Digital BW, The Print

Amadou,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. (And for your great book!)

I followed your link to that blog and its link to an Adobe article and learned some things. 
For now, I've decided to tweak  what I have and use Memory Stick and the efficiency 
measurement within Photoshop to decide whether I should increase my memory from 2GB 
to 4.

FYI, I usually can find things to do while Photoshop grinds away at an action involving 
many files - fixing a snack, checking email, ... It's the small chunks of time while working 
on a big file with many layers I'm trying to miimize; the seconds waiting for a filter to 
complete or a dodge/burn to show up in final form, for example, because these add up  
and there's nothing I can do but wait for completion.

Not contesting that you find a speed improvement with your new setup, but I'll keep those 
Macworld articles I saved and wait on a new Mac until I see an article showing a more 
significant improvement over what I have.

Thanks again,
Michael

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "amadou diallo" <amadiallo@...> 
wrote:
>
> Very few apps can utilize 8 processors simultaneously, and they are
> largely video editinging/production tools.
> See his blog post by John Nack for more info
> <http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2006/12/photoshop_and_multicore.html>
> Even if PS doesn't utilize all available processors that doens't mean
> there's no benefit to say, a 2x dual core setup. You have "spare"
> processors to devote to other apps and the OS while PS is crunching
> away. But video pros aside, the 8 core machines seem to be more for
> geek status than real world performance gains.
> When I switched to CS3 I moved to a Mac Pro 2x 2.66 dual core from a
> dual G5 2.5. On the Mac Pro, PS launches faster and progress bars feel
> shorter. A noticeable difference? Yes, but not night and day. And of
> course for optimum performance you need to feed the beast with
> adequate RAM, use fast drives, create RAID scratch disks, etc etc. So
> the cost of upgrading goes far beyond the Mac Pro purchase. Oh, and on
> top of that you get to track down (and pay) for upgrades for your
> other heavy use apps that must now be Universal Binary to run at full
> speed.
> Having said all of that, I don't regret the move, and everything feels
> fast, but there are definitely other ways to spend your money that are
> more photographically fulfilling.
> -- 
> amadou diallo
> Author, Mastering Digital Black and White
> www.masteringdigitalbwbook.com
>