Photoshop plug-in for raw format (crw)

[RalphEisenberg]

My prayers have been answered. Not only will the plug-in be rapid and efficient in real-time RAW image enhancement and subsequent conversion, it will instill in the user true competence in color management, as well as obviate the need for profiling down through the workflow. Because of its effectiveness I shall no longer have to upgrade my Mac and can allocate my funds to the greatly discounted 1 Ds to which all Adobe RAW plug-in users are entitled on the Mac platform. Finally, it will endow me with the knowledge, talent and photographic technical proficiency to make Photoshop retouching a mere mouse click to the free Epson printer. I trip over my tongue in panting expectancy on the way to adding this reply.

[Charles_Beasley]

Noel-I agree. The new ones have PC1066 RDRAM and 533MHz frontside bus that will take advantage of it, and hyperthreading.

If I'm not mistaken the latest Macs system bus can't take full advantage of their newest ram. Seems like they half-ass things until the latest version of a product line.

I've got 3 Macs and just got a Dell 4550 (my first ever PC) 1.8 ghz P4, 640mb ram, 30 & 120 GB 7200 rpm drives, CD burner, wireless keyboard & mouse,64 mb Nvidia card, firewire for under a grand (including $100 rebate and free shipping.) I'm gonna bring the ram up to a gig (the most this one will hold.) I'll primarily use it to do conversions as I am now (with trepidation) going to do weddings with the D60. With such large amounts of data to process, Canon's Raw Image Converter on the Mac just won't cut it.

I'll probably still do any necessary tonal and color correction to occasional files on my Mac.

This has been a tough decision, but OSX (still not as fast as 9.2 for Photoshop,) lack of software (such as Breezebrowser, Yarc, Pics2Exe,) price difference, speed, all came together to make my mind up.

I never thought I'd do it, but it
SEEMS like a justifiable business decision. I emphasize so that if I have to eat my words later,I can find them more easily!

[ January 12, 2003: Message edited by: Charles Beasley ]

[Charles_Beasley]

Noel-Is this what you were wanting to see?:

http://digitalpostproduction.com/200...acvspciii2.htm

Warning: Not pleasant reading for Mac eyes!

[Laurence_Bartone]

Charles,
I hardly blame you for going to a PC (at least for conversions), but what are you doing about color management? Are you managing your images? Is your monitor calibrated? This is the main part (besides the basic interface) of the Mac that's necessary for professional delivery, and I believe only Macs can do this correctly. I do conversions on a PC, too, but only manage them on a Mac. Also, I don't see any speed increases for Macs in the next 6 months, but certainly by 2004. If they're still there (just rumors).

bartone

[Noel_Carboni]

Yes, Charles that's more of what I would expect (wow, look at the difference in "Photoshop: Filter Effects"), and THAT Precision workstation was only running one processor.

I hear hyperthreading will make a dual processor system run even better. Plus, even single-threaded programs run better on multiprocessor systems because XP farms things like file system management and user interface stuff to the other processor.

My rickety old slow dual 800 system is falling out of date fast! [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

-Noel

[JohnMalloy]

Bartone writes >>Are you managing your images? Is your monitor calibrated? This is the main part (besides the basic interface) of the Mac that's necessary for professional delivery, and I believe only Macs can do this correctly.<<

Being as Apple no longer provides CRT monitors, and they use PCI video cards (same as PCs), and PCs now use an OS that is ICC profile aware, I'd challenge that belief. Either platform will do about the same on color management.

[Charles_Beasley]

Bartone & John-I have the Dell and Mac both hooked up to the same 21" Mitsubishi 2060U. The Mac (which has an ATI Radeon card)is calibrated & profiled with Optical. The Dell has an Invidia card that I will try to profile if I choose to buy the PC version of Optical.

I gray balance (CWB) each lighting setup in camera (D60.) I assign a custom camera profile and convert to Adobe 98, and convert when needed to whatever output profile is called for. (Andrew Rodney profiled my Fuji Pictro, my lab provides a profile for their printers.)

I rarely do much if any color correction (due to careful CWB,exposure & profile,) mostly just tonal adjustment. When I do, I'm on the Mac.

Frankly right now I can see very little if any difference in the images when I switch back and forth between the Dell and the Mac. I guess the Nvidia card is putting out data failry close to what I have the monitor controls set to when calibrating.

Everything's rosy!

PS-The biggest drawback I see so far to the PC is that the Ctrl key is not in as nearly a convenient place as the Command key on the Mac keyboard; why did Adobe choose to use Ctrl instead of Alt in the Mac equivalent keyboard shortcuts?

[ January 12, 2003: Message edited by: Charles Beasley ]