Computers for Photography

Computers for photography

I have to admit to being a bit of a tech head on the side, I love computer technology and find it fascinating. This is going to be simple write up on the type of system that will enable you to get on with the business/hobby of taking photographs. That being said, I am not a technology journalist and this is clearly not Computer Shopper so keep in mind I’m just suggesting, as

always, what I have found works well when it comes to computers in relation to photography.

As I have alluded to in other pages on this site, I am now doing almost all of my work using Apple computers. This was a slow change that began about 3 years ago and I’m at the point now that I rarely turn on my pc these days. I am not saying that a Windows XP or Vista computer will not do the job, either system type will and it comes down to personal preference. There are some things that any computer should have no matter what operating system you choose, if you hope to use it for photographic work however. Not counting the server which is running a version of Linux, I have an iMac 24in Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz with a 500GB hard drive & 4GB RAM, a MacBook Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz with a 160GB hard drive and 2GB RAM for when I’m on the road and tethered shooting and finally a Windows XP PC with a Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz processor and two 320GB hard drives with 2GB RAM.

Processor type and speed is important of course, but less so than most people seem to think. The area’s where somebody primarily interested in photography should be concerned are memory/RAM and the hard drive setup. When it comes to both of these items, basically the bigger the better and get as much as you can afford. This is especially true of RAM as applications such as Photoshop CS2 will just swallow up as much as you can throw at it and you’ll have a much better experience with more memory. Even Capture NX will use a tremendous amount of RAM on its own, and that’s before you take into account the email, IM, and web browser(s) applications you will almost certainly have open at the same time. As of writing this, I would suggest no less than 2GB for either Windows or Mac OS X when interested in photographic work. My preference would be for 4GB however, as even with 4GB I will often times find my system using just about every last MB during the course of an average day. Unless you are thinking of buying a Mac Pro, there aren’t many current computers that will accept more than 4GB and even if they did, the return on your investment isn’t good enough for photographic work to make it a necessity (if we were talking about video this wouldn’t apply) in my opinion so I’d say to try and get as close to 4GB as possible but don’t bother going past that amount at present.

When you are loading thousands upon thousands of images into your computer, you will find yourself running out of hard drive space very quickly. Depending on if this is a hobby or work, I would suggest no less than a 500GB hard drive. If photography is a hobby, it will be fine to copy the images to the main system hard drive so long as you have an external Firewire or USB2 (or even eSATA these days) drive to have a perfect one to one copy of every image you load. For myself, I prefer to keep my 500GB internal hard drive for the Operating System, applications and things like music files. I have various external Firewire 800 and gigabit networked hard drives and keep the images on these drives - I’d be remiss to not at least mention backups here and if you’re interested in how I backup my computers I have explained it on another workflow page.

The last item that I would suggest that is more important when considering a computer for photographic work is the screen size and if possible, a second monitor. If you have a choice between one 24/30in screen and two 20in screens, I would suggest going for the two smaller monitors as you’ll end up with many more pixels and simply put, having two monitors greatly enhances your efficiency when editing files. Luckily for Mac users, Apple uses excellent quality displays in both their all-in-one systems and separate monitors. Always check before buying a monitor as they are not created equal. Colour accuracy is vitally important for photographic work, as is the ability to properly calibrate the display. It is a good idea to figure in the cost of a monitor calibration device as it is very important and no monitor is perfectly calibrated when you buy it and will need adjusted. I personally use products by a company called X-Right, but there are several companies offering very good products that will get the job done. Do spend some time on learning how to calibrate the monitor properly as it can be tricky the first few times and remember that you will need to repeat the procedure every couple of months at the bare minimum. As far as accessories go, the only extra product I couldn’t work without is a tablet by Wacom. There are others available, but I’d pick one from Wacom as they have a large selection at a range of prices and once you learn how to use it, will make image editing a much more satisfying experience.