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What set-up best for Photoshop/Illustrator?

A

astriy

Senior member
I need to build a machine that will be used to make huge images (we're talking billboards - 32 x 8 feet at 75 dpi). What would be best to focus on faster processor/more memory/better vid card? What processor, Athlon XP or P4? Also would a raid 0 setup make any difference? This machine will not do anything else except for this function.
 
What's the actual image size?

I didn't think people made 32' images in photoshop for banners. I thought maybe they'd get scaled.

Realistically you're gonna need as many gigs of ram as you can, probably dual processors ... LOTS of hard drive space ...

400 x 9999 inches is the largest my photoshop goes ... and it'd be a 824mb PS file ...

 
the end product is an actual image that's 8 feet by 32 feet that goes to a special printer. Scaling down would mean increasing the dpi, so it's basically the same huge size file (aboot 400-500 MB if it's in photoshop most of the time). I was thinking of going with a 760mpx dualie board. But should I get faster processors or more memory?
 
well ... what kinda trade off are we talkin' about?

Athlon XP 1700 vs 2100?

Or 512/1024/2048 megs of ram?
 
You'll want a ton of RAM (512MB at the least) and a fast harddrive... with perhaps a 1GB partition
set aside exclusively to be used as a Photoshop scratch disk. I went from a P3-700Mhz processor
to a P4-1800 @ 1908Mhz without noticing much of a difference in PS performance, but I do work
with much smaller files.

I'd say RAM is your #1 priority. If you're getting dual processors, you should be fine with anything
that's currently mid-range or higher.

Heck, I worked on 12'x2' display headers for Walmart on a Mac G3 with 256Mb of RAM without any
major problems.
 
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