Posted: 10/10/2010 7:44:37 AM EDT
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My wife's laptop is on it's last leg. She's always love photography and recently bought a Cannon DSLR and is taking some classes and stuff. She really loves it and the photos look great to my untrained eyes. She's mentioned Mac, other artist type people have told her to get one and they are better than PC, but no one has been able to tell me WHY Mac is better. I've never known an artist that was good at the whole logical thinking thing either.
Any suggestions of what to look for when we are shopping for a new one? Just a basic operating system with Photoshop and stuff added in and spend more on a good monitor? Or are there any computers/laptops set up more for photography? |
| Think Mac is the photog status thing..I dabble in it and a Pc has been best for me with a CRT monitor to see and evaluate the colors better too.Get a Spyder to set up her monitor to be more exact in color renditions to send to the lab and shoot all images in RAW to be able to control the screwups.If a laptop look for a quality one with a good screen |
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been a mac user for a long time and a pro photog for a long time.
Most big time graphics places and photogs use mac (commercial and such) most small time use PC price is a big difference but also the resale and how long you use it. I had a new pc to run some software and it got "slow" very fast where my macs got slow gracefully if that makes any sence. kinda like elinchrom strobes vs. alien bee's I have shot both and and do the same with both (if equal power) but there is a big price difference My big thing is OSX is stable, easy to use, and mace just look better (hey I'm visual) 
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Mac vs PC any more I don't think there is a whole lot of difference. But, since you are talking photos, one thing you will want to do right is the monitor. If you go with a laptop, get a nice big separate screen to work on photos with. Also get a calibration tool for it so the colors are correct. I use a Spyder for my monitor calibration. |
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I'm a PC guy, but I know the ins and outs of computers... many people may not want to take the time/effort to "deal with" some of the extra tweaking/capabilities that come with the PC platform.
Having said that...she'll be fine with either Mac or PC. Technically you can install windows on any new Macs, so with Mac you have the option to do both. Pretty much all the standard software (adobe products) will run on either system. Make sure you have a decent monitor, preferably one that displays the full spectrum of colors (can get pricey getting a decent LCD... might consider an old CRT monitor), and a calibration device for it. You don't need a terribly fast computer to run Lightroom or Photoshop, although a higher end system will not be outdated as quickly. Just be sure to get her a 64 bit OS, and 6 to 12GB of RAM, and plenty of storage space for data. Whichever direction you go, make sure you have a GOOD and REDUNDANT backup system in place for all the data. |