[Cindy74]

Someone in another forum said that PC usage among graphic designers is up to 60%. I have a hard time believing that. Is it true??

[suhail]

Well yes it is very hard to believe…

But these reasearches also consider the bosses secertary, who makes the 'Party this Weekend' signs in Word with a silly clipart, a designer. Moreover, they add to that the Web designers which are mostly PCs, haven't you seen enough ugly websites to realize that

It is true that we are getting more PC designer, but they are unhappy designers

[godzookie2k]

I wouldn't go so far as to say 60% "real" designers but a high portion are 'switching' from what I gather due to the **** processors on the mac side and expensive hardware. I mean, colorsync will only justify so much of that bottom line..

[lland]

The company I work for was looking at PCs for design/editorial - they love them - and tried very hard to convert, but in the end the bought Macs.

Designers may be changing - but they will be changing PCs again in another year - if you buy a Mac you should get a much, much longer life cycle.

Feel the force - stay with the best - we may only make up 5% of the computer market - but it is the TOP 5%.

[Cindy74]

Yeah, I kind of figured it included every "web designer" and secretary making flyers out there.

[art_director]

Professional designers / art directors are still Mac based. We always will be Mac based. Period.

I have had the Mac vs. PC debate many, many times over the years. My favorite was with the CEO of an agency I worked for ten years ago. She maintained that the agency could save so much money by purchasing NEXT computers for everyone. In the end I lost the debate because she had the checkbook and got the little black computers all over the office.

Over a two year period she jabbed me about how *smart* she had been with the company finances by avoiding the expensive Macs. Then, after many a production snaffu, the agency realized that our vendors couldn't accept files from our nifty looking NEXT machines. That mean we had art directors and designers working up layouts and then paid to have them reconstructed on a Mac by our vendors at great expense to our clients and the agency. Shortly there after we were given new Macs and the NEXT machines disappeared into a storage closet where they still rest to this day.

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by art_director:
Shortly there after we were given new Macs and the NEXT machines disappeared into a storage closet where they still rest to this day.

Any plan to give them for free or sell on eBay? If the price is reasonable, I'd love to buy one just for display

[drmcnutt]

Originally posted by Cindy74:
Someone in another forum said that PC usage among graphic designers is up to 60%. I have a hard time believing that. Is it true??

I think that number comes from Adobe selling 60% of their products to PC based clientele (which is surprising because one would assume Macs are their base customer because of graphics).

At least I've heard something along those lines, but even with current trends I think the Mac/PC design ratio is like Mac 65% and PC 35%.


DRM

[Steven Lee]

Originally posted by Cindy74:
Someone in another forum said that PC usage among graphic designers is up to 60%. I have a hard time believing that. Is it true??

The poet once declaired, "All is fair in love and war!"
but now our battlefield is transglobally incorporated
and since blind passion reaches for a six-figure media career,
a meaner edge guilds that which was once sporting.

I'd say the poets cry in softer years,
referring to extremes of heart in days of yore,
is now equally apt for anything old thing involving money
specifically and especially News and Reporting.

---

Ignore everything you hear on TV. Question everything you hear on the Radio, cross reference anything you read in Print!

[art_director]

Originally posted by Adam Betts:


Any plan to give them for free or sell on eBay? If the price is reasonable, I'd love to buy one just for display

Afraid they're long gone, sorry.

[mitchell_pgh]

I think all serious design is done on a Mac. I think the 60% comes from Adobe, and that being said, more people on the PC side of the fence need access to the files that we are working on.

I do think there are some areas where PCs are catching up. I notice that the PCs at Kinkos are always filled, yet the Macs never have anyone there. then again, do you notice the crap that comes out of Kindos?

[suhail]

When the Macs took its first steps into design, the pro's did not like the quality either. Now, it is alomost imposiible to find PaintBox, or Da-Vinci users, but if you do, the stuff they do is heads and shoulders above ANY Mac designer.
If you think PhotoShop is good, wait till you see a Da-Vinci, or even better, a Quantel PaintBox.
Where am I going with this post? I dunno

[lAwrencex]

i am currently going to school to become an art director and i can absolutely tell you that every single agency in new york is entirely mac based with the exception of secretaries and finance departments. i have classes at agencies and my teachers are actual art directors and copywriters and we have had this discussion many many times.

[art_director]

Originally posted by lAwrencex:
i am currently going to school to become an art director and i can absolutely tell you that every single agency in new york is entirely mac based with the exception of secretaries and finance departments. i have classes at agencies and my teachers are actual art directors and copywriters and we have had this discussion many many times.

the creative and production departments at the three new york agencies i worked for were mac based. the account people, support folk and tech gurus were on pcs.

[art_director]

Originally posted by suhail:
...the stuff they do is heads and shoulders above ANY Mac designer.
If you think PhotoShop is good, wait till you see a Da-Vinci, or even better, a Quantel PaintBox.

rubbish. retouching done on a mac is as good as any machine out there when in the hands of a pro. don't believe me? check out:

http://www.georg-fischer.com/

he's among the most respected car shooters today. shoots for porsche, saab, volvo, audi, bmw, etc. he travels with his own retoucher. the retoucher brings a portable scanner and a g4 tower with him on location. he sits in his hotel room with the shades drawn and works magic on a mac, not a da-vinci or a quantel.

if you've ever worked on a car account you know the kind of money that goes into photography and retouching. if macs didn't do a great job clients wouldn't allow agencies to spend money retouching with them.

[art_director]

Originally posted by lAwrencex:
i am currently going to school to become an art director and i can absolutely tell you that every single agency in new york is entirely mac based with the exception of secretaries and finance departments. i have classes at agencies and my teachers are actual art directors and copywriters and we have had this discussion many many times.

where are you going to school?

[suhail]

Originally posted by art_director:


rubbish. retouching done on a mac is as good as any machine out there when in the hands of a pro. don't believe me? check out:

http://www.georg-fischer.com/

he's among the most respected car shooters today. shoots for porsche, saab, volvo, audi, bmw, etc. he travels with his own retoucher. the retoucher brings a portable scanner and a g4 tower with him on location. he sits in his hotel room with the shades drawn and works magic on a mac, not a da-vinci or a quantel.

if you've ever worked on a car account you know the kind of money that goes into photography and retouching. if macs didn't do a great job clients wouldn't allow agencies to spend money retouching with them.

I agree that Macs can do v.good gradients and shadings in PS and Illust. to do all the smoothies on cars and other products too. But I don't think you are qualified to say 'rubbish' to something that you have never worked on in your life (I am assuming that because you immediately dismissed them without comparison).
Here are some features that I don't think you knew were possible:
1- Rotate 500MB to 1 GB files in realtime without rendering. When rotating there is no outline of the image area, it is the actual image that rotates, it has special DSP card to do that.
2- Zoom in/out in real time, it looks like a movie zoom!
3- Beyond PhotoShop features, like unlimited undo's. You can even erase a moment in History or edit its values. The undo hierarchy is way more advanced than PhotoShop's one dimension hierarchy.
4- You can click on a brush stroke (on the screen or in the History panel), change it's thickness, shape, feather even after it's been applied and the file has been saved and reopened.
5- When you re-open a file you still have your undos, all the way to step 1.
6- Every brush stroke, can be edited just like if it was a bezier curve.
7- DaVinci comes with a Color device that you can select lets say a shirt, place the device over a different color material of the shirt and it will adjust the colors without posterization, the software automatically mixes channels like the Channel Mixer in PhotoShop but on a brush or an Alpha.
8- Masking features, are very advanced and quick. Way more adjustable and tweakable than in PhotoShop, I'm not going to go into that.
9- They can resave your files as PostScript or Halftone / Stochastic screen.
10- When you do effects like lets say feather, it happens in realtime, and once you hit the OK button. No rendering takes place. AND the effects can be readjusted later (Change feather settings etc.) PhotoShop has something similar, but still in primitive stages.
11- I know in the U.S. Levis used Da-Vinci, it ran UNIX.
The History feature, with its advanced capabilities, was available during PhotoShop 2.0

The list goes on and on. If you want to see where PhotoShop is headed you need to look at one of those machines. They are VERY expensive and Quantel is now being used mainly for Video. And unfortunately Da-Vinci is being faded-out because Heidelberg did not market it well at all, to even understand what it does, you would have to take a $5,000 rip-off class.

I have a book of what some designers did with these machines. After I finish moving to my new place, I'll post some stuff that was made on those machines and what elements were used to make the images. And tell me how one would accomplish something like that. I'm sure you would have an idea or two, but I would like you to attempt them and produce something just half as good in PhotoShop and all those plugins. They are not involved pictures which require lots of layers, many different images and things. They are very simple pictures, like a picture of a Banana and a Fish to make the Fish look like it's been pealed like a Banana.

I've been in the Digital design world since the 80's, before the Macs saw color, and if the competition weren't stubborn about prices, PhotoShop would've either been much much better or it would be in the Corel-PhotoPaint category.

Jeez… The longest post ever

[art_director]

we speak from two different perspectives:

you -- functionality

me -- results

we're both right.

the print world i live in dictates the mac is the most cost effective tool and it does a great job. what more could you ask for? of course, i'm not the one doing the work but i am the one responsible for the budget.

[SomeToast]

Originally posted by suhail:

Here are some features that I don't think you knew were possible:
1- Rotate 500MB to 1 GB files in realtime without rendering. When rotating there is no outline of the image area, it is the actual image that rotates, it has special DSP card to do that.
2- Zoom in/out in real time, it looks like a movie zoom!
3- Beyond PhotoShop features, like unlimited undo's. You can even erase a moment in History or edit its values. The undo hierarchy is way more advanced than PhotoShop's one dimension hierarchy.
...
5- When you re-open a file you still have your undos, all the way to step 1.
...
8- Masking features, are very advanced and quick. Way more adjustable and tweakable than in PhotoShop, I'm not going to go into that.
9- They can resave your files as PostScript or Halftone / Stochastic screen.
10- When you do effects like lets say feather, it happens in realtime, and once you hit the OK button. No rendering takes place. AND the effects can be readjusted later (Change feather settings etc.) PhotoShop has something similar, but still in primitive stages.
...

That sounds just like Live Picture! (except it didn't need a DSP card for the realtime rotation of 500-meg images )

[::maroma::]

Originally posted by SomeToast:

That sounds just like Live Picture! (except it didn't need a DSP card for the realtime rotation of 500-meg images )

Whatever happened to Live Picture? Wasn't that supposed to be the Photoshop Killer?