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Is 3.2Ghz i3 27'inch fast enough for photoshop

G

gorgen

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 1, 2010
10
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So Im looking at getting a imac, but i can only get the i3 version because there is a long wait for the i5 where i live.

So would mainly use it for pretty heavy photoshop work. just wandering if anyone here uses it for stuff like that, and how it performs....
 
A three year old Mac Mini is fast enough for Photoshop. It all depends on what you need to do in Photoshop—what your definition of 'heavy' is. I can do some pretty advanced stuff in Photoshop on my MacBook Pro, but if I need to work with a Photoshop file running at very large dimensions with numerous layers I'll be happier on my Mac Pro. The amount of RAM you have is extremely important and a point comes where a good video card is a must.
 
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Yes, I guess I am wondering...

So by heavy Im talking about filesizes around 5-700 Mb.

Maby a bump in Ram would help me more than a processor upgrade?
 
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I cant afford the SSD at the monent but i would like the option of getting one put in later. I read somewhere that this is a problem because you dont get some plugs or brackets needed if you dont order the imac with a ssd. Is this correct?
 
Just the brackets. If you order any 2010 or newer iMac, I'm pretty sure they all come with 3 e-sata plugs, so there's no worry in installing an additional SSD. However 2009 and earlier imacs only have 2 I believe.
 
I love these questions.

Is (insert name of machine that 5 years ago would be a supercomputer) fast enough to run (insert name of software that would run fine on a machine from 5 years ago)?

Answer is YES. It's a freaking quick bit of kit.
 
TMRaven said:
Just the brackets. If you order any 2010 or newer iMac, I'm pretty sure they all come with 3 e-sata plugs, so there's no worry in installing an additional SSD. However 2009 and earlier imacs only have 2 I believe.
Click to expand...

The 2010 21.5" iMacs only have 2 internal SATA ports, not 3 like the 2010 27" iMacs.
 
I am running Photoshop CS3 on my mid-2007 24" 2.8GHz 4Gb iMac and it is fine. Of course, if you are using a newer version such as CS5, I'd recommend upping the RAM to 8Gb. I'd say processor speed and RAM are more important than the graphics card. Providing you don't have too many other applications open, you should be fine.

By the way - if any folks are thinking of using Photoshop but are unsure of how to get the best from it, visit Lynda.com and have a look at the video training courses by Deke McLelland. While Lynda.com charges $25 a month for access to the courses, Adobe give a 1-month trial sub simply for registering a new Creative Suite product.
 
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Thanx everyone. It definately helped me.

Chundles, I get your point! There is other things to consider though in my question. E.x. Photosh cs5 has options with openGL and other advanced options that will cranck up the requirements for your computer if you want to take full advantage of all features.....

I have uses a macbookpro that worked fine for most things, but only after i disabled all the fancy open gl features.

Im just worried of running into these problems on a imac
 
Is 3.2Ghz i3 27'inch fast enough for photoshop

No, you will need at least a 233mhz G3 to use photoshop.
 
gorgen said:
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Thanx everyone. It definately helped me.

Chundles, I get your point! There is other things to consider though in my question. E.x. Photosh cs5 has options with openGL and other advanced options that will cranck up the requirements for your computer if you want to take full advantage of all features.....

I have uses a macbookpro that worked fine for most things, but only after i disabled all the fancy open gl features.

Im just worried of running into these problems on a imac
Click to expand...

Adobe's OpenGL acceleration using the GPU is a joke, so don't worry about it.
 
peskaa said:
Adobe's OpenGL acceleration using the GPU is a joke, so don't worry about it.
Click to expand...

ok....not sure what you mean that these features are a joke. I use photoshop on a daily basis at work for concept art. I must say I really like the features this enables, rotating the canvas for one and the seamless zoom is also nice.
 
gorgen said:
ok....not sure what you mean that these features are a joke. I use photoshop on a daily basis at work for concept art. I must say I really like the features this enables, rotating the canvas for one and the seamless zoom is also nice.
Click to expand...

I mean the actual workload put on the GPU is minimal - yes the features are nice, but they hardly touch the capabilities of GPGPU. As such, even a fairly basic graphics card works perfectly fine - the 5xxx series will do OpenGL easily.
 
Yes, most likely good enough. The real world performance of the Mac i3 computers is better than a lot of people would expect.
 
PS is the kind of things where quad-core can really speed things up. Most of the time, multi-core is a waste of time (and can even slow you down as the clock speed can be lower), but PS can use 4 cores in a lot of cases.

Also, upgrade the RAM and HDD, obviously.

If you want to do heavy PS work on a budget, you might be better getting a PC, and buying an MBA for when you need to get away from Windows.
 
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