picture editing and adobe photoshop

[spoma]

my girlfriend is a photographer and i am putting together a pc for her. she will be using adobe photoshop a lot and editing pictures that she has scanned into the pc. what features of a pc will create the best image for her? is it the videocard or do other pieces of hardware impact the image she will see?

 

[Eug]

Matrox G450 DualHead with two good quality monitors. If you're going with one monitor, the Radeon LE also has good 2D, but it doesn't support the 1280x960 and 1400x1050 screen resolutions in Win 2000.

Other than that, A nice Duron or PIII system is fine, with lots of memory and a big 7200 rpm drive. Get a CD-R for archival purposes, and a zip drive if she's going to be taking stuff to the local print shop often.

 

[Packet]

If she is mainly concerned with picture editing, you want to get a good 2D card.

I suggest a Matrox card, they are pretty much king of 2D (though trailing in 3D), get the new G450 or an older G400Max, they come cheap now days. A nice monitor is also really going to be important, try and find a high quality 15" - 17" monitor (larger if you can afford it). I have had good experiance with Sony, Princeton, and IBM monitors in general.

For photoshop, your gonna want at least 128megs of ram, might as well go with 256 since its so cheap.

 

[spoma]

ok thanks guys. i appreciate the help.

 

[rbV5]

<< the Radeon LE also has good 2D, but it doesn't support the 1280x960 >>



I'm running my Radeon at 1280x960 in Win2k as we speak

Recent generation cpu, lots of Ram, good 2D card, and good flat screen monitor for hardware. (these will all affect the image she see's, but do nothing to the image itself).

Don't forget the software. Photoshop plugin support is legendary and the right plugins geared to what she wants to accomplish can make a huge difference in productivity, especially if she's not fluent in Photoshop. (these do affect the image itself) Scour the Net for huge amounts of support and loads of freeware plugins/tutorials/actions.

 

[Eug]

rbV5, I wanna know how to get 1280x960, or better yet 1400x1050 in Win 2000. Help!

How'd you do it? I can't find anything in the registry, and neither the latest release drivers nor the latest beta drivers allow it. I am running at 1600x1200 right now on my 19&quot; and it's not ideal.

 

[Hellblast]

I suggest you put some serious RAM in that machine. I agree with Senior Member Packet to have at least 256MB.

Hellblast

 

[han888]

and also if she do a lot editing, get the dual cpu system

 

[rbV5]

<< I wanna know how to get 1280x960 >>



I use a little utility Radtweak under the W2000 refresh tab, click the button..reboot, if your monitor supports it, you will now have 1280x960 available