Digital BW, The Print

I had a similar feeling with my little 15in Powerbook (800Mhz).  I finally
stumped up for a 2x2.5Ghz G5 - 64bit processing rocks.  At the moment I only
have 1 Gig of RAM and I would like to go to 3Gig (my understanding from
recent posts is that PS CS can only use 2 Gig but with 3 it gets all of the
2).  I added a second internal hard drive and use that as a scratch which
helps.  I scan 35mm film at 6300 dpi (a little overkill but I figure if I am
going to go rent an Imacon 848 for an hour I might as well get the best scan
possible and it is fast), 16 bit - so that's around 90meg for B&W and 270
meg for colour...without any layers.  The G5 mulches this stuff.  If you
have colour slides and start using programmes like Photokit Sharpener (which
requires an RGB file), file sizes can rapidly peak out at a couple of gig
before you flatten them back down - even the G% twin slows down considerably
for this.


> From: Matthew Wensing <wensing@...>
> Reply-To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 14:25:24 -0800 (PST)
> To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [Digital BW] Computing power
> 
> 
> I scan in 4x5 negatives at 4800 dpi, 16-bit grayscale,
> and am having a tough (read: slow) time of it with
> Photoshop 6.0 with the resulting files.  Actually, I
> can't even work with the 50-90 mg .jpeg's, but instead
> downsize to roughly 12 megapixels and then
> dodge/burn/tweak those.  Does anyone here work with
> digital files around 50-90 megs in Photoshop that is
> happy with the quickness of their setup in doing so?
> Right now, with the machine I have, manipulating such
> files is impossible.
> 
> My machine is an Athlon XP 1.46 Ghz with 1 gig of DDR
> RAM.  Two possible bottlenecks from what I know are
> memory bus speed (333 Mhz with my current motherboard)
> and also the version of PS I'm using.  CS might be
> faster from the get-go?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Matt
> 
> =====
> E-mail: wensing@...
> Blog: <http://seaofglass.blogspot.com>
> Photography: <http://www.wensing-photo.com>