Digital Photography Minimum Requirement ?'s

My Brother-out-law has a photography studio and would like to begin to take and manipulate digital photo's. He already owns a very high end camera and now needs a computer to go with it. His P3 475 just wont keep up. He's asked for advice from conputer retailers and the advice all seems to be the same... "spend $2200 on the box so you can have the latest thing we have".

He owns the latest edition of PhotoShop. I've suggested that a decent 2G system with 512M would do him nicely for around $8 or 900. But I'm not an expert by any measure. We'd both appreciate any advice. Thanks, Chris

Hi.. It's not my area of expertise but I just had a friend over who does work with digital photograpy professionaly and he suggests to start off with at least five times as much ram as the average size of photos you'll be manipulating with photoshop... So if it's dealing with a 25meg file it should have exlusive access to 250megs of ram (keeping in mind the operating system should have at least 256M as well)

His computers at work all have an absolute min of 512megs and most have double or triple that. None have a processor less than 1.2G and he finds that 1.5G is a decent starting point.

He also said that they've recently bought a couple of Western Digital Hardrives with 8megs of buffer memory (as opposed to the 2meg buffers he had been using) and there's a noticeable difference there too.

They all use either win2k or xp pro.

The price range of $2k-2.5k would be the retail price for a high quality store bought PC but as you suggest one could be built with top notch parts for around half that.

Anyway see what others here, who may themselves use photoshop etc, say as well.

Precisely what I was looking for. I had no clue about the 5x factor, although I should have known to suggest a larger buffer in the HD.

Thanks to you and to anyone else, please add your comments, al are quite welcome.

Chris

I am a photographer and I use the following with no problems.

Gateway laptop, 96mb of ram, Pentium III at 600Mhz, 6GB hard drive, Windows 98 SE, Photoshop, PhotoDeluxe.

Canon flatbed scanner, Minolta Scan Dual II film scanner, HP Deskjet 932C printer. Minolta digital camera, film cameras (35mm, and 6x6, and Olympus 1/2 frame).

cus4fun, Photoshop works great on my 800GB computer and Windows XP, so your advice about not spending over $2000 is right on. The top of the line computers would be required more for video editing. The place to spend a little extra would be on a high quality flatbed scanner and printer. I have the same HP Deskjet 932C printer mentioned by jholloway, and it does a good job for home use, but I think I'd invest in something better if he hasn't already. I've read good things about Canon printers for photos.
If he follows your advice for 2GB, 512MB ram, he will be happy.

I am a photographer also, and I have a 900mhz, with 384 meg ram. I use Photoshop 6 and 7. both work fine on this lesser machine.

My input is about printers:
I use an Epson 1270 with excellent output for photos. If your friend is intending to sell his work, I would suggest either a higher end ink jet as mine is, or (wish I could afford it..:D) a thermal printer/dye sublimation. Kodak has some for about $800.

If he's interested you can show him this:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/

click on "digital photography" once at the home page.

Dye subs last longer and don't show those dreaded "dots" like ink jet. Most are waterproof also.