Best Post Processing set up

[phillym]

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Hello,

 

What would be considered a good set up to process and print images taken with the M9.

Computer?

Software ?

Printer ?

 

Currently using a PC 14' laptop with Lightroom 3.6 and and epson r1800. Happy with the printer but not so happy with the software/pc. I was thinking Apple IAC but not sure. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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[sanyasi]

macMini computer with two external monitors. Others will disagree, but I believe Apple monitors run too bright and are difficult to calibrate. Plus, if you have a problem with the computer, it is easier to ship a small computer without the monitor. I use Eizo monitors, but there are other options available including NEC and Lacie.

 

Software: LR 4, Photoshop, and Nik suite. Truth be told, Aperture and Capture One ( I am unfamiliar with it, but others on the forum have written about it) will get you to the same place or close. A lot of personal preferences rapped up in what people like. There are other companies that make software comparable to Nik.

 

You should also give consideration to backup issues. RAID is one solution, but not perfect.

 

Jack Siegel

[250swb]

Hello,

 

What would be considered a good set up to process and print images taken with.....

 

Money!

 

OK I know little about PC's, but in my order of merit would be

 

1/ Photoshop. People can do an awful lot of work in Lightroom, but for the real experience of being in control Photoshop beats everything. But don't think you need to learn Photoshop, you just need to gradually expand on what it can do as and when you need it. Nobody uses all of the Photoshop functions other than the people who teach it!

 

2/ Nik Suite and Silver Efex Pro, or Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro. These are Photoshop (and Lightroom) plugins and offer so much control without the need for lengthy time consuming routines that you will be amazed. Worth their weight in gold.

 

3/ Printer, an Epson R3000 would be my choice. Larger than normal ink tanks, great at colour or B&W, built like a tank.

 

Steve

[jaapv]

My setup;

 

Macpro quad, 8Gb RAM with four disks, one pair in RAID configuration, total 4 Tb

2 Eizo (one CG, one Colouredge) monitors ( I am not quite taken by the Apple monitors)

WD 2Tb portable backup disk

 

ImageIngester Pro

Capture1 - 6.x

CS5 extended

 

I do not print myself, as I cannot justify one of the Epson high-ends and get better results from a professional on-line printing service anyway.

 

I cannot recommend the use of dual monitors enough. Only one needs to be the best you can afford, the other can be a lesser but similar one. Both must be calibrated. The secondary monitor is for displaying thumbnails, processing tool menus, etc, the primary one will only show an uncluttered view of the image.

[jneilt]

I am quickly running out of space on my macbook air.

 

I am thinking of going the route of the mac mini with the flash boot drive and either an Eizo coloredge CG223W or NEC PA241W. I just bought a spyder4 express and would like to continue using it, but the more I read, it does not seem up to boot with these monitors...anybody use a spyder with a nice wide gamut display?

 

I will probably go with some type of NAS 4terra station to hold most of the library.

[jaapv]

I always use a Spyder for my Eizos and it works just fine - you do not need the fancy packages like Express4, as the difference is in the software, not the hardware and the Eizos come with their own software (hardware calibration). You only need the gizmo.

[kanzlr]

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I use a NEC P221W wide gamut screen, calibrate it with SpectraView II software using a Color Munki pug and I am VERY happy with it.

 

You will notice that not all apps are aware of the wide gamut monitor (not color managed, basically). Chrome browser for example will ever emphasize reds, while Safari works perfectly well.

[kdriceman]

My setup;

 

Macpro quad, 8Gb RAM with four disks, one pair in RAID configuration, total 4 Tb

2 Eizo (one CG, one Colouredge) monitors ( I am not quite taken by the Apple monitors)

WD 2Tb portable backup disk

 

ImageIngester Pro

Capture1 - 6.x

CS5 extended

 

I do not print myself, as I cannot justify one of the Epson high-ends and get better results from a professional on-line printing service anyway.

 

I cannot recommend the use of dual monitors enough. Only one needs to be the best you can afford, the other can be a lesser but similar one. Both must be calibrated. The secondary monitor is for displaying thumbnails, processing tool menus, etc, the primary one will only show an uncluttered view of the image.

 

Jaap may have the best setup here, but if you have a limited budget, you can get a very nice setup using a new Mac Mini, a Dell U2410 monitor (or monitors) ( Dell UltraSharp U2410 LCD Display; They Call It Premier Color…And It Is | Shutterbug ) and Lightroom. I have added an Epson 3880 printer (Epson has been offering a $300 rebate on this printer the past few months).

[bpalme]

I have LR3, CS5, and the NIK suite. I have aperture and other things I don't really use.

You can buy these used.. install and re sell it.

Macbook pro...recommend a second hard drive to back up things.

[jneilt]

I always use a Spyder for my Eizos and it works just fine - you do not need the fancy packages like Express4, as the difference is in the software, not the hardware and the Eizos come with their own software (hardware calibration). You only need the gizmo.

 

That is good to know. I can use my existing HW puck and just get the Eizo that has the software already....that almost makes the cost of the Eizo the same as the NEC as I don't believe the NEC comes with software.

[jaapv]

The software comes with the Eizo, and can be downloaded as well.

[haroldp]

'Best' depends on what your needs are, but there are some essentials.

 

1 - a graphic arts monitor that can display at least the adobe rgb color gamut.

- it must be calibrated. If your monitor is lying, none of the rest matters.

 

For Leica I use Photoshop CS-5 and ACR, because I can spend lot of time on a few images. If I was still professional and had large runs to process under deadline, I would probably use Lightroom.

 

On a budget, Elements 10 has most of what is needed and uses the same Raw developer as PS-CS5 or Lightroom.

 

For Nikon RAW work I use Capture NX2. I like their Nikon sensor profiles, and they have an excellent batch mode. I develop the RAW's to TIFF's and finidsh in photoshop.

 

I stitch panorama's using Autopano or PS-CS5 depending on whether I want a spherical or cylindrical rendering

 

External (not the system drive) drives for your images, processing will be faster and internal drives are easily trashed. ESATA is much faster than USB 2 but USB 3 or FW800 or Thunderbolt should be fine. For a MacPro with 4 quick change drive slots, one of the other internals is OK.

 

Backup drives on a network away from the main system or 'in the cloud' (Carbonite, Mozy etc.).

 

For printer control I use Qimage. Since it is windows only I run it under parallels on my Mac.

 

Hardware is the least important, but mine is:

 

MacPro 8 core 12 GB

 

System drive is a RAID 0 array of two internal drives, for speed since it is used for system paging. and I do not care if it crashes since I keep no data on it.

 

Monitor is Samsung XL20 calibrated with spyder 3

 

Printers are HP Z3100 24" and Epson 4900 17", both network attached.

 

I have a calibrated scanner ( Epson 10000 XL) that I use to create printer profiles.

 

I hope this is helpful .... Harold

[jneilt]

For you mac mini owners...I am curious if the AMD Radon 6630M chip runs the Eizo monitors (specifically the coloredge) without issue.

 

I have read some things that concern me about the intel chip...I assume the DDR5 memory with the 6630M chip would be a step-up.

 

Eizo has not tested that chipset.

[kdriceman]

For you mac mini owners...I am curious if the AMD Radon 6630M chip runs the Eizo monitors (specifically the coloredge) without issue.

 

I have read some things that concern me about the intel chip...I assume the DDR5 memory with the 6630M chip would be a step-up.

 

Eizo has not tested that chipset.

 

 

I don't use an EIZO monitor, but there is as very positive review of the MacMini with the AMD chip in the April, 2012 (current issue) of Shutterbug Magazine where the reviewer is using the EIZO FlexScan SX2262W monitor.

[eudemian]

I am an Eizo fan, they are expensive but the best (or amongst the best) and they can be calibrated. Lets face it, our most important contact with the camera is via the screen and this needs to be easy to set up and easy to look at. It is nigh impossible to get a good print without a quality display.They also come with a 5 year warranty which is an indication of their superior build quality.

[adli]

My setup;

 

Macpro quad, 8Gb RAM with four disks, one pair in RAID configuration, total 4 Tb

2 Eizo (one CG, one Colouredge) monitors ( I am not quite taken by the Apple monitors)

WD 2Tb portable backup disk

 

 

Hi Jaap

 

I also have a Mac Pro, but with only three disks, of which two are in RAID. May I ask what you use the fourth disk for?

[jneilt]

I don't use an EIZO monitor, but there is as very positive review of the MacMini with the AMD chip in the April, 2012 (current issue) of Shutterbug Magazine where the reviewer is using the EIZO FlexScan SX2262W monitor.

 

Thanks for the tip...I am going to pick up that issue on the way home to look at the review.

 

So, I am left with getting either a:

 

1) Flexscan sx2262w with software calibration

 

or

 

2) Coloredge cg223w with hardware calibration

 

The flex is less...but don't know if I will get anything more running the coloredge looking at the specs.

[algrove]

--Mac Pro 3.33GHz 6 core, 24GB 1333 MHz RAM, SSD 240GB Boot, 6GB Master, 6GB Raid 1 Time Machine Backup, 2x6GB Raid 1 externals.

--LR3. PS5, Nik

--HP 30" Matte HPZR30w LCD wide gamut monitor, calibrated-3yr warranty +2 yr warranty available.

--Epson 3880 printer-only cost $850 new from B&H

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[philipus]

I use a Mac Pro (early 2008) with 14GB RAM which I find to be adequate for CS5. I don't use LR but find CS5 to be sufficient for me (together with Bridge). I've actually sort of maxed it out HDD-wise with two internal 2-disk Raid 0, one for the user folder and one for backup (mirrored with SuperDuper). I know some may complain about such a setup for backup but it works for me so far and was a necessity due to the amount of images I have. My next step is to get a few 2TB+ drives and skip the striped arrays, possibly putting them in a 4-drive external FW800 bay (though they're pretty pricey). I tried Time Machine but found that I don't need the incremental backups - a daily, scheduled SD copy of what has changed is all I need and is super-fast, too.

 

Lion runs on an OWC SSD and then I use a second OWC SSD (both fitted in the second optical drive bay using an OWC drive doubler) for scratch.

 

The screen is the oldish ACD 23" which is big enough and good enough for me. My printer is an R1900 which I'm pretty happy with.

 

I use a Wacom Bamboo Pen&Touch which I find is much more useful than an ordinary mouse. Post-processing is much easier with a pen.

 

But as for what to use well if you're happy with the R1800 I'd keep it. It is an excellent printer if calibrated. If you're ok with LR then stick to that when you switch to Mac. Re monitor you should actually look at various models and compare. I did and fell for the ACD though these days they're all glossy which - imho - is useless for proper photographic post-processing.

 

As for which Mac, well it depends on your budget. There are excellent refurbished models out there (esp. in the US, google for Apple refurbished) and for almost all post-processing work you won't need a maxed-out or top of the line computer. What counts is RAM and a good storage solution. Mac Pros are more expensive now than when I bought mine a few years ago but you can get used/refurbished 2008 and 2009 models for much less and they run well. Even the model before that is a very good computer. But an iMac may be sufficient for you or a Mac Mini.

 

cheers

philip