Photographer looking to buy iMac, need advice.

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Hello;

Currently I work on a 6 year old Dell PC and as soon as my tax refund gets deposited, I'll be heading to the local Apple store. I've got my eye on a 27" iMac but I'm not sure which processor to get, i5 or the i7. I know the i7 is only 200 dollars more but there is no sense in spending the 200 if it doesn't help me. I'll be using the iMac to process photos. I'll be using lightroom, capture NX, silver efex and photomatix and will also be using capture to batch process my RAW files. Will the hyper-threading of the i7 be of any benefit or will I be fine with the i7? I've tried researching and found reports saying anything from the i5 being faster than a certain mac pro to it being slower than the core 2 duo based iMacs. Any help in this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,


Brent
 
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Hey Brent,


To be honest, either iMac will be fine for your needs. However, if you have the extra 200 bucks I'd recommend getting the i7.

You may not need it right now, but a year or two down the line you'll be glad you did.

Although investing the money in RAM is also very beneficial - don't buy it from Apple, get it from OWC since it is dramatically cheaper. The 4Gb in my MBP is pretty much all gone when running Aperture and some Nik Software plug-ins. So I'd recommend upgrading to 8Gb to keep up.

Lr 2.6 is painfully slow on OS X too compared to the Windows version in my experience, hence why I use Aperture.
 
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i will have to agree. aperture is the better road.
good luck with your future mac.
 
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thanks to you both for the replies. good tip on using OWC/macsales for the memory, almost half price! I guess I'll use the money I save on memory to buy Aperture 3. Thanks again for the help!

-Brent
 
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You could try out Lr 3 Beta and the 30-day Aperture 3 trial side by side to see which one you prefer.

Lr 3 should have addressed the performance issues, Aperture 2 was very slow too so I'd assume Lr is better now too. No idea as to when the full version will be released but the Beta will run fine until it does I believe and migration will be less painful for you.
 
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Agreed Mac products work unbelievably well with other mac products!

Aperture is the right route!
 
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I used Photoshop CS2, Lightroom and Aperture 3 and I find Aperture 3 brilliant. I also use Photoshop Elements 6 for some stuff Aperture cant do, but I love some of the new features publishing right to Facebook from Aperture, thats just excellent, resizes the RAW images and uploads them very quickly!
 
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I can't get on with Aperture. I tried. I really did but 'aaargh' it's UI had me tearing my hair out. Lightroom works much better for me.
 
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What kind of camera are you shooting with?
 
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Pentax 10D. I think the biggest issue I came across was importing. Been a while since I tried out the demo.
 
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go kill urself and do us ALL a favor

***..???

anyways i use currently the lastest lightroom, photoshop cs4 and recently got aperture 3 read up on all the tutorials they had on apple.com and i have to say i love aperture much better than lightroom it is well intergrated with iphone and all my albums. where as with lightroom you would have to do an extra step to have your photo library in the programs.

lightroom and aperture do the same stuff it is personal pref for sure. but i say if you are gonna be on a mac use aperture, it just works better
 
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I got the C2D 27in iMac, but this was before the quad-core was available. It's perfect for what i need right now, but in the near future i know I'm going to wish i had waited. I do plan on upgrading to 8GB from OWC soon, but I'm waiting a bit.

For a while I've ran LR2 and CS4, but today i downloaded Aperture3 trial and i must say i like what i see so far.

If you have the money for the i7, get it!

But yea, i LOVE the huge screen for editing, its simply amazing!
 
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i have no trouble running LR2 on my imac. much better than my 6 year old powerspec pc with 512mb of ram. it runs MUCH smoother than that old pile did. i was nervous about only going with the 4gig machine. i'm perfectly happy with it thus far though.
 
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brentD300
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Thanks for the advice, people! I picked up the 27" i7 iMac over the weekend and I'm still a little giddy. I ran a 9 exposure HDR process in photomatix complete with noise reduction on my old Dell PC. Took 5 minutes 13 seconds. Same process on the iMac took 44 seconds. I couldn't believe how fast it converted the RAW files. I'm still learning how everything works but it's awesome how everything works like you think they should. My only complaint is that I wasn't a convert earlier.

-Brent
 
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wheres the photo at??

i remember my old powerspec. i had to uninstall photomatix pro because it would freeze up every time i tried to HDR anything. haha. had to close all other programs and cross my fingers. that is something i don't miss.
 
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Where do I Start! How about Latest Purchase iPad 32gig WiFi, 27" iMac, 17" MacBook Pro,No more Room?
Consider SSD Drive

Hi Brent, I would go with the I7 as well. Is this your 1st Mac? The reason I ask is I have a Make G4 from 1989 and it is still in use today!! It is worth the investment to Buy the Best Machine you can. You will have it for a long time! Also I do alot of video work and the best choice i made was an SSD WOW doubled my speed a bit pricey but well worth it. Now i would consider this as an after market purchase and install your self. It's Really not that hard. Let me know if you have any Questions.
Dennis
www.YourMacShow.com
 
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Hey Brendt, I see that you and I both shoot with an D300. :D I find Aperture (all iterations) to be painfully slow (importing is horrible) on both my MacBook Pro's. Outside of that, i never did like anything about Aperture except for the thumbnail view.

LR has been my DAM of choice for about a year now and I'm very happy with it in almost every way. Though I'm not very keen on HDR images, LR has proven to provide a much more natural HDR type look on photos which need touching up that are either under or over exposed with its gradient filter tool. It's truly invaluable.

And the the features it has to offer, Aperture can't really compare with as far as I have seen. I couldn't disagree more with anybody here who says that LR doesn't integrate well with OS X. It's seamless, fast and the GUI is super intuitive. I feel that the Aperture GUI lacks the same intuitiveness. But maybe that's just me. I guess it's all personal preference though.

Last word, since you're a Nikon shooter. If you haven't been to or heard of Nikon Cafe I'd like to recommend it to you. Great community of folks made up of professionals and amateurs alike. Tons of great information such as that you're seeking in this thread, and never any talking down to on any level. It's also a ton of fun. In fact, just this past week I had the opportunity to participate in a project which has gone international.

The owner of an old, manual focus 35mm f2 Nikor, decided to ship his lens out to another cafe member in order to see shots of where they lived. This became the start of a thread called "Seeing The World Through A Single Lens" The lens started a journey through out the U.S. and people kept it for about two weeks. Eventually, someone wanted to know if they could get it in Europe, and the answer was yes. A member named John coordinated the effort and the lens made its way to EU and eventually wound up in my hands, in Hungary.

The idea is to document where you live. The number of members on the list to receive the lens is so big now, that we had to cut the time spent with it, down to a week. The link I posted goes to when I got it, and every photo (I'll call them snap shots, since they're not studio work, or necessarily artistic etc) until the last page is mine. I kind of... shot my butt off. Anyway, check out the forum. I think you'd really like it. It's free, unlike some other known Nikon forums.

Regards,

Doug
 
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chas_m

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In addition to all the good suggestions listed above, I feel compelled to mention that ACDSee Pro for Mac beta has some *seriously* good batch commands, as seen in this video.
 

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