Configuring Your Digital Darkroom: Your perfect Mac system, built for the way you work.
Every serious photographer has a different aesthetic, a different business philosophy, a different workflow. So it’s only fitting that you be able to configure a digital darkroom to suit your individual style. Here are a few issues to consider as you build your perfect Mac.
A Portable Darkroom
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Processor speed is generally considered the single most important aspect of a computer’s speed. The MacBook Pro can be configured with a 2.4GHz, 2.5GHz or 2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. All three configurations pack the power of two processors inside a single chip. Make your decision depending on the amount of time you spend in front of your laptop and the applications you run on it. Your choice is between fast, faster and superfast.
RAM. Photographs are increasing in size with each new camera model, and the amount of RAM in your computer has a big impact on how fast these photographs can be processed. The MacBook Pro comes with two SODIMM slots that can support up to 4GB of RAM. Time is everything for those on the go — RAM is a valuable asset when you’re against a deadline.
Hard drives. Storage space for your files and photos, your tools, your archives, your history — how much do you need to carry with you? MacBook Pro offers a choice of 200GB or 250GB of digital storage, accessible from drives that read and write at 5400-rpm. And if you’re looking for that little bit of extra headroom, you can choose a 300GB hard drive (available as a build-to-order option from the Apple Store). If ultra-swift access to files is a concern, you can opt for a 7200-rpm drive — especially useful if you often work with large files on your laptop, or with applications that require a lot of Virtual Memory.
Laptop display. Choose your MacBook Pro screen as you would the finish of your photographic paper. The matt display helps eliminate glare — important if you spend a lot of time working in bright or high-contrast conditions. The glossy display allows for a wider gamut of colour and increased brightness — ideal for working on images if you have more control over the relative glare of your surroundings.
Second display. Your Mac laptop is capable of driving a second display — very useful when you’re in your studio and want more screen real estate to work in. High-resolution Apple Cinema Displays are available in 20-inch, 23-inch and massive 30-inch models — offering a dramatic canvas for your images.
The Studio Powerhouse
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Processor speed. The Mac Pro computers are, by far, the fastest Macs ever. Opt for the 8-core Mac Pro and you get the power of two Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors — based on the new 45-nanometre Intel Core microarchitecture. You decide how fast they fly: 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz or 3.2GHz.
RAM. The Mac Pro incorporates a 256-bit-wide, fully buffered memory architecture with Error Correction Code (ECC), which corrects single-bit errors and detects multiple-bit errors automatically. You can install up to 32GB of ECC memory in every Mac Pro system. Fly through your high resolution digital images by adding RAM — 4GB is a good starting point for today’s digital darkroom.
Internal storage. With four hard drive bays, the Mac Pro family can accommodate up to 4TB of storage, accessible at up to 15,000 rpm. Choose your internal storage to suit the way you organise your assets. Get two drives and you can configure one as a worry-free automated backup. Get three drives and use one as a System disk, the second as a Projects disk and the third as a backup. Whatever configuration you choose now, it can always grow and change as your photo business does.
Graphics card. Designed to turbocharge picture-handling at the hardware level, your choice of a graphics card can influence the speed and performance of Aperture and other powerful visual applications. Three stellar graphics card options lets you choose the card that meets your specific needs. The baseline ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT card capably handles most tasks, but you’ll notice a considerable improvement with the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT card or the workstation-class NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 card.
Second optical drive. Every Mac Pro comes with a 16x SuperDrive with double-layer support for burning portable data discs, including DVD+R DL, DVD-R, CD-R, CD-RW. If you need to produce a lot of CDs or DVDs — for backing up files, sending out special promotions or mass-producing copies of your DVD-based digital portfolio — a second drive will make you more productive.
Apple Cinema Displays. Great images deserve to be displayed beautifully. Apple offers a variety of displays to meet your studio needs. The 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display offers enough real estate to review multiple images, side by side. The 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display provides the exact resolution to display widescreen HD material. And the 20-inch Apple Cinema Display is a practical solution for smaller spaces that still require perfect pixel representation.
