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Recommendation on iMac

C

chris650

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2010
179
0
I have so far a PC desktop user, with iphone, iPad, and MacMini as HTPC. Now, it's time for me to upgrade my PC desktop. I am seriously thinking of switching to Mac as my main desktop. Also, I had been a advanced amature photographer for a long time, and have high end digital SLR. However, I haven't done anything on the computer with photo, in ternms of modifying, enhancing, touching, processing, archiving. Since I am upgrading the computer, I thought I would like to start using desktop to do some digital processing,etc.

My question is on the choice of iMac. Hope to hear your recommendations:
1. My current display is a 24" Dell monitor. I think i would like to go for 27" on iMac.
2. I don't need huge storage on the computer, as I have many external drive and large home network storage, etc.
3. I don't do video editing at all. Probably won't be doing any in the future.
4. I need good graphic, good enough processing power to deal with Photoshop, etc. when I start doing digital processing of photo.
5. Graphic display should good for an adavanced amature photography.

What's a reasonable iMac configuration should I go for, that won't break my bank?

Thank you all in advance.
 
Any iMac is fine for you. You may want to add more RAM later on but 4GB is sufficient for amateur photography.
 
Hellhammer said:
Yes as Photoshop is dual threaded (AFAIK) so it can't even take advantage of extra cores. Also, it's not very CPU intensive anyway
Click to expand...

Really? So what is critical for Photoshop? memory? graphic card?

I might need this desktop to do some video conversion...Handbrake..
 
chris650 said:
Really? So what is critical for Photoshop? memory? graphic card?

I might need this desktop to do some video conversion...Handbrake..
Click to expand...

RAM is important, thus upgrading to 8GB might be worth it. How much HandBraking would you do? If you do a lot, then buy the i7 iMac as it's the fastest in that.
 
Yes you are fine with the base 2-core 27". Consider yourself lucky I guess, no gaming or video editing means 4gb and any modern 3d GPU is just fine.

I am an amateur photographer too... I went from a basic 2-core XP laptop, where Photoshop was still acceptably quick. Now using a 4-core 6gb PC using Win7. Photoshop flies.

My next PC will be the 27" i5 iMac and Aperture, just for the screen and Aperture. I cannot conceive of any way an amateur photographer could stress a modern iMac.
 
InlawBiker said:
Yes you are fine with the base 2-core 27". Consider yourself lucky I guess, no gaming or video editing means 4gb and any modern 3d GPU is just fine.

I am an amateur photographer too... I went from a basic 2-core XP laptop, where Photoshop was still acceptably quick. Now using a 4-core 6gb PC using Win7. Photoshop flies.

My next PC will be the 27" i5 iMac and Aperture, just for the screen and Aperture. I cannot conceive of any way an amateur photographer could stress a modern iMac.
Click to expand...

i5? is that the one just came out today? I was hoping to buy a discount or slightly used from 2009. They are all core2 duo.. will they be enough for me? do i need to upgrade to 4g memory? is it easy to do memory upgrade myself on iMac?

For color accuracy, is the iMac 27 LED good enough?
 
Hellhammer said:
Yes as Photoshop is dual threaded (AFAIK) so it can't even take advantage of extra cores. Also, it's not very CPU intensive anyway
Click to expand...

Does that mean core 2 duo is good enough? for fast photoshop processing, i need to go for the higher speed of the processor?
 
chris650 said:
i5? is that the one just came out today? I was hoping to buy a discount or slightly used from 2009. They are all core2 duo.. will they be enough for me? do i need to upgrade to 4g memory? is it easy to do memory upgrade myself on iMac?

For color accuracy, is the iMac 27 LED good enough?
Click to expand...

I would say that a 2009 Core2Duo model would be fine. 4GB of RAM is strongly encouraged. If the computer doesn't already boast that much memory it is very easy to upgrade that on an iMac, even if you've never opened a computer before.
 
what's the differen of core2duo and Quard Core i5. Could someone help me decide which one of the three... pro and con




iMac 27-inch 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

27-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display
4GB memory
1TB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics with 256MB memory

and

iMac 27-inch 3.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

27-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display
4GB memory
1TB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics with 256MB memory

and

Mac 27-inch 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5

27-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display
4GB memory
1TB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics with 512MB memory
 
I'm sure that the C2D will be perfectly adequate for you. The i3, i5 and i7 iMacs will just do the same things faster.
 
The core 2 duo should be more than adequate, however if you can stretch to affording the quad core, it would probably be a better buy and would last quite a bit longer than the dual core machine!
signature_silverapple.jpg
 
Hellhammer said:
Any iMac is fine for you. You may want to add more RAM later on but 4GB is sufficient for amateur photography.
Click to expand...

I'm an amateur photographer myself and I would urge you to get 8GB RAM.
Even a few 10mpix pictures in photomerge would bring you past the 4 GB limit.

So if you often get documents that's 1.5GB+ in size, get 8 GB RAM!
 
cluthz said:
I'm an amateur photographer myself and I would urge you to get 8GB RAM.
Even a few 10mpix pictures in photomerge would bring you past the 4 GB limit.

So if you often get documents that's 1.5GB+ in size, get 8 GB RAM!
Click to expand...

so the processor is not a big deal for photographer?

how easy to upgrade memory...? can i open it up just like a PC????
 
Just killed the deal

iMac 27" won't take any video input except MacBook or pro... I have several PC's under my desk. I would have to have another monitor... that's a deal killer.

Apple's narrow mindedness just turned me off
 
cluthz said:
I'm an amateur photographer myself and I would urge you to get 8GB RAM.
Even a few 10mpix pictures in photomerge would bring you past the 4 GB limit.

So if you often get documents that's 1.5GB+ in size, get 8 GB RAM!
Click to expand...

I should have said "in the beginning" :p RAM is so easy to add and you shouldn't buy it from Apple anyway;)

chris650 said:
Just killed the deal

iMac 27" won't take any video input except MacBook or pro... I have several PC's under my desk. I would have to have another monitor... that's a deal killer.

Apple's narrow mindedness just turned me off
Click to expand...

You can but you simply need an adapter. What outputs do those PCs have?
 
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