Do pro Photographers really have to use a Mac?!

I have somewhat a dilemma! My current PC is a MESH 3.6Ghz(P4 Intel single

core)/2Gb RAM/XT850 Radion Graphics card(256M) and loads of SATA disc space

running WinXP pro sp2.

 

Moreover, I am spending loads on new camera gear (even waiting for the 1Ds

mk3) and dont fancy shelling out any more for a MAC system plus learning a

whole new Op system (as im a seasoned Windows user).

 

I've heard colour management is better or has the potential to be better on

the mac... but this alone doesn't warrant the huge outlay in both time and

money for the Mac. With MS Vista just around the corner and increasingly

better colour management windows tools; maybe just buying a really decent

monitor would put me on par with even the best mac system?

 

If I have to go mac to be taken seriously in this profession then i will.

 

OK, this was not so much a question but a rhetorical speech. Any constructive

comments welcome.

"...Even waiting for the 1Ds mk3)"

 

Please let us know when your face turns blue from holding your breath.

 

Some professional photographers use Windows. I don't, but I know a few who do. If yu are

are working with ad agencies and graphic designers primarily you'll probably be better off

with a Mac.

 

 

I'd rather see you spend the money on a color calibration and profiling system and a better

monitor. So would your clients. But Vista is going to be like OS X 1.0 for awhile.

Macs hold no advantage anymore. When Photoshop first appeared, it was a Mac only application. So back then, yeah, you pretty much had to have a Mac. Today the programs are all but identical; the color management works pretty much the same and Macs are even using Intel processors. Plenty of professionals use PCs and Photoshop now. When's the last time you looked at a photo and wondered if it was prepared using a Mac or PC? No one on earth could tell.

I think it has less to do with being a professional photographer than what computer you're

comfortable using and can produce the images. They both can do the job, it's a matter of the

user. Personally, I used a PC for my last two years at work (~20 years of mainframe and Unix

before and with the PC), and I couldn't get the hang of PC, and Microsoft's dumb-down

mentality, along with the interface. Having never used a Mac, I tested and bought a G5, and

never regretted it. It's whatever works for you. And you can configure a Mac to

simultaneously run Windows, if you want. Good luck.

"...If yu are are working with ad agencies and graphic designers primarily you'll probably be better off with a Mac..."

 

That wasn't necessarily true back in 1998 when I used a Win-NT with some agencies and it sure ain't true now - thank God!

 

Macs have no advantage whatsoever any more.

<I>Macs have no advantage whatsoever any more.</I><P>Tell that to Microsoft, 90% of

their Graphic Division uses Macintosh computers. BTW, over 60% of the copies of Photoshop

sold are Macintosh versions.

As a professional special effects photographer for the last 22 years and on the Adobe alpha/beta team since 1989 as many here are and being a total Mac geek I can say that you absolutely do not NEED a Mac. As Ellis mentioned, Photoshop was Mac only and not unified until v 3.0. Both platforms run for the most part identically and by the way the processor has little if anything to do with Photoshop's underpinnings (just because they both use Intel chip is like saying that because the Camaro and Corvette both had small block Chevy engine they were comparable, not quite...). Both the Windows and Mac versions are very long in the tooth as neither has been totally overhauled since version 3.0 (that's nearly 12 years folk's) and the new ground-up rebuild has great promise.

 

As others have also stated, you should use what you are most at ease with and those around you are using (ie: your clients). I like the Mac platform because I don't want to have to know how to build an electric drill just to drill a hole. I just want to make holes. :-)

 

Pax,

 

Will

 

Adobe CTI Photoshop

From Computerworld earlier this year:<P> "Not surprisingly, according to research from

New York-based TrendWatch, 83% of graphic designers, 77% of corporate design

departments and 65% of advertising agencies rely on Macintosh computers. And

publishers also continue to depend on Apple's machines.<P>

 

Kim Vichitrananda, a desktop support engineer for 800 PCs and 250 Macs at The Dallas

Morning News, acknowledges that Windows has comparable applications for the

publishing market. But, she says, "those applications don't run as robustly on Windows.

They're not as fast or as seamless as on the Mac. We could not replace Macs for PCs."<P>

 

At The Home Depot Inc., senior engineer Bruce Covey evaluated only Mac options when he

upgraded his video production equipment at the company's corporate headquarters in

Atlanta. "We never considered the PC option, because it can't do what the Mac does in

video production," he says.<P>

 

Home Depot's video group standardized on dual-processor Mac G5 desktop machines

with 2GB of RAM accessing 4TB of storage on Xserve RAID storage. Covey uses Apple's

Final Cut Pro as his editing application.<P>

 

His team also depends on outside freelance talent to produce nearly 300 10-to-45-

minute videos every year on everything from CEO commentaries shot in the corporate

studio to forklift-safety programs filmed in warehouses. Covey says the "lion's share" of

freelance video talent "depend on Macs," so he does, too."<P>The article continues into

the use of Macintosh in the science community where UNIX rules. enuff said.

Absolutely yes. Black turtlenecks are optional.

Based on the comments above I don't see any reason for you to switch to a Mac and the arguments that "everyone's using it" is a pretty poor justifcation for anything. Get a decent monitor, calibrate your monitor and don't worry about the rest.

 

It isn't as if anyone's going to put "Win XP P4 2GB, Radion Graphics card, inkjet print 2006" on the wall in a gallery, so don't worry about being "taken seriously" because of your OS choice.

the reason I suggested using a MAc is if you are dealing with graphic designers and ad

agencies is that if they are workin with you they will much more likely to be familiar withte OS

X interface and command strucure than they will be with a Windows interfaceand command

structureAnd there is more than a little bit of perception issues going on: and understanding

perceptions like that is a lot of YOUR marketing ability. The issue of names on a wall or prints

in a gallery is a red herring.

Ace Fury - I bet you have figures to prove that everyone's riding pushbikes to work these days. You can also prove that most people are vegetarian and say "No to plastic bags" in supermarkets.

 

Inertia is the only reason agencies are still using Macs. They are taught by Mac-centric teachers and become resistant to change early in life. Apple has been very clever targeting education and academia. Alternative lifestyles will always exist.

I work for an art museum photography department during the day and continue to be

support staff at the community college photo program that I went through. We are mac

based at both places. I tell everyone to get a Mac. But only because I love working on a

mac. I let that go for about five seconds until I tell them to use what you know and don't

switch because you think everyone else uses a Mac. I really think that it depends on how

savy you are working in your camera software, photoshop or printing digital. If you have

problems with using a pc for simple things such as finding files and questions about

printing I still don't think a Mac is for you. What people need is the knowledge of how to

use what is in front of them. This discussion happens continuously at the community

college and it all depends on your own knowledge of what you are using. Learn Photoshop

well and it doesn't matter what you use. But expose yourself to both environments. We

have four week classes that meet once or twice a week for a few hours to learn Mac basics

because our digital photo program is on Macs. Today compared to 12 years ago when I

started in photography, the differences were huge even though Photoshop 3 was in use.

The differences were computer based and not software. And things have become

smoother between the two. Good luck, and spend the money on your career and not on a

computer.

<I>Any constructive comments welcome.</I><P>

 

OK, <a href="http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/

counselor_480x376.mov">click here</a>.

"Apple has been very clever targeting education and academia."

 

They used to provide pretty big discounts (and maybe still do). My former college began switching over to Dells en masse when Dell offered a better deal, although you'll still see some Macs sitting next to a scanner with a 21 inch monitor. We also used to have SGI graphics workstations, but they've been gone for years. This clearly proves that Dell is superior for most academic work.

 

I think what Ellis is saying is that Macs are cool, are perceived as the tool of choice for creative types, and using one will thereby enhance your reputation and marketability in the creative fields.

 

So is a Mac like trendy clothing? Nothing wrong with trendy clothes and they may be functional and high quality. It reminds me of a friend who just got hired by a NY talent agency and had to upgrade his wardrobe. He may be a literature expert and the smartest guy there, but that's not all that matters.

 

If you rip the guts out of a Mac case and put in PC internals, do you get the best of both worlds? (funny story linked)

http://macminute.com/2004/01/27/pcg5

Until Windows XP was released, the Macintosh was the preferred platform since it already had a huge market share in the creative segment.

 

However, the reality is that Windows makes up about 90% of the market, and it would be foolish if companies don't tap into that huge market.

 

My opinion, a Mac Pro would be a good choice. It runs both Mac OS X and Windows, and it has the best hardware (Intel Xeons with up to 32GB of headroom).

 

Your system is fine for now and the near future.

There is no practical difference, except that when in doubt Apple generally goes for style over function, and Mac users worry excessively about clothes. Most of the successful still photogs I know use PC's, and PC's dominate in areas like motion picture visual effects.

 

The little clip posted above demonstrates Apple's yearning for the good old days, when Apple really did have something special to offer. But since that time Apple has inherited a lot more from PC's than the other way around.

<I>"Not surprisingly, according to research from New York-based TrendWatch, 83% of graphic designers, 77% of corporate design departments</i><P>What OSX revision is Apple working on again? 10.5? Christ, I'm still running Wink2 Server and CS2, and making 40x60's off LightJets. Local graphic lab is running 4 Macs in house with two different revs of OSX because of driver incompatibility problems with OSX 10.4 and their printers, but they have no problem getting Win2K to talk to everything. Yep, I'm going to sell all my dual Core AMD to buy a dual core Intel tomorrow just so I can run the same apps on OSX. You want me to run OSX? Fine, give me a disk I can install on my Dual core AMD and I'll happily load it up. Russian hackers do. I can run OSX inside a VMware wrapper inside any hardware I want, but I can't load OSX legally on Intel machine unless it has the BIOS chip that says it can. <P>I'm currently doing security admin work for a 10,000+ user environment, which I've already lost count at how many corporate gigs I've done like this over the years. Contrary to the crap above, I haven't seen a Mac in a corporate media or marketing division since before the frikken millenium. I see portable Mac's from time to time, but that's it. I work with half a dozen local full time digital shooters in town, none use a damn Mac for anything. We made hi-def instructional videos a few months back for a MRP/ERP migration with $40 spent on software, and again, not a frikken Mac in sight<P><I>OK, this was not so much a question but a rhetorical speech.</i><P>Your right, it was. If you really think the OS is more important than your technique or apps, then you'll fit right at home on the Apple platform, or this forum. Might not be constructive, but it's true. Now if you pardon me I'm off to google all those top 10 web hosting providers that use OSX becuase of it's superior stability and and security.

I can think of two reasons why it's better to get a MAC. They may or may not affect you:

 

1. Apple users are very snobbish. They look down on PC users. It's not just in the TV Ads,

it is true. This is probably because Apple has such a small market share compare to

Windows. However, if you think you will be coming across all these snobbish people in

your line of work, you're better off having a MAC so they won't look down upon you. Here's

a nicer way to put it: If you need help on your work and the majority of the professional

who can help you use a MAC, it's easier if you use a MAC also.

 

2. Using Photoshop should be the last reason why you should choose a MAC. The MAC

platform has already outgrown the Photoshop niche. You can make your own HD movie,

burn a DVD, compose a piece of music, or edit your photos without investing in any extra

software. If you want more, there are world class professional editing software beyond

that.

<blockquote><i>...but it's true. Now if you pardon me I'm off to google all those top 10

web hosting providers that use OSX becuase of it's superior stability and and security.</i>

</blockquote>

 

<p>Hang on a sec -- let me login to one of my OS X servers:</p>

 

<tt>$ uptime<br/>

18:28 up 474 days, 19:08, 1 user, load average: 0.16, 0.03, 0.01<br />

</tt>

 

<p>Hmm, seems stable to me.

<p>I have a bunch of servers, most are Linux or Solaris, but a few are OS X (both server

and client versions). Personally, my next batch of servers are going to be Xservers. I've had

much better luck with them than my Sun or Dell machines. YMMV.

This topic will bring out the arguments. Bottom line to me: get the system that fits where you can get help if you need it and with which you're comfortable. There isn't all that much photographic that you can't do on the Mac or can't do on the PC, since most of the software is cross-platform. You can color manage effectively on PC. Buying a really good monitor is a good thing, certainly.

I use to think why bother with mac if your a windows guy? Well, I later found out why. If you get real serious about your photography, and want to buy a used drum scanner, they all run software only for the mac. Of course, with new stuff like the Creo IQ2/3 or Cizanne flatbed currently produced they work on either system (the Cizanne will soon have a windows version)...then again big $.

 

Probably best way around the problem is if your a windows guy, keep using it, but pick up a mac laptop if you want a used high end scanner. Check out this site and you will quickly see why a mac may be the way to go, for that one reason only.

 

http://genesis-equipment.com/products.cfm?prodTypeID=6

Did Steve Job have done anything to Scott when he was a kid? Scott seem very fragile when

whe bring a Mac vs PC...wonder why? Be happy my friend with your dream machine : )

If nothing else the 65,000 (known) viruses for the PC as oppesed to the how many for

Mac,....ZERO,...should give pause to those wishing to store their hard work and digital files

on a PC. I have benn using Macs for the past 16 years and have NEVER run any anti-virus

software because I have never needed to.

I do have a question about using XP. I know it supports ICC profile via the Display Control

Panel, but how do you create an ICC profile? There isn't any default ICC profile (e.g.

Monitor RGB, LCD etc). Is there a color management routine to help you set customize

profile, monitor gamma and white point? Or do I have to buy a display calibration device?

I've been trying to calibrate my PC monitor at work and can't find a good way to do it.

 

For folks who have not worked with a G5 or MacPro before, please go to an Apple Store

and ask them to show you the inside. The computer is whisper quiet, and it is an example

of great engineering design work.