Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Good Computer For Photo Editing
RainbowDoll59
Member UncommonPosts: 11
in Hardware
Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question but my dad currently has an eight year old windows vista desktop computer which he uses for photo editing and while it's not that bad he's having problems with it. I figure since the computer is almost 10 years old it's time for a new one. His birthday is coming up in February so I might get him a new computer for his birthday. He doesn't trust me to build a computer for him so he wants me to buy one. He said that he would mostly use it for photo editing in photoshop, but he also needs a word processor in which he can save in .doc. I told him that he could either use something like one drive or google drive or download open office for that. He also wants iTunes for putting music from his cd collection onto his computer so he's going to need a computer with a cd/dvd drive which I have notice is hard to come by these days. Since he takes lots of photos he's going to need a lot of hard drive space. He has a 1TB external hard drive filled with just photos and it's already a third of the way full. By the way he told me he would like another desktop since he doesn't plan on doing any photo editing on the go. Any ideas what kind of computer would be best for him.
Comments
If he only does word processing and photo editing, then get a really budget PC. Games use more processing power than anything, if he is not gaming then you can go for budget. You should be able to get a quite decent desktop for £150 to £200.
If he wants to play occasional games, then AMD offers some really good APUs that might lag a bit behind Intel on CPU performance but have superior integrated graphic cards and at very cheap prices.
Have at least 8GB of RAM on the system for photo editing.
You should get 2 hard drives. One small SSD disk for Windows and programs, plus a large HDD for storing photos. Alternatively you can just get a large enough SSD for daily use, and then occasionally move photos to external hard disk.
I am not sure what value someone would get who does not use games from a SSD drive? Two large HDD would be better.
8GB is a good idea if only because each iteration of word and photo processors assume you have more and more memory. Even though to my mind they do nearly exactly the same job.
For the average user, I would definitely say Dell. It's the warranty that makes them better, since your Dad can just call and have them fix and replace stuff for him, and the warranty can be extended after it expires if you feel the need. They have lots of options, just kinda depends on his computer area.
If you really need a CD drive sometimes, then just pick up a cheapo USB external, that should be fine. For storage of Photos, I cannot recommend a Drobo enough. It gives massive storage, redundancy, and easy expansion and replacement of drives that do go bad (you don't need matched drives, if a drive goes bad you can just get whatever at best buy to replace it).
For online storage/office, just do the office 365 thing. If you already have Office 365, you can attach his account to yours and that will let you share it. But it gives you the latest office, office for tablets and phones, office web apps, and a terabyte of onedrive.
The nice thing for you is, you don't need to look at the expensive end of the spectrum (since he isn't interested in games).
That said, you still have plenty of options in the amount you feel like spending.
--
You need an average processor (CPU). If he is into video editing at all, he will notice a difference with a faster CPU. If he is into simply touching up holiday photos a bit, the difference will be much less noticable.
The graphics card (GPU) only really makes a difference for playing games. In your case, it is much less important than the CPU. You can get away with a below-average one.
The RAM (memory) makes switching between applications faster. Technically speaking, it lets you get back to applications without the computer loading them up (calculating) again. 8GB is the standard for gaming today. In your case, 4GB would still be very decent.
The hard drives come in two types: HDD and SSD. A hard disk drive (HDD) offers much larger sizes for a lot less money. An SSD drive is much faster, but much more expensive. What my father (computer guy) builds for people is a small SSD drive (128GB) for the system + a large HDD drive for the file storage.
Some may say an SSD drive is a luxury, but it makes an enormous difference when doing the stuff your dad likes to do. The computer will start up in 8 seconds instead of 1 minute. Itunes will start up 5 times faster, internet browsing will be a breeze. It is definitely worth it. The fact that the computer won't have the latest cutting edge CPU and GPU won't matter, because he won't spend any time waiting for stuff to open with an SSD drive.
This video shows the difference between having your system on a HHD drive, compared to the faster SSD. (Starts at 0:30)
Just remember that Dell´s experts are also sales people and will try to get you to pay as much as they can...
This have been a good conversation
You may take a look at this test why:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_a10_7800_kaveri_apu_review,11.html
Buying one is no brainer, just look for AMD APU CPUs like A8-76xx and 8GB RAM and no GPU.
Another good thing about it that its actually decent intergated graphic card, so it will perform decently if he ever uses something that needs graphic card.
SSD is also highly recommended for quality of life.
For text editing i use Kingsoft Office (its free), and it works flawlessly. You may give it a go and see if it suits you.
http://www.kingsoftstore.com/
Don't talk to a sales advisor, they only try to convince you need twice the memory and processing power you really need. Your dad can't be doing something that needs less power to my mind. Photo editing Is not that power hungry. Its not like CAD, which is used to design new cars and so on.
Adobe has had good multi-core support for many years for both Photoshop and Lightroom. This is one case where an i7 actually makes some sense over an i5. It also makes good use of available memory so 16 instead of the typical 8 GB of RAM makes sense as well.
Depending on how he works and what he does, some things (eg. stiching severl shots into a panorama, stacking several exposure for HDR, etc.) will eat all available ram anyway and have to frequently load from disk so an SSD for the Windows and photo editing software (128 or 256 GB) will also be useful. A storage HD of 2 or 3 TBs should also be in there.
As others have said, graphics cards are not a biggie for 2D work so you can get away with a lower tier or even integrated one.
A couple of extras that make a huge difference would be a USB3 card reader (if his camera is older and doesn't have full USB3 transfer) to get those photos into the computer and a monitor calibrator (the cheap ones from Spyder or Xrite will do the job just fine) if doesn't already have one.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED