you're running Windows or another OS as a virtual machine (I run a Windows VM for work, which is why I have 8 GB of RAM, but when the VM isn't running, I don't ever go over ~3 GB of RAM in use). But RAM is cheap, and does future-proof you a bit as well. Definitely a worthwhile upgrade.


    Quote Originally Posted by freelanceshots
    Maybe they will come out with a Firewire 1200 in the short future.

    They did much more...it's called Thunderbolt, and it's like Firewire 10000.

  4. #14
    Senior Member freelanceshots's Avatar
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    Re: New iMac



    I do my all my lens distortion correction in CS5 through a highly regarded plug in. Might someday look into DxO Optics Pro but I really don

  5. #15
    Senior Member freelanceshots's Avatar
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    Re: New iMac



    Is Thunderbolt a hard drive? I guess your out of luck running thunderbolt thingy unless you have the newest imac or macbook pro. It seems to be a lot faster then firewire 800 which is pretty fast. How do you hook up a card reader to run Thunderbolt fast?

  6. #16
    Senior Member neuroanatomist's Avatar
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    Re: New iMac



    Quote Originally Posted by freelanceshots
    Is Thunderbolt a hard drive?

    It's a new I/O technology. There are Thunderbolt hard drives, but no CF card readers yet. An exec inCanon’s Video Products Group, stated that the company is “excited about Thunderbolt technology and feel it will bring new levels of performance and simplicity to the video creation market.” Maybe means a Thunderbolt port on some future Canon products (camcorders, if not dSLRs).
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  7. #17
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    Re: New iMac



    Quote Originally Posted by neuroanatomist


    It's a new I/O technology. There are Thunderbolt hard drives, but no CF card readers yet. An exec inCanon&rsquo;s Video Products Group, stated that the company is &ldquo;excited about Thunderbolt technology and feel it will bring new levels of performance and simplicity to the video creation market.&rdquo; Maybe means a Thunderbolt port on some future Canon products (camcorders, if not dSLRs).

    It seems that there billing this as a consumers substitute for a MAC Pro.


    APPLE Says:


    "Now you can create a professional video setup for your MacBookPro or iMac, just as you would for your MacPro. If you&rsquo;re a video editor, imagine connecting high-performance storage, a high-resolution display, and high-bit-rate video capture devices to handle all the post-production for a feature film &mdash; right on your MacBook Pro or iMac. Thunderbolt I/O technology allows you to daisy-chain up to six new peripherals &mdash; such as the Promise Pegasus RAID or LaCie Little Big Disk<sup><span style="font-size: xx-small; color: #666666;"]1</sup> &mdash; plus an <span class="nowrap"]Apple LED Cinema Display"


    John


    Maybe this is what Canon's guy was really saying in marketing speak: "Now professional grade video proccessing will be available to the masses, and more people will buy new Rebel's with video capability because of it."


    Its all good though.

  8. #18
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    Re: New iMac



    Thank you for the suggestion. Curious to hear what Homer plans to buy, but I

  9. #19
    Senior Member neuroanatomist's Avatar
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    Re: New iMac



    Quote Originally Posted by rusty
    Out of curiousity, how would the hyperthreading ability in the i7 quad core benefit those utilizing photo editing software? Most of the information I've found concerning photo software uitilize memory and hard drive before truly benefiting from 8 virtual cores.

    Yes, it will benefit. A better processor means faster image processing. For example, I went from a 17" Core Duo MacBook Pro to a 17" Core i5 MacBook Pro (now the previous generation of MBP with4 virtual cores), and DxO does my RAW-to-JPG conversions about twice as fast (~30 s per image vs. just over 1 minute per image), and spreads the load across all 4 cores. More significantly, with my old MBP, processing a set of images was pretty much all I could do - today, I processed a set of 90+ images while browsing the internet in OS X and dealing with emails in MS Outlook and a flowchart in MS Project running on a Windows virtual machine, with no significant impact from the image conversions running in DxO.

  10. #20
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    Re: New iMac



    Quote Originally Posted by neuroanatomist


    Yes, it will benefit. A better processor means faster image processing. For example, I went from a 17" Core Duo MacBook Pro to a 17" Core i5 MacBook Pro (now the previous generation of MBP with4 virtual cores), and DxO does my RAW-to-JPG conversions about twice as fast (~30 s per image vs. just over 1 minute per image), and spreads the load across all 4 cores. More significantly, with my old MBP, processing a set of images was pretty much all I could do - today, I processed a set of 90+ images while browsing the internet in OS X and dealing with emails in MS Outlook and a flowchart in MS Project running on a Windows virtual machine, with no significant impact from the image conversions running in DxO.

    John


    Now you have me testing this out. 30 seconds per picture sounds kind of slow. Maybe DxO is slower than DPP? Or its doing more functions when it converts?


    I just tested how long it takes to convert on the Dell at work using DPP, it has a Intel Core Duo, T9300 @ 2.5ghz and its about 2 and half years old now. It took 16 seconds per conversion. (5D Mark II full size RAW file)


    I am going to test this out on the wifes laptop and I Mac when I get home and the Mac Pro as well.


    Rick

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