Ordered a new iMac!

[eric j]

Hi,

Being on the dark side of 86 and with another birthday looming, I’ve decided to treat myself to a new Mac.

The Mini, purchased some 5 years ago, is still working well on Snow Leopard but I have an urge to experience more speed on photo modifying apps, having acquired a nice Olympus OMD M10 Mk 2 recently.

After studying the multitude of options for the iMac Retina (poor eyesight prefers a good monitor) I finally opted for a CTO version rather than one of the standard models.

The sales person was a little surprised that I chose the basic 27” with one exception, namely, instead of the conventional Fusion drive, a 512Gb SSD. It seems that most others (probably business users with more cash and the ability to deduct their purchase from tax liabilities) associate an SSD hard drive with top graphic cards and processors.

All this rambling may be of little interest to fellow Techsurvivors but I’m feeling in a mellow mood and – though my order is now placed and irrevocable – I wonder what others think?

eric j

[kimmer]

I think you'll truly enjoy your new iMac! I love the retina screen on my MBPro, and an saving up to get an iMac like yours.

[beacher]

Congratulations, Eric!  You're making me jealous!    Since you want to "massage" your photos, check out the on1 Photosuite;

http://tinyurl.com/obx7se5  I use both this and LightRoom, but the on1 software is much more intuitive than LR!  Have fun, Eric!

BTW, I applaud you on your adventurousness; I have friends that are 20 years behind you, and are stuck living in the past, and wondering why they aren't happy. . .

[jchuzi]

You're really going to like that machine. I thought that my 2007 Mac Pro was good until I got my iMac (a birthday present to myself for turning 70). Put it this way: If you don't indulge yourself, who will? According to Jewish tradition (my ethnic background), God will call you to account for all the harmless little pleasures that you denied yourself.

Good luck and enjoy!

[Xairbusdriver]

I think you'll be very happy, mate! I know I would!! Congrats! "Pre/Post Birthday, self purchased gifts" are always the best!!

[Paddy]

Eric, you'll love it. I treated myself to a 27" Retina iMac this summer - I'd been looking into 4K screens and finally came to the conclusion that the iMac was the most cost effective way of getting one, particularly as my early 2008 Mac Pro was getting a tad long in the tooth and didn't have a video card capable of supporting 4K.

I found one at the refurb store - opting for the 1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM. I still need external drives for my photos - but decided since I'd need them anyway for backup etc., that I'd go for the fastest SSD startup drive.

The only downside is that now the screen on my old Mac Pro, an 8 year old 24" Dell, looks both small and extremely fuzzy!

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

The only downside is that now the screen [...] an 8 year old 24" Dell, looks both small and extremely fuzzy!

I'm sure it's just the better pixels on the iMac...
OTOH, a visit to a competent Optometrist might be wise...

[Paddy]

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Nov 8 2015, 04:02 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

QUOTE

The only downside is that now the screen [...] an 8 year old 24" Dell, looks both small and extremely fuzzy!

I'm sure it's just the better pixels on the iMac...
OTOH, a visit to a competent Optometrist might be wise...

Well, erm, 442 pixels per inch vs 96 is a rather noticeable difference. I may need glasses to drive and watch TV, but I'm not THAT blind!

One of my clients has an older LCD monitor on her PC, which I suspect is about 72 PPI and it's almost unusable to my eyes. I don't know how she stands it. I've been spoiled, clearly.

[eric j]

I apologize for being so tardy in responding to the many kind words of encouragement and support that ensued from my notice about having ordered a new iMac.
What transpired was the following; I followed a link suggested by beacher and began to examine ON1 Photo 10.
I’m ignorant, but curious, about post-processing so I proceeded to spend hours browsing the Web investigating a myriad of PP apps, each with its own characteristics, not to mention price.
The consequence is well expressed by some words attributed to Omar Khayyam:-

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
About it and about:
But evermore came out
By the same door as in I went.

I encountered new expressions and abbreviations, like “content aware” and DAM.

Until now I have shot in JPEG. It seems that RAW brings benefits along with larger file sizes. Still I’m not entirely clear why a preliminary edit in RAW needs to precede the PP in JPEG.

A new Mac app “Affinity Photo” is receiving a lot of attention.

Techsurvivors is not the venue for long photo editing discussions so I’m not looking here for further advice on the topics raised above – I’m merely trying to justify my delayed response (and I already have PSE 11).

BTW the Olympus M10 has an astounding EVF.

For the iMac, being a CTO, I have to wait about 2 more weeks until delivery.

Thanks again.

eric j

[Xairbusdriver]

I'm no expert in photography nor the varied apps available. But not being an expert never deters my delivery of opinions, advice and comments!

As mentioned before, I use Elements 11 (only upgrade when I see something I think I can use). I bought Aperture when Apple offered it at a steep discount a couple of years ago (I should have guessed that move indicated pending end-of-support ). I bought LightRoom as a replacement.

I was "given" ON1 9.5 as a consequence of having the print version of P(hotoshop) E(lements) T(echiques) switch to an electronic (thus less expensive) format. I did upgrade to ON1 10, since my cost was substantially less as a current owner.

I must now admit that LR has a fairly steep learning curve. ON1 seems to make that curve much less steep but, in turn, requires learning a new interface to a huge number of pre-defined options that are actually already available in LR. Both apps allow you to save your own combinations of actions/steps for use in other images. I now have some quite powerful tools, at fairly lower normal costs, most of which are much more than I usually need.

As for using RAW instead of JPEG, the bottom line is that the latter causes a loss of information every time you make and save any edit, at least to that new copy. In addition, the original is already a compressed version of the image if that's how it was captured by the camera. That explains the smaller size of that format compared to RAW. I also explains the phrase "lossy" almost always included in any discussion of JPEG.

BTW, JPG/jpe is the same as JPEG/JPEG, it's simply the old 3-character maximum suffix size needed by Microsoft. "JPEG" is the abbreviation of the organization that created the format and algorithms used to compress the file sizes back when camera RAM space and web bandwidth was more critical and expensive. If your camera does not supply a RAW option, there's not much point in bothering with that format right now. If it does, you should consider using it and possibly investing in a larger memory card, if you shoot lots of images at one time.

[eric j]

There remains for me one nagging question.

Given that RAW preserves the maximum of information and given that there exist apps to manipulate the RAW file to a certain extent:-

why must the file then be transferred to a different app and transformed into a JPEG, entailing a loss of info, in order to undertake the "final" image adjustment?

Why is there, AFAIK, no app to undertake the editing process from beginning to end in RAW?

eric j

[jchuzi]

Photoshop allows you to edit RAW files from beginning to end(?). I always convert to TIFF for after manipulating the RAW parameters so I don't know if you can do more without converting. At any rate, TIFF is fairly lossless and you can always convert TIFF to JPG later.

I also preserve the original RAW file so that I can start over, if necessary. It's like keeping a negative if you want to use it again, without destroying the original.

[Paddy]

I process RAW files in Lightroom all the time.  (??)

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

(1)why must the file then be transferred to a different app and (2)transformed into a JPEG

(1) As far as I know, RAW is simply a file, usually created in a camera. Cameras can usually create image files in several formats (jpeg, mp4, etc). But, unless you want to do more than simply view them in something other than the camera, you must import them into some kind of app. That app may do nothing more than present a slide show, but you still must do the importing regardless of the original format. Certainly, if you want to do most any kind of editing, you will, again, have to import the file into some kind of app.

(2) As mentioned above by Jon and Paddy, there are many apps that can import and edit the RAW format. And even Elements allows one to import, edit, and save in numerous other formats than JPEG. I usually us PSD, but TIF does save some disk space while maintaining any Layers at the same time. The only time I save anything as JPEG is for something I plan on uploading to a web site where I am more concerned about space than quality. And even then, I often save a TIF or PSD version, first.

I don't have any app that actually Saves in RAW. Lightroom (and most likely, Photoshop) can convert it to DNG. Of course, edits in Lightroom are actually made on a way that doesn't change the original, anyway, so you still have the RAW version even after making edits.

The point is, there are multiple "non-lossy" formats and any good image editing app will offer several of those as final output options. Importing a RAW image is not a process that 'converts' the original file any of the apps I use. That original file remains on my drive until I decide to erase/move it.

I think of JPEG as simply one that offers thousands of colors instead the 256 allowed by GIF. I use both mainly for one-off, usually much smaller (800 x 600 pixels), images for email, forums posting, etc; rarely ever for printing. When I had a much simpler camera that produced only JPEG's, I simply reduced the size, keeping, all the available pixels, until I could get a reasonable resolution for printing of ~240ppi.

[eric j]

What a wonderful set of friends you are! Many thanks for the comprehensive information.

Now all I have to do is try to be patient until the iMac finally arrives.

eric j