imac matt screen?

[ben_swinnerton1]

Considering a 24" imac as next purchase. Can you get the screen in Matt finish?

[tmcleland]

Not a fan of the glossy screen either, yah? The only option to get the matte screen is to get the last white model.

Apple.com still has a few for sale in the clearance/refurb area of their web site. Alternately, there's (cheap) the Mac Mini

or (expensive) a Mac Pro, and the Apple Cinema Display.

[Carl Stone]

Not in the current models. But, I love my glossy screen. Probably the worst place to view the glossy screen is at an Apple Store, or other

retailer that has it displayed under strong lighting. At home, I do not have reflection issues with the glossy screen, and the colors are way

better than the matte screens.

[ben_swinnerton1]

is there a mac coming out in near future that is between imac and mac pro?

[Carl Stone]

Not that I know of. If there is, it's a closely guarded secret at Apple.

 

Don't sell the 24" glossy short, it's a great photography machine. If you max it out with ram, images open almost instantly.

Plus, it's half the price of a MacPro and 23" ACD.

[kerry_grim]

Go to a Mac Superstore and see the monitors for yourself. My thoughts exactly until viewing the monitor. It is georgous and great for photos. Likely, blacks will look better on a glossy monitor. The only problem I see is the extreme brightness of the monitors, which certainly can be turned down.

 

My fears were relieved when actually seeing the monitor. I talked about the screens with a friend who uses Macs and PCs and he said the only people who do complain about the glossy screens are PC uses who basically deserve Vista.

 

After seeing the IMac, there is definitely one in my future as soon as I can afford it. Go see one for yourself and, surely you will be impressed.

[ben_swinnerton1]

i suppose glossy or matt, if the screen is calibrated properly, images should look ok. What are your thoughts on a pantone huey calibrator compared to Eye-one?

[Carl Stone]

I use a Spyder 3 Pro, and it does a great job.

[ben_swinnerton1]

Slowly steering twds imac glossy but teetering on macbook pro too. Is there a noticeable speed difference between

24-inch: 2.8GHz imac and 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo macbook pro.

 

I shoot a lot of weddings and have anywhere between 1000-1500 images up on Lightroom (PC) at one time, plus PS

CS3 running too. Will the macbook handle such output or should I steer twds a desktop

[Carl Stone]

The MBP is a fine machine, but it's not a desktop. For photography, the 24" iMac will be better, and considerably less

expensive than a MBP. Laptops don't compare with a good desktop for imaging. The general consensus is that the 24"

2.8 GHz iMac is a better buy than the 3.06 GHz model because of the extra expense of the latter model, for only a 7%

gain in performance.

 

I use external hard drives to both backup my iMac, and for extra storage. The Icy Dock external enclosures are great for

both of those operations because you can hot swap hard drives on the go. One can also get extra trays, mount hard

drives to them, and have as many hard drives ready to hot swap as you like. They run cool, they're dead silent, and they

take 3.5" SATA I or II drives. You can get enclosures with interfaces for eSATA, USB 2, Firewire 400, Firewire 800, or a

combination of those.

 

http://www.icydock.com/product/mb559ueb-1smb.html

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817198013

[g dan mitchell]

Glossy only. I worried about it until I got my 24" iMac - it has a great screen and is a fine Photoshop machine. I _never_

think about the "glossy screen problem" until I come across these occasional posts on the topic.

 

The laptop thought is interesting, but there are issues. I used a "Pro" Apple laptop as my main computer for several years.

The two main issues are the smaller screen and the limits to internal hard drive capacity.

 

You can resolve the screen issue by attaching an external monitor when you use the computer as a virtual desktop machine.

(Many Apple laptop users keep an extra keyboard, mouse, and monitor on the desk and connect them all when not going

mobile.) If you go this route, you may be able to save some money (and tonnage to carry) by getting the smaller 15" model

and relying on the desktop monitor (24" or larger) for major PS work.

 

The hard drive capacity issue is a tougher one to solve. The largest laptop drives generally available are 320 GB, though I've

heard of 500 GB models that should be available soon. 320 GB is not very big for an active photographer. I have quickly

filled the 750 GB drive in my iMac, and if I were getting one today I would certainly get the 1 TB model. With your laptop you

are almost certainly going to need to hook up a bunch of external drives to expand your archival storage - and to make

sufficient backups of all this stuff.

 

Another approach is to outfit your desktop iMac as your working PS machine and then get the cheapest Macbook (not pro)

that you can find. Add third-party memory to bring it to 4 GB RAM and install a cheap 320 GB internal drive. Reserve the use

of this very small and not over-powered laptop for mobile stuff, and do your main work on the desktop machine.

 

Dan

[Carl Stone]

Not to argue with Dan, but buying hard drives from Apple is the expensive way to go. Using the Icy Dock external drive

gives one unlimited storage capacity, limited only by the drives that you have, and you can get the drives at much better

prices than what Apple charges. I buy the smallest internal drive that Apple offers, then use my externals to cover my

needs beyond that.

[joseph_martines]

I recently upgraded to the iMac 24" glossy from a three + year old 20" iMac.

 

Boy, do I love the screen. It has the real estate to work on images and the glossy screen doesn't phase me one iota.

 

I especially love the flat key board. It has helped my carpal tunnel syndrome immensely.

 

Bought a "Drobo" for image and all back-up.

 

I think you will enjoy it. Let us know.

[Uhooru]

Just curious. Has anyone here actually printed on the new 24" glossy's? And how were the results. Luv my 24 matt, but looks like some day I'll have to get a glossy unless Apple has a change of heart.

[ricardo_tomasi]

uh? printed?

 

you mean compared prints to screen output, as in calibration?

[Brad_]

I have a MacBookPro. As nice as it is, I would not use as my sole image processing machine. TN LCD panel (like all

laptops), slower HD, slower internal bus. Works fine on the road...

 

With respect to the 24" iMac, glossy is great. You won't be disappointed. For external drives, just go FW 800 with a drive

from OWC. Nothing zippier...

[ben_swinnerton1]

I'm currently using a PC with Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 @ 2.4ghz and 4bg Ram and Samsung 2253BW LCD. What sort of comparrison can anyone make with this against an iMac 24" 2.8.

 

Is the mac going to be 10x faster than the pc or not. I edit between 1000-1500 images at a time in Lightroom and have Photoshop cs3 running too

 

I've also got a 1TB Western Digital HD as back-up.

[Brad_]

>>> I'm currently using a PC with Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 @ 2.4ghz and 4bg Ram and Samsung 2253BW LCD. What sort of comparrison

can anyone make with this against an iMac 24" 2.8.

 

I doubt anyone here can give you an absolute answer on that. Best thing to do would be to take a bunch of image files into an Apple

store and play with an iMac 24" to see if you like the overall experience.

 

It gets to a point where 95% of the image editing operations happen so quickly, that discerning a 10% change is difficult. I would look

for things like how responsive the interaction is. And how you like OS X. To me, it's not the hardware, but rather all about the OS and

how that integrates with things I need to do.

[Carl Stone]

"Just curious. Has anyone here actually printed on the new 24" glossy's?"

 

Sure, the prints are fine. I turned the brightness down to the lowest setting, then calibrated my 24" with a Spyder 3 pro.

[denise_d]

I had a nice G5 that recently died. The only replacement option I could afford was a 24" imac, so off I went to the apple

store. I had concerns about the glossy screen as well, so I took a couple of image files with me on a thumb drive. In

the overhead florescent lighting at the store I was not really too impressed with the glossy screen, but I bought the imac

anyhow, knowing that I could hook up my existing monitor to the imac if I really decided that I hated the glossy screen.

 

After I got home and calibrated the imac and got away from the awful lighting in the store, I discovered that it's really

pretty good. Nice colors and no glare. the only thing I have discovered is that my prints (on a Epson R2400) tend to be

a tiny bit lighter than what I see on the screen.

[Carl Stone]

"the only thing I have discovered is that my prints (on a Epson R2400) tend to be a tiny bit lighter than what I see on the

screen."

 

Did you leave the brightness set all the way up when you calibrated? If so, you might want to drop it down, and re-calibrate.