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RynoZebz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 12, 2008
112
0
Hey guys. I've been trying to read up on this for a while but haven't found a ton of information. Mostly people who are graphic designers and such answering questions like this but I was wondering what about people who are illustrators and use their Macs to paint illustrations professionally to be used in web and print? I could care less about the monitor because I can order another display that should be able to handle the color work just fine. What I'm concerned about is the hardware being able to keep up. I've only used PCs for this sort of work but I've been wanting to make the jump to OSX for a while now. At the moment I don't want to shell out the extra cash it would take me to get the Mac Pro. (Once I add dual monitors and all the extra features to make it even with the top tier iMac) So I'm considering just getting the top tier iMac (3.06) with all of the base settings (1tb drive, 4gb of RAM, etc.) and using this for a few years until I can afford the MP. I work on illustration files at 300 dpi and I'm laying down brush strokes. Not just moving images around. I'm curious what the performance is for this sort of Photoshop usage. I've looked on art forums and haven't found much info there either.

I'm also considering doing some minor modeling or maybe playing around in MudBox when that is released. Nothing too crazy as I'm just a 2D artist. I wouldn't mind messing around with these apps but wouldn't use the 3D apps to their fullest. Like rendering an animated scene, etc. If I did start to get into that stuff heavily I'd start counting my pennies for the MP instead. But I'm curious how this sort of usage on an iMac would be.

Everyone says this is a consumer machine. But it seems to be pretty well powered these days. But I've been out of the computer game (pretty much just use the PC I have at work for illustration stuff now) for a long while and am just curious how these macs will work out for my needs. Thanks for the help.

-Ryan
 
You can be sure it'll be just fine.
I've been working with 2D and 3D graphics (even video editing) on a 15" MBP and it worked all well, so there's no reason why it shouldn't work on an iMac (I'm getting one myself soon).

Apart from the rendering of Mudbox, which may take a while, depending on what you do, everything else will be fast.
 
I hope so. I work with some big files so I'm starting to get a little nervous. :: shrugs ::
 
lol just saw your post in conceptart.org and replied. I use cs5 and mudbox on my dads 15" lowest specced out mbp (2010 model) and it runs just fine. I think all you need is a decent amount of ram for what you want.
 
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