[olePigeon]

Any ADC members *cough* that have Tiger on a Mac with a non-supported video card? I'm wondering about the performance of Core Image. I'm really bummed that the Mac mini doesn't have a supported video card, but it's the only computer I can afford at the moment.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

What do you need it for?

[Eug Wanker]

Correct me if I'm wrong but Core Image functions will fall back to Altivec'd CPU support, which is slower than GPU support obviously. However, it will work. You just won't get real-time support. Not a big deal for this price point though.

[TETENAL]

What do you want to do with your computer? Word processing, web browsing, e-mail, editing images, making iMovies, all the other iLife stuff, this will work all fine with the Mac mini. Whether CoreImage will work or not with the mini hardware accelerated is not known since Apple removed the requirements from their web page. Maybe they changed or will change till the release for Tiger. Who knows? But what are you missing without CoreImage anyway? Nothing as far as I can tell, since nobody but the Motion users are using it yet, and we're all happy.

I would say get the Mac mini.

[olePigeon]

Very large format Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Quark.

The reason I wanted the Core Image support was because I know Adobe is adding CI support to Photoshop. Having realtime filters in Photoshop would be phenomenal, especially if working with such large images.

I already know how Photoshop handles on the eMacs at work, I can't imagine it being much different on the Mac mini. While it's acceptable, it doesn't seem worth upgrading from my old G3 without the bonus of Core Image.

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Very large format Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Quark.

None of these programs support CoreImage and I doubt they will any time soon. None of those support even Quartz yet, and that's been available for 4 years now.

With all the heavy design work you do, I'm somewhat surprised you can not afford more than a Mac mini. You need to charge more for your work.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Correct me if I'm wrong but Core Image functions will fall back to Altivec'd CPU support, which is slower than GPU support obviously. However, it will work. You just won't get real-time support. Not a big deal for this price point though.

That is what I have been hearing also which is great news. With quartz extreme it either works fully or doesn't.

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:
With quartz extreme it either works fully or doesn't.

That's not true. Quartz Extreme does the window compositing in hardware. Without it window compositing is done in software (by the CPU). The feature – window compositing – works either way.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
That's not true. Quartz Extreme does the window compositing in hardware. Without it window compositing is done in software (by the CPU). The feature – window compositing – works either way.

That is not true either, many fany QE effects do not work on some hardware such as the cross-fading desktop pictures and cube logout screen.

[TETENAL]

They could work without Quartz Extreme. They just have been turned off, because they would be too slow.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
They could work without Quartz Extreme. They just have been turned off, because they would be too slow.

So will Core image draw that line also?

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:
So will Core image draw that line also?

I have no first hand knowledge about CoreImage, but if it is true that there is some software implementation, then it is obvious that this will be slower than the hardware thing. So some application will probably prefer to do without some "effects" (gimmicks) instead of showing them slow and crappily. Just like with Quartz Extreme. But the software implementation should be able to do anything that the hardware accelerated one can do. But again I don't know whether CoreImage will have a software version and Apple's Tiger web-site is inconclusive about this.

Anyway, for the type of applications olePigeon is going to use, the 1 GB limit of the mini would be much more of an issue than CoreImage. None of those apps support CoreImage and won't do for many years (my estimate).

[CreepingDeth]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Very large format Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Quark.

The reason I wanted the Core Image support was because I know Adobe is adding CI support to Photoshop. Having realtime filters in Photoshop would be phenomenal, especially if working with such large images.

I already know how Photoshop handles on the eMacs at work, I can't imagine it being much different on the Mac mini. While it's acceptable, it doesn't seem worth upgrading from my old G3 without the bonus of Core Image.

Link?

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
But again I don't know whether CoreImage will have a software version and Apple's Tiger web-site is inconclusive about this.

No, it isn't.

For computers without a programmable GPU, Core Image dynamically optimizes for the CPU, automatically tuning for Velocity Engine and multiple processors as appropriate.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
None of these programs support CoreImage and I doubt they will any time soon. None of those support even Quartz yet, and that's been available for 4 years now.

With all the heavy design work you do, I'm somewhat surprised you can not afford more than a Mac mini. You need to charge more for your work.

I'm a student doing comps for an internship, I don't get payed anything.

Originally posted by CreepingDeth:
Link?

Just what one of the professors told me. He's a NAPP member and has friends at Adobe.

[CreepingDeth]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Just what one of the professors told me. He's a NAPP member and has friends at Adobe.

I had my hopes up for a minute. Any news on CS 2.0? I've heard deafening silence and nothing more.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
That's not true. Quartz Extreme does the window compositing in hardware. Without it window compositing is done in software (by the CPU). The feature – window compositing – works either way.

Yes, but in this particular case the compositing is not provided by Quartz Extreme if a supported video card isn't there; OSX instead falls back to the older technology used in OSX 10.1.

In essence, QE isn't so much a feature as a means of providing a feature. CoreImage is different, which is why they have to fall back to the emulated card if a supported card isn't found.

[mikellanes]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
I already know how Photoshop handles on the eMacs at work, I can't imagine it being much different on the Mac mini. While it's acceptable, it doesn't seem worth upgrading from my old G3 without the bonus of Core Image.

What speed are the eMacs? How much ram? Those would be the two biggest factors along with Hard Drive Speed.

I don't see any *real* benefit to core image in Photoshop, as far as I understand it, you get real-time image processing but only on the "display" image.

As you have MASTER IMAGE ==> GPU ==> DISPLAY

Your master image is sent to the processor and gpu, then put on the display with real-tiime effects. but to get the master image actually changed you would need to write back to the drive (render it).

When I use motion, sure I get all the fancy real-time effects and video, but when I need to send it out of the machine I still need to render all the effects in.

Unless I am missing something, this is how I understand it.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by mikellanes:
What speed are the eMacs? How much ram? Those would be the two biggest factors along with Hard Drive Speed.

I don't see any *real* benefit to core image in Photoshop, as far as I understand it, you get real-time image processing but only on the "display" image.

As you have MASTER IMAGE ==> GPU ==> DISPLAY

Although that's probably the primary use case for CoreImage, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to add a feature where it could be written into an offscreen image instead of the screen itself. Then the program could simply pick up the changed image from there.

[mikellanes]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Although that's probably the primary use case for CoreImage, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to add a feature where it could be written into an offscreen image instead of the screen itself. Then the program could simply pick up the changed image from there.

Hmm I don't know, I will have to look in to this deeper. It just took around 10 min to render the files I create in Motion once I put them in to Final Cut.

I cant see how the system could accelerate the entire process in real-time when my Dual 2.5 took 10 minutes.

But I am open to the possibility that it is because Final Cut doesn't do core image *yet* that I have to render... Again, I will look more in to this.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by mikellanes:
What speed are the eMacs? How much ram? Those would be the two biggest factors along with Hard Drive Speed.

I don't see any *real* benefit to core image in Photoshop, as far as I understand it, you get real-time image processing but only on the "display" image.

As you have MASTER IMAGE ==> GPU ==> DISPLAY

Your master image is sent to the processor and gpu, then put on the display with real-tiime effects. but to get the master image actually changed you would need to write back to the drive (render it).

When I use motion, sure I get all the fancy real-time effects and video, but when I need to send it out of the machine I still need to render all the effects in.

So either way it ends back on the CPU to actually render it? If that's the case, then I don't mind so much. I thought it actually used the video card to render the effect.