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Graphic Designers: What's your set up?

motoxpress said:
Joseph,

There is no such thing as too much power when it comes to Photoshop :)

-mx
Click to expand...

yeah,

if it's too big for you, joseph, i can give you my mailing address ;)

actually, i am not a graphic designer, but my wife was for a long time, but it's still nice to dabble with stuff for fun
 
I use a variety of tools, here's everything.

safari-use grab to take part of some image and mess with it in photoshop
grab-ultimate tool for grabbing an image from somewhere, I use it all the time
photoshop-for normal 2D image editing and touching up, both on the simple and advanced level. Also used sometimes to touch up 3D images.
iphoto-has some cool things you can do to images, sometimes I do that.
blender3D-awesome 3D modeling app, open source so it's free.
pixen-I used to use pixen for small images until it got updated and was all laggy and horrible and never got any bug fixes... I don't use it now, but maybe it's updated by now?
That's all I can think of... I don't have any special hardware.
 
Hardware:
Mac Pro
2.66 Ghz (2x Dual Core)
8Gb RAM
X1900XT 512Mb
250Gb + 500Gb Hard-drive
2x Eizo ColourEdge 24" Displays
Wacom Intuos 3 6" x 11"
Apple Keyboard
15" Mac Book Pro (For Traveling/Meeting With Clients/Sitting in my favorite coffee shop and working)
2.6 Ghz Dual Core
4Gb RAM
8600GT 512Mb
200Gb HDD

Software:
CS3 Design Premium
Quark XPress 7
:apple: Final Cut Studio 2
*cough*Microsoft Office for Mac 2008
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Misc:
Canon 20D + Canon 40D with a rage of lenses and accessories
An assortment of drawing equipment
 
Do any of you use the new 24" iMac for graphic design?
I'm playing around with a DIN A3 file in PS and the filters are taking ages to apply. Can you tell me whether 4GB of RAM would cure this to some extent? Or is it all in the graphics card?
 
Shotglass said:
Do any of you use the new 24" iMac for graphic design?
I'm playing around with a DIN A3 file in PS and the filters are taking ages to apply. Can you tell me whether 4GB of RAM would cure this to some extent? Or is it all in the graphics card?
Click to expand...

Anyone who uses Photoshop heavily will tell you that 4gigs is the sweet spot. I am working on a 1st gen Alu iMac 24" 2.4Ghz with 4 gigs of ram at work, and it performs well, even on big files and batches.
 
InLikeALion said:
Anyone who uses Photoshop heavily will tell you that 4gigs is the sweet spot. I am working on a 1st gen Alu iMac 24" 2.4Ghz with 4 gigs of ram at work, and it performs well, even on big files and batches.
Click to expand...
That's what I was thinking. Do they come with 1x2GB or 2x1GB of RAM? What's the best price on 2GB sticks?
 
Shotglass said:
Do any of you use the new 24" iMac for graphic design?
I'm playing around with a DIN A3 file in PS and the filters are taking ages to apply. Can you tell me whether 4GB of RAM would cure this to some extent? Or is it all in the graphics card?
Click to expand...

How much dpi does the file have? And how big is it in terms of mb? On my iMac I have no problems with files about 500 mb. I have 4 gbs of ram though, but even with 2 it should not be too slow.
 
Shotglass said:
That's what I was thinking. Do they come with 1x2GB or 2x1GB of RAM? What's the best price on 2GB sticks?
Click to expand...

Not sure what the "best" price is on a 2GB stick, but when I bought my (2) 2GB sticks (a 4GB kit) I paid $150. I have since seen it go for about $80 with a rebate. It may be even less than that now.

If the iMac is anything like my MacBook Pro, it'll have (2) x 1GB sticks.
 
Shotglass said:
That's what I was thinking. Do they come with 1x2GB or 2x1GB of RAM? What's the best price on 2GB sticks?
Click to expand...

I can't remember what number of sticks they enicially come with - but as klymr said, I think its 2x1Gig. You can check for yourself by going to about this mac>more info>memory.

We paid a little under $100 for the 4Gig kit. I can't remember if we purchased from newegg.com or owc.
 
I'm not an artist of any type, in fact I can't draw a simple circle that looks good. But, I wanted to chime in.

I am a fresh convert to Adobe Flex development, and I picked up a Cintiq 20WSX widescreen to do interface design with.

I am also very new to Flash and Photoshop, but am getting a kick out of the power and functionality of this Cintiq. It is absolutely incredible.

If there are any Flex developers out there, this is at least worth giving a short if you want to speed up and enhance your interface design time.

I use a 24" 2.8Ghz iMac as the primary monitor and the 20WSX as the secondary display.

Tip: !!!

Inside of Eclipse (or Flex Builder), you can select the Window Menu, then New Window. This creates a new Flex / Eclipse window in which you can browse to your code. HOWEVER, unlike other IDE's which just create a second development window, this option links your two environments together. Meaning; If you have your Cintiq set to design mode, and your main display set to source mode, as you change one, the other automatically updates. Excellent, excellent system.

This means writing code on the 24" screen for real-estate, and always having the interface design mode available on the Cintiq within quick reach to make interface changes.

Hopefully that is useful to some.
 
My main setup is a 24" iMac 2.4 with 3 GB of RAM

CS2 for the apps

Various FTP apps

Secondary Optiquest (Viewsonic) 20" monitor

Rather have a MacPro, but for the cost, this machine works pretty nicely. Plus it's dead sexy ;)
 
My current home setup (not ideal for work but good enough for now) is:

MBP 17", 2.33 C2D, 160gb 5400 stock drive, 3gb ram... matte. Leopard.

Open, on a stand on a wide bench, to my left and always as a secondary display for mail, itunes, iCal... directly connected to:

• A recently calibrated Dell 24" in front of me mainly for Creative Suite, Quark, Safari, Video. I have a full, wired aluminium keyboard
• An iPod dock. 80gb 5g
• A CanoScan 8800FF and a Canon 400D DSLR for imaging
• A Canon Pixma Pro9000 printer by 5m USB cable. I like Canon Fine Art Premium Matt paper and love A3+
• A Lacie 320gb Quadra connected by FW800 for different daily Retrospect backup scripts
• Two daisy-chained FW400 drives; one an archive of work and libraries, the other its backup. Seagates I put into Icy Box enclosures
• Bluetooth Sony phone

To the Airport Extreme in the cupboard to which is connected:

• a 2.2 Black MacBook 2gb RAM that I sometimes use when I'm out, in bed and in the kitchen. I keep my portfolio on it in various forms
• a 733mhz G4 1.5gb ram, Tiger. Extra SATA card with two 500gb Seagates. Run by screen-sharing. Slept and woken with WakeUp. Used for more data
• Two Airport Expresses, one in the studio with the stereo, the other in the kitchen with the iPod Hifi
• Some kind of Netgear router, 8mb ADSL
• A Samsung ML-163 A4 laser printer

Next upgrades I'd like to do are a completely clean Leopard and app install within the next 3 months on a new 7200rpm 320gb Hitachi drive in the MacBook Pro and then sell it within 18 months, replacing it with whatever the best Mac laptop I can afford at the time. Then a new display.

I do not possess a television.
 
While I'm not primarily a graphic designer, it does fall into my line of work from time to time.

I use a Macbook Pro connected to a 24" color calibrated Gateway LCD. I use a Logitech MX Revolution mouse and a Wacom Graphire tablet (mostly for photography work though).

Print to a Epson Stylus Pro 3800.
 
Work:
17in Mac Book Pro 2.2Ghz
23in ACD
Adobe Apps
Quark...Sigh
Office
A really crappy mouse

Home: (fun part)
30" ACD (Next Week)
2.8Ghz Dual Quad Core Xeon
Roket 6 Studio Monitors
iPod Touch 16g
HP Pavilion zv6000 Laptop
Adobe Design Premium
Autodesk Maya
Wacom Intous3 6x9?
Logitech 1600dpi MX518 mouse (Best GD mouse. Ever.)
Wireless Apple Keyboard
Apple Mighty Mouse (Somewhere)

As well as the most important weapon for any Graphic Designer. A ******** of Music.
 
MacBook Pro with 2Gb RAM (more would be nice)
Logitech MX 900
Adobe Photoshop CS3
Adobe Flash CS3
CSS Edit
Yummy FTP
Microsoft Office 2008
Snapz Pro
VMWare Fusion with Windows XP so I can see how Explorer 6 is screwing up my sites ;)
TDK tremor speaker system to play quality calming music from iTunes while I pull my hair over some design stress! :D
 
here's my setup:

- dual monitors: 2 dell widescreen 20" lcds
- mac pro, 8-core, 2.8 ghz
- wacom intuos3 4x6
- humanscale keyboard tray (this is important for ergonomics)
- kinesis freestyle keyboard (i love this keyboard)
- adobe cs3, fcs 2

southcounty949 said:
I tried searching this forum for a thread like this, but no luck. I apologize ahead of time if this HAS been posted before. ;)

I'm new to the whole graphic design thing and I'm really loving it so far. I'm currently taking a course on "Beginning Graphic Design" and am just interested to see what kind of set up you all have (Keyboard, Mice, Tablet, etc.) Also curious to see what your opinions are of certain devices that are better for graphic design.

Currently, I only have a Wacom 6x8 and the CS3 suite. I'm currently using the mouse that came with the wacom but want to get a Logitech MX revolution. Could you guys also recommend a keyboard that might be better than the average for design?

All opinions are appreciated!
Click to expand...
 
_bnkr612 said:
MacPro 2.8 w/ 4GB RAM with two 20 ACDs. –This machine is a bit much…

I am a web and print designer. You can see some of my work in my sig.

Cheers.
Joseph
Click to expand...

Here's the link to Joseph's site: http://josephpeart.com/

Spot on. I looked at your superb portfolio, and saw nothing that couldn't have been accomplished with, say, a G4 AGP450. Great to see some exquisite work, without all the digital over-embellishment, so prevalent these days.

Most of the work seems to have been well conceptualized, well thought out, BEFORE taking it to the computer.
So far, nobody's mentioned bond paper, Eagle pencils, Pentel sign pens, or Magic Markers as part of their mix.
I couldn't resist.
The conceptual work is most important -- always has been, always will be.

Yes, I too fell for the Mac Pro 2008 (6GB), but primarily in anticipation of doing video work.

Now, if only I can get this #*%^!! little LCD display to work with my trusty Sony CRT 22", and mammoth Wacom, I'll be in pig heaven.
 
My design setup:

Coffeepot
Copious amounts of x-acto blades
Scoring and folding tool
Cretacolor pencils (the BEST 6b pencils)
Epson 2400
Epson 3170
MBP 1.83

Everything else is just a nicety.
 
A somewhat more modest setup than some here.

• MacBook Pro
• Apple Cinema Display
• Apple Aluminum Keyboard (Wired)
• Apple Mouse (Wired)
• Western Digital Studio Edition II's


My software requirements have slimmed somewhat in recent times too.

• Adobe CS3 (Acrobat 9 Pro, After Effects, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop) handle the core creative work.
• Adobe Director 11 (still the best rapid prototyping tool)
• Apple Shake 4.1
• CSSEdit, TextMate, Transmit & MAMP
• Processing/Wiring and Arduino

Misc software such as Linotype FontExplorer X, Microsoft Office 2008 and Roxio Toast 9 Titanium also have a role in my workflow. LEGO's Digital Designer and Google Earth fill any playtime.
 
At home (freelance business):

DP 2.5GHz PowerMac G5
4GB Ram
ATI 9800 Radeon Mac Pro edition (256MB)
20" Dell monitor (2005 FPW)
250GB LaCie external HD
6x8" Wacom Intuos3 tablet
Adobe CS3 Premium
iWork '06
MS Office 2004
Airport

At work:

17" MacBook Pro 2.33GHz
3GB Ram
20" Apple Cinema Display (for dual monitor setup)
500GB LaCie external HD
BookEndz laptop dock
6x8" Wacom Intuos3 tablet
Adobe CS3 Premium
iWork '08
MS Office 2004
 
Here we go:

• 20" white iMac Core 2 2.1Ghz, 2Gb RAM
• 733Mhz Power Mac G$ with 21" Apple CRT as a scanning machine
• LaCie Porsche 80Gb and 500Gb external HDs
• Epson Perfection 4870 Photo scanner
• Xerox Phaser 7300N colour laser
• Apple Laserwriter 16/600PS BW laser

• Adobe CS 3
• QuarkXPress 7
• Linotype Font Explorer
• Office 08
• OS X Leopard
 
Does anybody use an older mac for design? I'd like to hear from people using a 1ghz G4 and lower.
 
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