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iMac good enough for regular Photoshop work?
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Salt Lake City, UT USA
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I'm thinking about replacing my wife's aging MDD with an iMac. The heaviest thing that she does right now is some medium-weight work with Photoshop CS. Mostly editing and cleaning pictures. She doesn't work with any images that are massive. Is an iMac enough for her?
Normally, I would lean towards the tower,but I've come to realize that for the most part, neither of us do anything that would need a Mac Pro (and of course, there's no middle option).
Any thoughts on this?
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2008 iMac 3.06 Ghz, 2GB Memory, GeForce 8800, 500GB HD, SuperDrive
8gb iPhone on Tmobile
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: nyc til they bury me
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Yes, an IMAC should be more than enough for some regular photoshop use. Even with occasional heavy use, it isn't terribly bad. Even at 10"x32"@300dpi with dozens of layers I haven't had any huge wait times except when resizing it down for web use but even then that's a final step that I can kick off and let churn while I go elsewhere.
Due to the premium memory price at apple, my advice is to get the lowest memory option from Apple and then max out the memory to 4gb from someone like OWC and install it yourself.
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Last edited by baglunch; Nov 12, 2007 at 01:00 PM.
Reason: memory)
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Apr 2000
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Check out the speed test comparisons at Barefeats.com. While the MacPro is faster, the iMac has very respectable performance. If you upgrade to CS3 you will experience a decent speed increase because CS3 is written to take full advantage of the Intel processors.
One thing to see for yourself is the iMac glossy screen. Many photographers have reported problems calibrating the glossy iMac screens. I personally do not care for gloassy screens so I snagged a 24" 2.16GHz iMac shortly after the new aluminum iMacs were introduced. There may still be some excellent deals on the white iMacs; I got mine for $1099 and it included a $149 coupon good towards the previous-generation iPod of my choice. (Since I bought it after 10/1/07 Leopard was another $9.95.) MacMall recently had the white 24" iMac for around $1299 including Leopard and iLife '08. The performance difference between the two iMacs is negligible.
DealMac.com is a good place to find Mac deals. You can set-up automatic e-mail alerts so you will be notified of a new deal as soon as it is posted on DealMac.
If you decide on the new iMac and discover that you do not like the glossy screen there are anti-glare films available.
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Automatic
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I have both, a single 1,25 GHz MDD and a 24" aluminum iMac… if speed is what concerns you, well, don't worry at all 
I second about the RAM configuration… I bought it with only 1 GB RAM and then bought 4 GB (2*2GB) from OWC (macsales.com), I gave the original 1 GB module to a friend who happily installed it into his iMac 
The screen is obviously a matter of personal taste, my MDD has an Apple ADC TFT, which is good enough, but the iMac glossy screen puts it to shame, so to speak…
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