Fastest combo for RAW output

I did a good search and did not find a direct answer.

I am currently using CS2 raw and Lightroom on two machines:

2.0 GHZ MacBook Pro, 2GB ram, 7200 rpm drive.

20 inch Imac 2.0 G5, 2GB ram.

I am looking at aperature with either a 24 inch Intel imac w/ 3 GB ram or a dual 3.0 GHZ MacPro w/ 4 GB ram and a 1900 video card.

The primary role of my main machine MUST be FAST raw output to either JPEG or TIFF.

What do you mean by FAST?

Is that fast workflow - i.e. you can quickly review and edit, or is that fast output - i.e. you take a bunch of shots, and want to turn them straight into JPG's with no editting?

Film_Ruled said:

I did a good search and did not find a direct answer.

I am currently using CS2 raw and Lightroom on two machines:

2.0 GHZ MacBook Pro, 2GB ram, 7200 rpm drive.

20 inch Imac 2.0 G5, 2GB ram.

I am looking at aperature with either a 24 inch Intel imac w/ 3 GB
ram or a dual 3.0 GHZ MacPro w/ 4 GB ram and a 1900 video card.

The primary role of my main machine MUST be FAST raw output to
either JPEG or TIFF.

Click to expand...

Film_Ruled said:

I did a good search and did not find a direct answer.

I am currently using CS2 raw and Lightroom on two machines:

2.0 GHZ MacBook Pro, 2GB ram, 7200 rpm drive.

20 inch Imac 2.0 G5, 2GB ram.

I am looking at aperature with either a 24 inch Intel imac w/ 3 GB
ram or a dual 3.0 GHZ MacPro w/ 4 GB ram and a 1900 video card.

The primary role of my main machine MUST be FAST raw output to
either JPEG or TIFF.

Click to expand...

For Aperture the 24" iMac should be equipped with the 7600GT GPU upgrade - rather go with only 2GB RAM and get the 7600GT. The Mac Pro with the X1900 is certainly faster (but not as much faster as 2 additional cores may suggest) and exports will benefit from a second SATA-II disk being the export target. To give you an idea (this is not a scientific figure, as the rendering and export speed will be influenced by the amount of adjustments): Exporting 150 heavily adjusted 16 MP RAWs to 16-bit TIFF at full size takes around 6 minutes on my Mac Pro, 2.66 GHz, 4GB RAM, X1900XT.

Cheers,
Uwe

uwe_r said:

Film_Ruled said:

I did a good search and did not find a direct answer.

I am currently using CS2 raw and Lightroom on two machines:

2.0 GHZ MacBook Pro, 2GB ram, 7200 rpm drive.

20 inch Imac 2.0 G5, 2GB ram.

I am looking at aperature with either a 24 inch Intel imac w/ 3 GB
ram or a dual 3.0 GHZ MacPro w/ 4 GB ram and a 1900 video card.

The primary role of my main machine MUST be FAST raw output to
either JPEG or TIFF.

Click to expand...

For Aperture the 24" iMac should be equipped with the 7600GT GPU
upgrade - rather go with only 2GB RAM and get the 7600GT. The Mac
Pro with the X1900 is certainly faster (but not as much faster as 2
additional cores may suggest) and exports will benefit from a
second SATA-II disk being the export target. To give you an idea
(this is not a scientific figure, as the rendering and export speed
will be influenced by the amount of adjustments): Exporting 150
heavily adjusted 16 MP RAWs to 16-bit TIFF at full size takes
around 6 minutes on my Mac Pro, 2.66 GHz, 4GB RAM, X1900XT.

Click to expand...

Thanks Uwe, that is the answer I was looking for. When UB P/S comes out in the Spring ( I hope ) the raw converter could be faster. We seem to be in such a limbo state now for production, everything just takes forever....I want my film back...

how is film faster?

scanning, retouching, adjusting and then convesion to output to the file you need.. + it takes up tons of physical and HD space and is fragile as hell...

film worked when there was nothing else.. glass plates worked when there was nothing else.

loaded fast computers are the way to go. better than the mobile and single core chips that you have now anyway. it does generally take a bit longer but it is better. searching keyword, camera and lens info.. try to search for a 24mm or wider landscape shot with flowers in your film library. with digi you can get the answer in a few seconds if you do your system/archive right from the very beginning. I can do that and make a web gallery that can be uploaded in 15 min or less to be viewed by anyone in the world (anyone who could have a use for that kind of thing anyway..). I cant do that with film. your images are you income, you have to have them available searchabe and accessible, film is none of the above.

go with as much as you can afford. sell the imac and use the money you get from that to buy ram, its an old processor an wont be worth much sooner than later.

Even the 2.0 Mac Pro will outrun any iMac. Especially with Aperture. Everything basically happens in the background but the overall time will be less with the Mac Pro. Another trick I have used is to use different Apps or different users. I use Adobe Camera Raw, and you can run 2 copies at the same time, one in Bridge and one from Photoshop. Run ACR simultaniously proccesing RAW's from two jobs. You can also switch users and work while the first user still processes RAW files or batches Jpegs. Having 2-4 cores really helps when using multiple applications. Make sure you have enough ram and a decent video card for Aperture. Adobe apps are less so.

Jon

Thanks everyone, including the guy from Aspen ( where I live ).

I built a monster.

New Mac Pro 2.66, 4GB ram, 512mb XT1900 video card, one 500 GB drive for storage, one 160GB drive for a scratch disk and a Western Digital 150 GB Raptor 10,000 RPM as a boot drive.

This thing is at least twice as fast as my iMac or Macbook. When 10.5 and CS3 comes out, it's gonna scream.

Glad I plopped down the extra $2,500.

jonnynogooder said:

how is film faster?

Click to expand...

It is often more about quality than productivity. Right out of the camera, film just sings.

jonnynogooder said:

scanning, retouching, adjusting and then convesion to output to the
file you need.. + it takes up tons of physical and HD space and is
fragile as hell...

Click to expand...

Edited film takes up less space than archived RAW files.

jonnynogooder said:

film worked when there was nothing else.. glass plates worked when
there was nothing else.

Click to expand...

The best film output still beats digital in terms of look. I still shoot both, have a long term project that needs it for the next 3-5 years.

Humans don't live so long that still using film is a bad idea for the long term. Even if it is only around for another 10 years, that is a decade worth of shooting I get to leave behind in a wonderful non-computer aided format.

Some things are just so obvious to me in this life...

Film_Ruled said:

New Mac Pro 2.66, 4GB ram, 512mb XT1900 video card, one 500 GB
drive for storage, one 160GB drive for a scratch disk and a Western
Digital 150 GB Raptor 10,000 RPM as a boot drive.

Click to expand...

Do you find that the Raptor speeds things up when used as a boot drive? If so, what?