Your computer setup?

jdeg

^ broke something
Staff member
Do you require a pretty hefty setup to process large amounts of photos? What are you currently working with? How about storage? Backups?
 

Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
I have a desktop (XP Pro) with a 23" lcd monitor, nothing special dual core but 3 gb of ram, most of the work is done on my laptops one with 3 gb (XP Pro and one with 4 gb (64 Bit Vista). I like to think of the Hard drives built in (250-500 GB) as nothing more than temporary storage, I back up to an external, I have several, and burn a dvd of my originals & edited shots as quick as I can. Normal workflow is Nikon View NX for raw downloads and then editing and cropping with Corel Paint Shop Pro X. Onced edited I do use other specialty software like flash and some slide show stuff mostly for web work and some for portrait work.
 
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pjl

Senior Member
Got 2; 8 yo HP P4 desktop (XP Home) and 2 yo Gateway laptop (Vista Home).
HP got toooo sloooooowwwww, and I needed a new laptop anyway...

I've got 3 external drives, 1 1.5 tb and 2 500 gb's.
All originals go to the 1.5 ext; edit prospects get copied to the laptop.
Laptop (and desktop) have Adobe Elements 7 on it.

Edit, etc., then transfer edits to the ext for storage.

Keeps the 'puter hard drive clean and faster for forum slogging...:)

My laptop has an HDMI out; I can link it to my big tv to run slide shows of my sunset shots...
Verrrrrry nice to be able to kick back and relax looking over some of my works. :cool:
 

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
Do you require a pretty hefty setup to process large amounts of photos? What are you currently working with? How about storage? Backups?

I use 3 systems. The majority of my processing is on a MacBook (2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 640 GB HDD). My desktop is a HP (2.0 GHz, 4GB RAM, 320 & 500 GB HDD, Win 7 Ultimate) and a ThinkPad T60 (1.8 GB HDD, 3GB RAM, 2 x 500GB HDD, Win 7 Ultimate).

All of my systems have OS-specific Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5. I download all images using Downloader Pro (using VMWare on the Mac) to a "New Images" directory, move them to a "My Pictures" directory using either Finder or Explorer and then import them in place in Lightroom.

If I'm traveling I use a WD USB drive to copy the "New Images" directory. Once I'm home I make an archive copy of the LR catalog and images on a 1.5TB external drive and also maintain a master directory on the desktop.
 

DaveKoontz

Senior Member
I have both a MacPro (G5) and the MacBook Pro. The G5 is used almost exclusively for editing and storage of my images. I currently have, and use three internal drives with capacity of just under three TBs. I store NEF in one drive, and the JPEGs in another... kind of a cold storage file, and a Work in Process/active file. I initially upload onto the desktop and then import into Aperture for minor editing, cropping and conversion to JPEG. The images are held in the Aperture Library (additional storage of NEF files). If I want to further "play" with the images I then download to PhotoShop Elements 6. The latter is an excellent package and seems to satisfy any of my editing needs.

I will often use my MacBook Pro both in the field as well as the studio to help refine my shots. To help with this I use Nikon's Camera Control an excellent way to validate your camera's set-up, adjust and preview potential results of the shoot. A couple of issues to overcome ... first you will need a 'shroud' to help block the light. Second, battery life is short so make sure that you use sparingly until you are confident in the set-up. Oh, and you will have some initial issue with the USB/Tether cable being so short ....
 

Browncoat

Senior Member
Laptop:
Running Windows 7 on 2.4GHz, w/ 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD. It has a 17" monitor and a graphics card that's more powerful than some PCs LOL. I do all my editing in Photoshop CS4 and ACR, and save all my RAW files as well. I often take my laptop into the field with me because it's much easier to see results on a 17" monitor than a 3" LCD.

Backups:
Currently just have 1 external HDD (500GB) where everything gets saved, even finished images. I also backup the really important stuff to USB drives.
 

jdeg

^ broke something
Staff member
You all have some pretty nice computers!

Here's mine -

Laptop:
HP HDX 16 - Intel Dual Core P7450 @ 2.13 GHz - 4gb ram - 225gb hard drive - Windows Vista Ultimate 64

Desktop:
Custom built Intel quad core i7 920 @ 2.67 GHz - 6gb DDR3 ram - Dual 147gb 15k rpm Fujitsu SAS drives running in RAID, 1tb storage - Dual 20" monitors - Windows 7 Ultimate 64
 
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Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
Desktop:
Custom built Intel quad core i7 920 @ 2.67 GHz - 6gb DDR3 ram - Dual 147gb 15k rpm Fujitsu SAS drives running in RAID, 1tb storage - Dual 20" monitors - Windows 7 Ultimate 64

Shweeet setup!
 
My setup:

13" MacBookPro Unibody 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 250GB HD, and when it's home, it's tethered to its 24" Apple Cinema Display (display has power/charging cable, USB hub/cable built in), and when it's on the road, it downloads all my cards.

Workflow includes download to laptop (or shoot tethered), burn DVD archive of .NEF (never shoot anything but .NEF), copy folder to external HD when it gets home. From there it's imported into Aperture 3, and unless there's a single image that I really want to work with, all the post is done there with help from Portrait Professional Pro 9.0 Studio edition, the entire Nik Software Suite, and if needed, Hydra HDR software plug-in for Aperture 3. Rarely I will actually export the files and work on them in Photoshop, but mostly only for sizing and creating something specifically for a web post.

For single image work, I'll open up Capture NX2 and play with that specific image there. From there I will edit in Aperture 3 with the Nik software if needed. It's RARE that I go this route, however.
 

Em11y

New member
Custom built liquid cooled, core2 duo at 3.00GHz DDR3 RAM, 2x ATI 4890 in crossfire also liquid cooled

may upgrade to the core i7 soon :)
 

Snap Happy

Senior Member
Nothing too flash, I got 3. First is my laptop I have in the camera bag. When I go out with my camera, it comes along too. It has Adobe Lightroom on it to do the first step in my workflow. It also has games and stuff to pass the time while not shooting or going to or coming back from a shoot. It is a 2.6 Ghz AMD processor, 2 Gig ram, a 500gig HD and I have a card reader with it and a 320 Gig External HD as well. Some blank DVD and it has a DVD Burner. I also have a portable blu-ray reader/drive/combo for watching movies or reading blu-ray data disks.

My second machine I use as a "Work" computer, just about the same specs as the laptop with windows 7 on it. I use this as my ..... Doing tasks machine, like processing stuff that takes ages, connecting to the internet etc.. All the stuff that takes a while to do. I do on this machine. I only have a 19 inch LCD monitor on this one.

My Third machine has a Quad Core AMD processor aprox 3.0 Ghz speed, 2 Gig Ram, 1 1/2 TB HD and 3x1 TB External HD's. It has a blu-ray burner plus a standard DVD burner (yes 2 DVD drives). A 23 inch Samsung LCD Calibrated Monitor (Gotta love the spyder). It also has Adobe Lightroom and Adobe CS4. Plus other standard programs MS Office and Windows XP Pro. Corel Photoshop and Paint shop Pro.

All computers have wifi access and bluetooth. They are all networked and share drives. Wifi modem at home, with ADSL2+ at home.

That is about it for my machines.

Edited for wrong specs :)
 

AxeMan - Rick S.

Senior Member
(*)Dell Inspiron 570 Desktop

AMD Athlon II X4 630 processor 2.8GHz,with a 2MB L2 Cache
6GB DDR3 system memory
1TB 7200 rpm hard drive (1000 gigs)
(*)Western Digital 500g My Book Essential External hard drive
16X DVD/CD burner drive
23" diagonal HDMI wide screen flat panel display (Running in HDMI @1920 x 1080)
Integrated ATI Radeon HD4200 graphics card
Built in 19-in-1 digital media card reader
Integrated 7.1 channel audio sound card
Epson Stylus NX100 All-in-One Printer / Scanner
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition
Adobe Photoshop Elements 8
McAfee Total Protection 2010

Photo's are download to a folder By Date then Event Name. Photo's are reviewed and good photo's copies are saved in new subfolder created called "Keepers". Keepers are processed in Photoshop if needed and saved into a new subfolders called Finished Photo's. Two more subfolders are created call To Print out, and Posting and copies are move into them if needed. This helps me keep track what I have printed and what I have posted, per Event.

File Structure:

Date and Event Name (All originals are kept here regardless of quality)
Keepers
Finished Photo's
To Print Out
Posting

Yes I know I'm wasting Hard Drive space by having double and triple copies of photo's, and I could use Photoshop Organizer to do this but find my way much faster when looking for photo's and remembering what has been printed out or posted.

Computer is password locked on BIOS Startup, and screen saver with two different passwords. This keeps Step children off the computer, and off the internet, preventing a total Virus Crash / Reformat, Reload Windows. Something I went through on my old Machine before I bought this one. Thank god for DVD Back-Ups other wise I would have lost a lot of photo's prior to buying my Nikon.

(*) NOTES:
This is a Wal-Mart bought machine (two thumbs up from me)

After drive was given to me new as a gift, Book Drive only is powered up and used during monthly back up after reading negative reviews on short life hard drive failures during constant use.
 

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
I use 3 systems. The majority of my processing is on a MacBook (2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 640 GB HDD). My desktop is a HP (2.0 GHz, 4GB RAM, 320 & 500 GB HDD, Win 7 Ultimate) and a ThinkPad T60 (1.8 GB HDD, 3GB RAM, 2 x 500GB HDD, Win 7 Ultimate).

All of my systems have OS-specific Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5. I download all images using Downloader Pro (using VMWare on the Mac) to a "New Images" directory, move them to a "My Pictures" directory using either Finder or Explorer and then import them in place in Lightroom.

If I'm traveling I use a WD USB drive to copy the "New Images" directory. Once I'm home I make an archive copy of the LR catalog and images on a 1.5TB external drive and also maintain a master directory on the desktop.

I replaced the ThinkPad T60 with a sweet little ThinkPad X201 two weeks ago. Netbook size at 3 pounds and a 12.1" matte screen, it has an Intel i5-520M (2.40GHz base; 2.93GHz Max Turbo, 3MB Cache), 8GB RAM, 500GB 7200 rpm HDD, Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Photoshop CS5 Extended 64-bit and Lightroom 3 64-bit. Keyboard is the same size as the T60 but without the trim. Got it a couple days before my recent trip to Vienna and the size/weight combo was awesome. I was able to get more than 6 hours of battery life too. Got a great deal through the Lenovo Outlet on the base machine and upgraded the memory and hard drive myself.
 

johnwartjr

Senior Member
Computers are as addictive as cameras :) I've been thinking of upgrading for awhile, but every time I get some extra funds to work with, I put it into camera gear and deal with the existing machines a little longer.

My primary workstation is a Dell Latitude D620 laptop - 2 ghz core 2 duo proc, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB 7200 RPM SATA drive, Windows 7 Ultimate x64, LR3, CS5
I also have a desktop that I use sometimes, although it is a bit outdated. Dell Optiplex 620, 3 ghz dual core processor, 4 GB RAM, 640 GB 7200 RPM SATA drive. Windows XP Pro, LR3, CS5

My workflow is as follows

After a shoot, I:

-Import card through LR3 on laptop. LR3 import module makes a 2nd copy to a network share on the desktop. Assign basic copyright info as well as basic keywording
-Go through images in library module of LR3 and do all flagging, ranking, etc. Add images to various collections and fine tune keywording.
-Edit those images that need editing, jumping into CS5 as needed. The majority (98+%) of my images are corrected and edited in LR3 without the need to go to CS5
-Export images to jpg as necessary. Publish using modules for SmugMug, Facebook, etc as appropriate.

My backups could use an improvement. I do a monthly 'full image' backup of the laptop using Acronis True Image. This is stored on a USB hard drive, and takes nearly 12 hours. The desktop is imaged a little less frequently as all it really does anymore is serve as the backup of the laptop.

I need to look a little closer at carbonite. If a drive fails, I should be OK - but if my house were to burn, flood, whatever, I would not be.
 

PhotoSnapShot

Senior Member
I have a HP dv9000 notebook computer (a couple years old) running Windows Vista 64bit, it has a 17in display and I have a second 19in LCD display hooked up for dual monitors. With an external 320gig HD. I just updated to lightroom 3.2 and Photoshop CS5 and now the computer is showing it's age.


For printers I have a Epson Picturemate 4x6 photo printer, and a Canon ip2600 for regular printing.
I recently was given on loan a large format printer a Canon iPF8100 (this printer is awesome) it will print posters and print on canvas.


I also have a Attached Network Storage Server running FreeNAS software for backups and extra storage. I also have Mozy Online backup. I am a little paranoid about backing up data over the years I have had many hard disks crashes.


this is a picture of my setup with out the big printer

DSC_0124-2.jpg
 

fotojack

Senior Member
I build my own computers. Right now I have an AMD motherboard with 4 gigs of DDR2 RAM, 500 WD HDD, 2 SuperMulti DVD drives, a multi card reader, an ASUS EN9500GT 1GB video card, onboard 7.1 audio, 22" Samsung wide screen HDMI monitor (colour corrected), an HP PSC 1610 all-in-one printer. I use LR3, Paint Shop Photo Pro X3, NX2, Picassa 3 and Irfanview for cropping and resizing. Still using XP Pro 32 bit, as I'm waiting for Windows 7 prices to drop dramatically. ;) Either that, or I'll have to resort to pirating a copy somewhere! :) lol
 

Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
I have a HP dv9000 notebook computer (a couple years old) running Windows Vista 64bit, it has a 17in display and I have a second 19in LCD display hooked up for dual monitors. With an external 320gig HD. I just updated to lightroom 3.2 and Photoshop CS5 and now the computer is showing it's age.


For printers I have a Epson Picturemate 4x6 photo printer, and a Canon ip2600 for regular printing.
I recently was given on loan a large format printer a Canon iPF8100 (this printer is awesome) it will print posters and print on canvas.


I also have a Attached Network Storage Server running FreeNAS software for backups and extra storage. I also have Mozy Online backup. I am a little paranoid about backing up data over the years I have had many hard disks crashes.


this is a picture of my setup with out the big printer

View attachment 588

Way too neat, makes me ashamed of my work area, you don't even have a yellow sticky in sight.
 

johnwartjr

Senior Member
Picked up an ASUS G73JH laptop this week.

The D620 is getting old and tired, and it's out of warranty. I had the system board replaced 6 or 7 times in the 3 years of warranty due to a design flaw with the video card overheating.

Since I use it so much, and depend on it, I needed a backup, and I decided to replace the laptop first. The desktop is just too slow to use that much. So, the old laptop goes on the shelf as a backup for now.

I'll pick up a faster desktop sometime soon probably, but the new 85 1.4 is calling my name pretty loudly, so it comes first!

SPecs of the G73JH
Intel Core I7-740QM processor - 4 cores, 2 threads per core. 1.73 GHz
6 GB DDR3 memory, expandable to 8. While the MFG says 8 GB is the max, I've seen reports of people doing 16 GB online.
17.3 inch screen, 1600x900 resolution
640 GB SATA2 drive
Radeon HD 5870, 1 GB RAM built in. HDMI output for my big ole monitor too!

I also added a couple external drives to the mix this week, since I am out of disk space! The drives are combo USB/eSATA drives, 2 TB capacity. Actual usable space is around 1.8 TB each.

Did a little benchmarking, to see if the i7 is really as good as it sounded!

Test 1:
Combined 3 files into a HDR using LR3 and CS5
Old machine took 2:41
New machine took 1:52

This one wasn't a real common task for me, but I did note how making the HDR brought my system to its knees last time I tried it.

Test 2:
Took 562 RAW images I shot at a wedding last weekend, and converted them to JPG in LR3
Old machine took 54:21
New machine took 23:15

This test *is* a real world activity for me.

So, productivity has improved :)
 
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