I know very little about computers so please forgive a possibly obvious question.
I’m looking for something to replace my 6-year-old PC, which freezes everytime I try to do anything with digital photos. All I need is something that will allow me to download, photoshop and send/print photos from a digital camera, nothing else.
Does anyone make home PCs that are specifically built for (primarily) this purpose?
Thanks in advance.
Besides Apple?
Are you telling me that Apple is designed specifically for photowork?
PC’s are designed to be general purpose machines these days. Any newer ones can do what you describe. PC’s and Macs can both do it well as the millions of users who do it everyday on both platforms can attest to.
If you do a lot of photo work, you probably want a computer that has a decent video card. It sounds like “decent” for your needs isn’t going to take much.
How old is your camera? If all you want to do in Photoshop is crop and resize, you might want to invest in a photo printer with PictBridge software (if your digital camera is less than 3 years old, it probably supports it), so you can print straight from the camera and crop and resize on the fly, without having your computer on. It might save you a bit of money on that end. Otherwise, any computer made nowadays will be able to do what you want. But I’d look into maybe upgrading your computer before buying a new one, if all you are having trouble with is photos, I’m not sure it is worth plunking down for a brand new computer.
Not specifically, but there is a big overlap of people who do photo editing, and people who use Apples.
I don’t think there are any that are designed specifically for photo editing. Though it depends on the size of files you’re working with, almost any mid-line computer will do the trick (with the right software).
One general guideline for working with photos however: The more RAM, the better.
Not specifically, but Apple is usually the choice of graphic designers. Many designers prefer Photoshop on Mac over Photoshop on Windows (not personally my opinion, but YMMV), and Macs come with a default suite of audio and video editing software.
The OP said his computer is 6 years old. That is well outside of the upgrade wisdom window IMHO.
If they have something like Dell, in Hong Kong, I would just look at any mid-range computer with any type of real video card and place an order for a package. It sounds like the OP wants no-fuss and that is a good way to get it.
As others have said, any PC should be usable for this purpose, assuming the videocard is decent and there’s enough memory. But if you want, HP has the “a1150y series” which it calls a “digital photography PC.” It’s got enough memory and comes with photo editing software. I think Dell also used to sell systems that were designed for this purpose.
You may want to pay attention to the quality of the video card and monitor. Some graphic design professionals need systems that can reproduce color on the screen so it appears as it will when being printed. You can get hardware and software to make sure that the colors you see correspond to the appropriate Pantone colors.
You’re right, I don’t think it can be upgraded at all – i can upload pics onto it but anything else, including e-mailing pics of the smallest size, freezes the machine.
The camera I have is new and can take pics of quite high resolution – I’m basically looking for a machine that can play with pics of a little greater than snap quality without taking an age to do anything.
Thanks for all the suggestions so far.
There are some significant advantages of Macs over Windows for graphic work: systemic ColorSync, vastly better dithering (especially to 16-bit) and typography, and a number of small architectural differences for speed. Plus better image resizing, systemic alpha (transparency) channel support, and anti-aliasing support if you’re a developer of such tools.
None of these will matter to most people, though, especially since several of them would require all your devices to have support for them as well (ColorSync, in particular), and others, like the typography, are irrelevent in general for photos.
Well, if this were several years ago and if they weren’t so obscenely priced I would say “Get an SGI* machine”. Then again, that would be a little bit of overkill for just plain picture editing.
*SGI, or perhaps better known as Silicon Graphics. Though the Silicon Graphics name is now defunct.
Wanna bet ?
Your real question is about having a PC that would allow you to “download, photoshop and send/print photos from a digital camera.” Almost any current model of PC will work. Make sure there’s enough RAM (>320MB), enough free hard drive space (750MB), and a hi-res monitor (1,024x768) so that you can run Photoshop.
Bet about what? The company now uses SGI as their name, supposedly to modernize the brand. Certainly, they are actually Silicon Graphics, Inc. but none of their products would carry that designation, instead having the SGI badge on the front.
The machine brand in most cases is going to be irrelevant. Any machine, even some basic ones can do a fine job with the proper software packages. I love Corel stuff myself but thats what I learned on, Adobe photoshop is in broader use however for professsional work. Even then, it may be overkill for what you want and some simple freeware bitmap editor might be able to handle it.
Hardware wise you may want.
- A little extra ram (almost any graphics software is pretty RAM hungry)
- A large monitor to be able to see more of your work when zoomed in.
- An integral card reader for more convenient access to photos on various memory cards.
- Make sure you have a CD burner for moving storing and sharing those pics in a cost effective manner.
- May want to look into video cards with S-video or RCA style jacks if you plan on interfacing with other video gear.
- A nice printer might be the one place to splurge a bit.
Notice none of these items on the list is brand dependent, almost everything can be had from several sources made by many manufacturers of varying quality and cost. You probably don’t NEED a Mac, Probably don’t NEED a $200 photo editing program, You probably dont NEED much more than a basic machine and a desire to make it work for you.
Do your research, if you walk into a big box store they are going to try to sell you the “ULTIMATE GRAPHICS WORKSTATION with Uber E-peen Support” for $3000 when the $599 special would have been fine for you.
This sounds just the job, but HP HK only seems to offer the a700 series, which seems to become an a1248hk on closer inspection. They market this machine as “A simple, complete digital photography solution: HP Image Zone Plus software makes it easy and convenient for you to access a variety of photo-related tasks.”
Could this be local rebranding or an update of the a1150y series?