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from pc to mac.

cdonovancdonovan Registered Users Posts: 724 Major grins
edited February 24, 2009 in Digital Darkroom
:D

I know it can be a fairly "easy" transition, but, I still have some questions.

Can anyone answer them for me?

Main question is, imac or mac pro and why?
I'm a fairly busy photographer, what are the advantages and will someone like me notice the difference. I've about 80% filled my pc (all photo files are store on external hard drives) it's specs are 524 processor .. 1.0gb memory 200gb hard drive I have found it extremly slow in the last 6 months, so know that it's nearing it's life expectency.

I have cs3 right now for the pc and won't go to the mac without photoshop, so assume that I'll have to buy the mac version, but, I've over the last few years purchased noise reducers, and various actions from people...will those work on the mac, or will I have to purchase those again too?

Should I purchase the CS4 or is it possible to still purchase CS3? I've had problems with it running on my pc, several defunked things happening, but I've chalked it up to it being pc problems...it is 5 years old! lol


Any insight will help!
Thanks

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    Art ScottArt Scott Registered Users Posts: 8,959 Major grins
    edited February 20, 2009
    From all I have read and seen on here mac is almost to the point of being a price inflated pc..........

    I took my Plll 1.0gb processor /w512 ram and rebuilt to a dual amd processor with 2gb of ram (will have 4 next week and yes MOB and software will recognize all 4gb).....i put the full specs on another thread .....but this thing now screams and my cpu meter has yet to even move ...where as on my old pc it was in the red all the time ........ several years ago Mac was the best graphics machine there was......but people still used pc for graphics also.....with rebates and all I builtthis machine for right at $300 (after rebates)......I now have around $500 invested including 3 - 1tb internal harddrives (special cables etc) with another on its way .......I store nothing on my c drive except for what is actually running.....all software is stored on an external as are all of my music and photos.....software and music one one (plus their repecive back up drives) and photos on another drive (+ respective backups)........I have found that as longas I keep taht "C" drive holding only what is actually running the machine runs faster and better.
    "Genuine Fractals was, is and will always be the best solution for enlarging digital photos." ....Vincent Versace ... ... COPYRIGHT YOUR WORK ONLINE ... ... My Website

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    PupatorPupator Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
    edited February 20, 2009
    cdonovan wrote:
    :DMain question is, imac or mac pro and why?
    I'm a fairly busy photographer, what are the advantages and will someone like me notice the difference.

    The iMac has the advantages of its space-saving design. Every other advantage goes to the Mac Pro (Except price, I guess). Many folks do not like the iMac's glossy screen for photo editing. That's probably the feature you'll have to consider most. Of course, if you're going to buy a Mac Pro and a crummy monitor, that won't matter much! rolleyes1.gif

    Adobe will let you transfer your Photoshop license to Mac. I don't know the answer to your plug-in questions.
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    mwgricemwgrice Registered Users Posts: 383 Major grins
    edited February 21, 2009
    I moved to a Mac last year. It was a pain to switch the license for CS3, but I was able to do it eventually for the cost of the media and shipping (around $20 USD).

    I have read about people making the switch using an upgrade version instead. I would recommend calling Adobe about that first.

    Personally, I'm going to hold off on upgrading until the next release, and possibly longer. I believe you can run Lightroom on either platform with the same license, and the fact that you can't with CS3 annoys me to no end.
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    RichardRichard Administrators, Vanilla Admin Posts: 19,937 moderator
    edited February 21, 2009
    Pupator wrote:

    Adobe will let you transfer your Photoshop license to Mac.

    Unless Adobe has changed its policy, you can only transfer a license on the current version of a product, i.e., CS4. You would need to pay the upgrade fee to CS4 to transfer to Mac.
    My Pics
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    CatOneCatOne Registered Users Posts: 957 Major grins
    edited February 21, 2009
    Art Scott wrote:
    From all I have read and seen on here mac is almost to the point of being a price inflated pc..........

    Well, except if you get the PC you have to run this POS called Windows. That's a not so insignificant difference headscratch.gif
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    Art ScottArt Scott Registered Users Posts: 8,959 Major grins
    edited February 21, 2009
    CatOne wrote:
    Well, except if you get the PC you have to run this POS called Windows. That's a not so insignificant difference headscratch.gif

    Actually since I learned not to trust MS telling me I NEED this or that update my OS has been running smoothly except for the fact that my previous pc was around 8yrs old with a maxed ram of 512.....the new one screams and I have had open and running 29apps all at once for over 5 hours and that did not include FF with its current 72 tabs open and running....no crashes, no stalls and under $300.....after rebates of course
    "Genuine Fractals was, is and will always be the best solution for enlarging digital photos." ....Vincent Versace ... ... COPYRIGHT YOUR WORK ONLINE ... ... My Website

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    mwgricemwgrice Registered Users Posts: 383 Major grins
    edited February 22, 2009
    CatOne wrote:
    Well, except if you get the PC you have to run this POS called Windows. That's a not so insignificant difference headscratch.gif

    You are paying a premium to run a Mac, though. I'm debating the merits of making the next white box PC I build double as a hackintosh. I could use a good VMware lab, though, so I may go that route instead.

    Has Adobe changed its policy on platform switching since CS4 was released? Honestly, they need to seriously rethink this: there is no good technical reason why we can't run their product on both Mac and Windows. They already let you run it on two machines, after all.
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    cdonovancdonovan Registered Users Posts: 724 Major grins
    edited February 24, 2009
    You guys are awesome, thanks for you help so far.

    I have another question about hard drives.
    I have 3 externals right now, and wondered if I unplug from my pc, am I going to be able to just plug em into the imac?
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    DavidTODavidTO Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
    edited February 24, 2009
    Aside from display preferences, the biggest difference IMO between the iMac and the MacPro is the drive bays in the MacPro. It's so easy to slide a drive in, it's all SATA with no cords or external nuthin', and they're cheap enough that you can RAID, or run a backup internally. For large storage needs the MP wins, I think.
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    DavidTODavidTO Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
    edited February 24, 2009
    mwgrice wrote:
    You are paying a premium to run a Mac, though. I'm debating the merits of making the next white box PC I build double as a hackintosh. I could use a good VMware lab, though, so I may go that route instead.

    Has Adobe changed its policy on platform switching since CS4 was released? Honestly, they need to seriously rethink this: there is no good technical reason why we can't run their product on both Mac and Windows. They already let you run it on two machines, after all.


    You build a hackintosh and you're violating your EUA. Not an option that's open for discussion here on dgrin.
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    RichardRichard Administrators, Vanilla Admin Posts: 19,937 moderator
    edited February 24, 2009
    cdonovan wrote:
    You guys are awesome, thanks for you help so far.

    I have another question about hard drives.
    I have 3 externals right now, and wondered if I unplug from my pc, am I going to be able to just plug em into the imac?

    Macs don't natively deal well with NTFS formatted drives, but FAT32 is no problem. You can reformat the external drives if you have to, but it will require some juggling. There are also third party products that provide full NTFS support.
    My Pics
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    cdonovancdonovan Registered Users Posts: 724 Major grins
    edited February 24, 2009
    Richard wrote:
    Macs don't natively deal well with NTFS formatted drives, but FAT32 is no problem. You can reformat the external drives if you have to, but it will require some juggling. There are also third party products that provide full NTFS support.

    thumb.gifThank you for that, I have one NTFS which I usually use with my laptop when traveling off site, I was very close to coming home with one tonight, but ran out of shopping time....I can't get over the size of the monitors....I can't wait, it's going to be easier than I expected...I'm going to adobe right now to find out about replacing photoshop!rolleyes1.gif
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