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Mac vs. PC Digital Photography Comparison
An anonymous reader writes "Rob Galbraith posted a comparison among two Macs and two PCs. Both a high-end Mac and PC are included with somewhat surprising results given the number of Mac zealots who will claim otherwise... optimized for PC, Mac support second, Photoshop is faster, yada, yada, yada."
Thought it said digital pornography comparison. I've never clicked on a Slashdot story so fast in my life!
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Surprising? I think not. Every /. reader here knows that Apple has been dragging its ass in the sand in the processor race due to Motorola's lack of money/research/carbonated beverages, and this isn't going to change until IBM gets around to releasing the "G5" architecture, probably using multiple cores on chip. So this is all old hat until then, really.
Sure they appear to be slow, but that's because they're so fast that time slows down as a result of general relativity. Yeah that's it. I can't believe that you mindless Pee Cee thugs didn't know that.
Morons.
--Steve Jobs
Mac zealot here, wanted to know where the PC zealots were. I also bumped into the VAX/VMS zealots as well, they were hanging with the System V zealots, who were, in turn also hanging out with the BSD zealots.
I don't care what computer you use, why should you care what I use? Ahhh, PC zealot. In case you must know, i have a PowerBook G4, an RDI Powerlite, and a Sun Ultra Workstation.
There are countless articles on this subject. We know the PC's are faster. In some cases signficantly faster.
But there are a variety of reasons for choosing a machine and platform, speed is not necessarily only the thing that comes into play.
For example, I, for one, just how long the battery on that super 1337 Alienware notebook lasts. It's probably not anywhere close to the Powerbook.
Oh well.
But doesn't anyone else see that this is pointless? Use what you like to use......
My "terribly slow" Dual 1 Ghz Macintosh is limited by its slowest part... me.
I keep the CPU meter running in the dock, and its twin towers of darkeness mock me..."what's the matter, buddy, can't even feed two glacial G4's? We're just sitting here, at 20% of capacity, while you try to decide which Actionscript to incorrectly code next..."
Even when I'm saving giant Photoshop files, checking 14 e-mail accounts and loading web pages into three different browsers (IE, Chimera, Safari), it still has one or two little dark blocks at the top of each meter. Probably just to piss me off.
Disclaimer: If I was a 3D or video artist, a 10% increase in speed could free up an hour a day. Since I'm not, even a 100% increase in speed would just mean my computer would have half as much to do while it waited for my sorry ass.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
I think this would be more interesting if the benchmark included a usabilty benchmark between teh two systems.
Meaning, start to finish, how long it took to setup each computer to be a good digital photography workstation, including color matching, scanner setup, etc. Plus, an examination of workflow on each system. Plus an examination on how much the operating system acted as a hinderance to actually getting work done.
Then I'd trust a benchmark. Processor speed and computational speed only extend so far. Windows vs. Mac is not a speed issue, but a usability and interface design issue. Regardless of speed, Mac OS X is more usable than Windows. It puts less obstacles to getting work done than Windows does.
You can't examine "performance" without measuring the performer's productivity, as that has as much to do with how fast a given system is as the processor speed.
Not magical- integrated. Macs have a system level technology called ColorSync, that can calibrate and store color profiles for all your output devices.
Add that to the limited hardware space Mac users have to account for- only certain types of monitors, video cards, etc- and the hooks the application developers build into their DTP apps, and you have an elegant way to make sure your puke green logo is the proper shade of puke green throughout the production process.
For instance, I develop for the Web- so I have embedded a ColorSync profile that makes my monitor look like a Windows machine (about 20% darker than a typical Mac). By propagating that profile through all my apps that support ColorSync, I can make sure that even if I specify a very light color, it will be properly compensated for and appear darker on my screen.
Windows users can do the same thing- Photoshop recently shook up their entire profile handling on both platforms, much to the concern of digital artists everywhere- but, as is usually the case, the implementation is not quite as elegant, and the results not as predictable.
That said, there's no reason why Windows can "never" reach a similar level of function. Never is a long time...
(p.s. Safari inline spellchecking in HTML forms is a great way NOT to look like a doofus when posting at 3:05 AM!)
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
That being said, you can read more of the discussions on Galbraith's site for some interesting back-and-forth regarding color management. Windows has been gaining quite a bit of ground in color management. For most people, I would say that color management software between Apple and Microsoft products are equivalent. On the hardware side, there is quite a bit of color calibration equipment now available for both Macintosh and Windows.
I'm curious how many magazine and newspaper editors you have seen that are really judging color on screen. In my experience, most editorial folks have no good color viewing conditions in their personal offices, let alone even minimally calibrated monitors. If you look at an image on a screen in a very brightly lit office with a three year old 20" monitor while wearing a heavily saturated shirt, it really doesn't matter if you are on an Apple or MS machine--your color judgement will be impaired. In contrast, our imaging department has color-controlled lighting booth and regularly calibrates (and replaces) their monitors.
Professionals do not always go over their images on Macs. I work at a large national weekly sports magazine. All of our photo editors edit images on Windows machines. Of our 15 photographers, around half use Macs and the rest use Windows. Our imaging department uses macs for production work partially due to page design software requirements. Similarly, our editorial department also uses macs because of other software requirements. Because of software requirements, all of our Macs currently run MacOS 9, not MacOS X. (Let's not even get into the server side.)
I went to the Fiesta Bowl a week ago or so. Of the photographers I saw in the press tent, around half were using Macs and half were using PCs running Windows.
So do "professionals always go over their images on a mac, just to see if it looks 'right'"? No, not really. Are there other advantages to running on Apple hardware and software rather than using WIndows and Intel hardware and software? It is definitely a topic worth debating. Galbraith has done a great job of stimulating discussion.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not a Windows bigot. (The Unix people call me a Windows bigot. The Windows people call me a Unix bigot. No one really wants to keep running MacOS 9.) However, I hate it when assertions are made regarding platforms that simply aren't true.
--Sam
Cyan is the absence of red, Yellow is the absence of blue, and magenta is the absense of green. Why is it so hard to convert colors?
Converting to a CMYK color space is not difficult. But you have to consider that as an additive model the color of the paper matters to the conversion, as does the ink used. You also have to provide a means for the user to adjust their monitor so what they see on the screen has some correspondence to what the final output looks like. A good CMYK conversion can save you hundreds of dollars per image in the fewer proofs you'll need before the final output looks good. You also really want to do this yourself because if you leave it up to the printshop you soon begin to believe that all their employees are color blind.
Photoshop has profiles for major printers with brand-name ink and paper plus less effective monitor profiles. It also has support for little sensors you stick on your monitor to measure it's whitepoint. This almost works, but you need very controlled lighting, and it still needs to be adjusted a bit because your eyes aren't standardized... (everyone sees additive and subtractive images differently, but how differently depends not only on the ambient lighting and the brightness of the monitor but your particular eyes too.)
So to sum up converting to a CMYK colorspace is not so hard, converting to the right one is a PiTA.
The amount of support I have to give these people is minimal and is all application-related.
The other area I encounter non-technical people is the PC world and, of course, the level of support required is much higher. Each successive edition of Windows is more cluttered as standard, and the learning curve is often a major irritation for busy professionals. Things often don't just work out of the box. Only last week I spent a frustrating hour just trying to get two W2k notebooks to communicate properly over ethernet, whereas I don't even have to think about adding Appletalk boxes. OK so I'm stupid, but how many other people are out there who are just as stupid as I am, and also need to work with computers?
In short, I see no real change in the long term situation, which is:
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Guess what? All my company does is proffessional layout and photowork. We use Photoshop on all our machines.
Half of us use Macs (because of other software they need to use due to the drafting package the architecture firm we are associated with uses)
Half of us use PCs (because of other software we need to use for 3D rendering and animation, and compatibility with drafting packages from other architecture firms)
Now. Like I said, we do photowork and layout on both platforms. Both platforms are network printing to the same professional-level color printer. Guess what? We can make images look the same on print, display.....REGARDLESS of which machine we create them on.
Next time you go and babble about an industry and a use....make sure you actually know what you are talking about.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
...beats the hell out of pointing and clicking around GUI apps for repetitive tasks like the file conversions used in this test. Try doing that on a PC...
When i bought my powerbook with osx it was too soon, things didnt really roll until the 10.0.4 release. I was sucked in by their excellent marketing of the powerbook g4 running a gorgeous open sourceOS. Call me a sucker but apples marketing department sure knows what its doing! Still I felt resentment over buying (into) something that didn't live up to what I thought I would get.
But right now things are different. OSX is sweet, my powerbook g4 at 400mhz might not sound like a powerhouse but it's sexy. No matter what I run on it or do with it it conveys an image that I am stylish, that I value quality over other considerations such as cost and speed. That I think different. Even though I am a programmer I really noticed that this laptop made me stand out. If you're meeting creative people commercially the powerbook does the selling for you, it tells them you are no lummox. In many many fields the thing the apple brand means and conveys about its owner is a priceless add on.
I have to say i mostly run mandrake 9.0 cooker on the powerbook G4. With KDE 3.1 beta. People who have never seen osx but heard about it sometimes think Im running OSX and they comment on how beautiful it is. Yeah KDE 3.1 is gorgeous! It runs very well on the 400mhz G4. But all that's besides the point. (albeit it does show that its hardware rather than software that appeals!)
Apple did something with its brand that very very few companies have done. They created incredible value; Apple appeals to people. You dont get that with your dell or toshiba or even an alienware rig.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
"Not really.. as great as the GIMP is, it still has a ways to go before it can pry photoshop out of the cold dead hands of the people who use photoshop what it is intended for rather than just for general cropping and resizing."
I can vouch for that. Paying $150 every so often (plus the $600 tag to start) is somewhat painful, but my experiments with Gimp didn't prove fruitful enough for me.
Let me explain some things, though:
a.) I already have PS paid for. So for me to switch to Gimp, it has to be better. Price tag isn't everything.
b.) I already have a well established workflow with PS and no real bottlenecks (that I'm aware of) that Gimp has the opportunity to fix. So, for me to adopt it (or evaluate it) then they'd have to do something Photoshop doesn't do. I guess this makes me a Photoshop zealot. At least I'm honest!
c.) As long as Adobe keeps making really big updates to PS every year or so, they keep my attention. Gimp would have to ride that wave to keep me on board. So far, it feels like they're playing catch up.
I realize my reasons aren't entirely rational, but I can imagine that there's a significant portion of the PS population that shares or would share similar feelings.
Adoption of Gimp may happen in a year or two, particularly when Linux becomes more and more attractive to the digital artist. (Note: I'm not implying Gimp's only on Linux, but rather that Photoshop is not on Linux...) Today, though, it's not all that interesting in any way other than for the visionary. Us artists would just like to get our work done.
Indeed, a better comparison would be to Paint Shop Pro, which is in fact what I'd gues 90% of the Photoshop users actually should be using. I know so many people who just pirate Photoshop so they can feel "pro" and use "the best" that it's not even funny. Get over it!
Not to mention the GIMP looks horrible on every OS
Looks OK to me, running in GNOME on Linux (which is in fact its "native" OS) - note that screenshot is quite old now.
Considering that the GIMP will run on basically anything, and Photoshop runs on Windows or Mac OS (unless you count Wine), I think the:
I guess you get what you pay for though.
line is extremely old. No, hard to believe though it is, there's this thing called charity and it means sometimes you get something great for absolutely nothing.
They compared the very fastest notebook you can buy (when not running off battery), which only runs nearly that fast when tethered to wall outlet with cpu cooking at like 50W, to a PowerBook that is slower than any you can buy right now (20% lower clock rate and much less cache than currently available) and uses less than half the power.
What kind of comparison is that???
Looking at the charts, it appears that a current PowerBook would easily smoke the P4 book in speed alone. Even if you ignored the higher cache (which is not insignificant b/c altivec is severely handicapped by small caches), a 1GHz PowerBook would be about 25% faster than the one they tested. This would make it faster than any P4 book even when P4 plugged into wall cooking at like 50W.
Furthermore, PowerBooks with Radeon cards can run at full speed for hours on one battery, whereas P4 books will roast your nads for about an hour while running half speed and then die.
I've never owned an Apple product and certainly am not a mac zealot, but this test is ridiculously rigged. Nice way to get on Slashdot real easy.
I manipulate very very large photoshop files (100 meg +). A dual g4 1gzh is plenty fast for this..
I usually am playing mp3s when working and its still fing.
And that OSX is realy stable. Plus the built in color matching in OSX is a blessing..Saves so much time when printing, I usually get what I expect out of the printer, which saves time ink and $.
I had a friend that worked at adobe a few years ago that told me that they release 10-20 serial numbers into the wild for about all of their products so that kids resizing and cropping will choose their software. When the kids grow up, they'll know Photoshop/GoLive/Illustrator/whatever and will be more likley to purchase it or recommend it for purchase to their company. Nothing really lost as they wouldn't have bought the $500 package anyway. I believe macromedia came out a few years ago and said that they put together and distributed a full package version to pirate web sites to do the same. Now it's the most popular program going.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
In short, take a power4, lop off core #2, reduce the amount of L2 cache, add an altivec execution unit, change the bus interface and make it on a smaller (.13 rather than .18) process, and eh voila, PowerPC 970
And will I need a soldering iron or do you think I'll manage with some tape, a conductive ink pen and a sharp knife...?
RMN
~~~