Need your opinion on future Hobbyist Photography Machine

[CameronCalvert]

First off, I have an aging machine, Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 running 6GB Ram and Nvidia GT 730 4GB, all while running Windows 10 20H2. Honestly I'm not really unhappy with the performance necessarily, but Adobe has introduced a new can of worms recently with requiring the SSE 4.2 instruction set, which the PC doesn't have. I'm leaning two ways. Use my existing case, and replace all the internals with new AMD or Intel, save maybe the PSU if applicable ? OR save up and buy the base MacBook Air or Mac Mini. I'm posting the in this forum because I want to know your experience with one or the other and why you think it's worth it to go that route.To be perfectly clear, I will not be going past the 899 limit for the macbook air on sale right now, as I don't really even want to spend that much, but I do want to do something that balances a long life with without breaking the bank.

 

PS. I'm not opposed to using a Windows laptop either, however I would want a close to 100% sRGB screen if I went that route.

[Radium_Angel]

19 minutes ago, CameronCalvert said:

First off, I have an aging machine, Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 running 6GB Ram and Nvidia GT 730 4GB, all while running Windows 10 20H2. Honestly I'm not really unhappy with the performance necessarily, but Adobe has introduced a new can of worms recently with requiring the SSE 4.2 instruction set, which the PC doesn't have. I'm leaning two ways. Use my existing case, and replace all the internals with new AMD or Intel, save maybe the PSU if applicable ? OR save up and buy the base MacBook Air or Mac Mini. I'm posting the in this forum because I want to know your experience with one or the other and why you think it's worth it to go that route.To be perfectly clear, I will not be going past the 899 limit for the macbook air on sale right now, as I don't really even want to spend that much, but I do want to do something that balances a long life with without breaking the bank.

 

PS. I'm not opposed to using a Windows laptop either, however I would want a close to 100% sRGB screen if I went that route.

Professional photographer here. Take my advice based on that. (aka, worthless, like everyone else's opinion)

 

I bought, outright, CS6. Fuck Adobe's pay as you go plan. If you are an amateur, nothing you do will surpass the abilities of LightRoom or Photoshop. Buy it outright, and be done with it.

 

I run a pair of Ivy Bridge Xeons in a Dell Precision T5610. Wroks fine. Lots of cheap DDR3 ECC RAM, lots of room for SSDs, even nVME with an adapter. Plenty of power at 1300watts. I shoot RAW (as any photographer should) with my D3X/D2X/D7000 IR converted.

 

System handles thousands of RAW files without issue.

RAM will be your key here, RAM and nVME or SSD for your workflow. CPU/GPU (I'm running a GTX 1060) will be important, but not as critical.

 

Apple...no thanks, they've shown again and again a willingness to entirely dump hardware platforms or program lines and leave you to twist without any support or path forward. 

[GDRRiley]

I've done photo work on 6 machines just doing raw processing in canons software.

1 stop paying for CC, go buy CS6 or go get something like Luminar 4

2. you really don't need much a 3100x/7700/4790 (a quad core or better with multi threading clocked well) with 16gb+ of ram will edit photos just fine.

hell even a system running a 4x00G (AMDs current APUs) would do good

3. get a SSD for the boot drive

[LaFemmeEnVert]

11 hours ago, CameronCalvert said:

First off, I have an aging machine, Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 running 6GB Ram and Nvidia GT 730 4GB, all while running Windows 10 20H2. Honestly I'm not really unhappy with the performance necessarily, but Adobe has introduced a new can of worms recently with requiring the SSE 4.2 instruction set, which the PC doesn't have. I'm leaning two ways. Use my existing case, and replace all the internals with new AMD or Intel, save maybe the PSU if applicable ? OR save up and buy the base MacBook Air or Mac Mini. I'm posting the in this forum because I want to know your experience with one or the other and why you think it's worth it to go that route.To be perfectly clear, I will not be going past the 899 limit for the macbook air on sale right now, as I don't really even want to spend that much, but I do want to do something that balances a long life with without breaking the bank.

 

PS. I'm not opposed to using a Windows laptop either, however I would want a close to 100% sRGB screen if I went that route.

upgrade or buy a new computer if necessary, PC or Apple you decide.  for photoshop and lightroom, the new M1 apple chip is getting good reviews and Adobe needs to launch versions of their software that are designed for the M1 chip.

 

for the display, if you really do photography you should go for adobergb monitor instead.  prices of monitors that support close to 100% adobe rgb is coming down.

 

for Adobe subscriptions, the photography package with Photoshop and Lightroom is $9/month or $120/year

All apps CC is $53/month or $600/year

 

if you are a working professional, you could easily cover the entire year worth of cost within a few hours to a few days of work.  I have the all apps CC plan since I do video and photo work and in 2-3 hours of work I already earn 1 year of cost for adobe.  this year with the pandemic, i even managed to save paying for the subscription:

1. during the early part of the year, adobe gave away 2-3 months for free because of the pandemic
2. and last month i chatted with a customer service person online and they reduced my annual subscription to under $300/year for the next 2 years

if you don't need any of the adobe apps or not a working professional, whatever!  do what you want.

 

if you need photoshop and lightroom and use the latest cameras, you should always use the up to date versions of the software that support these cameras and not use old versions like CS6.

[Radium_Angel]

5 hours ago, LaFemmeEnVert said:

support these cameras and not use old versions like CS6.

Ah yes, the ol' gotcha that is CameraRAW, "we only support the lastest cameras for our latest CC because fuck you professional photographer, pay up...forever."

 

Fuck.Adobe.

[LaFemmeEnVert]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

Ah yes, the ol' gotcha that is CameraRAW, "we only support the lastest cameras for our latest CC because fuck you professional photographer, pay up...forever."

 

Fuck.Adobe.

as stated, for people who are earning money with the tools from adobe, a few hours to maybe a couple days of work and an entire year of adobe subscription is covered.  the photography plan price is the same as the cost of a basic netflix subscription if not cheaper

 

before it use to cost about $700 to buy Photoshop stand alone and $2600 for all apps (Master Collection), and to keep them updated you pay a few hundred minimum each year

https://prodesigntools.com/products/adobe-cs6-pricing-list.html

[Radium_Angel]

7 minutes ago, LaFemmeEnVert said:

as stated, for people who are earning money with the tools from adobe, a few hours to maybe a couple days of work and an entire year of adobe subscription is covered.  the photography plan price is the same as the cost of a basic netflix subscription if not cheaper

 

before it use to cost about $700 to buy Photoshop stand alone and $2600 for all apps (Master Collection), and to keep them updated you pay a few hundred minimum each year

https://prodesigntools.com/products/adobe-cs6-pricing-list.html

It's the principal of the thing. Buying it outright meant you could do what you needed to do with it, and it was yours forever and ever and nothing Adobe could do could change that/

Now, it's no longer yours, you are at the whims of Adobe deciding to what they are going to do, or not do, with the software. Personally, I like to be in control of my own gear (both hard and soft) 

[LaFemmeEnVert]

9 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

It's the principal of the thing. Buying it outright meant you could do what you needed to do with it, and it was yours forever and ever and nothing Adobe could do could change that/

Now, it's no longer yours, you are at the whims of Adobe deciding to what they are going to do, or not do, with the software. Personally, I like to be in control of my own gear (both hard and soft) 

do you truly need to own the software?  you can only do what you want with them as far as the functionality is there in the software, you cannot change the code or program new features

 

adobe doesn't decide to change things on a whim, and though they have some fringe software they release and then discard or stopped supprting some tools (like Adobe Encore), they will support the core software as there is a strong client base.  and they will only keep on improving it based on feedback from customers, changes in the industry, and changes in workflow

 

an exampe is transcribing and subtitling in Premiere.  before last year I was using a online service called Trint before they increased their price, then I moved to using a plugin called Transcriptive because they made it cheaper and it integrated very nice with Premiere.  next year in the 2021 version of Premiere, Adobe will include audio transcription and captioning as a part of the software.  I haven't tested the beta yet, and looking forward to see how it compares to transcriptive.

 

running an old software like cs6 means you need to keep running a computer with an older operating system that likely will not receive support anymore

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, LaFemmeEnVert said:

adobe doesn't decide to change things on a whim

 

2 minutes ago, LaFemmeEnVert said:

discard or stopped supprting some tools (like Adobe Encore

Which doesn't affect you, until it does.

 

3 minutes ago, LaFemmeEnVert said:

online service called Trint before they increased their price

Thank you for making my point for me.

 

[LaFemmeEnVert]

as for alternative software, yes there are alternative tools for Photoshop and Premiere, such as Luminar and Resolve among others.  they are also good tools.  no problem if people use them, all these tools along with adobe tools have their advantages and disadvantages when comparing their functionalities...  As a working professional, I am expected to be familiar with multiple different tools and possible have them readily available

 

 

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Thank you for making my point for me.

trint increased their price by removing the pay as you go/buy minutes option, they still had a monthly/annual subscription membership tier that was just as expensive.  if they kept their pay as you go/buy minutes option and transcriptive didn't deicde to decrease their core price by 50%, i would still be on trint.  with transcriptive I still have to pay by the minute for the audio transcription service.  i'm not saving money, I simply switched to an option that let me keep paying the same amount, after a fashion

[Lord Vile]

21 hours ago, CameronCalvert said:

First off, I have an aging machine, Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 running 6GB Ram and Nvidia GT 730 4GB, all while running Windows 10 20H2. Honestly I'm not really unhappy with the performance necessarily, but Adobe has introduced a new can of worms recently with requiring the SSE 4.2 instruction set, which the PC doesn't have. I'm leaning two ways. Use my existing case, and replace all the internals with new AMD or Intel, save maybe the PSU if applicable ? OR save up and buy the base MacBook Air or Mac Mini. I'm posting the in this forum because I want to know your experience with one or the other and why you think it's worth it to go that route.To be perfectly clear, I will not be going past the 899 limit for the macbook air on sale right now, as I don't really even want to spend that much, but I do want to do something that balances a long life with without breaking the bank.

 

PS. I'm not opposed to using a Windows laptop either, however I would want a close to 100% sRGB screen if I went that route.

Issue with the Macs would be storage and compatibility of the M1 with adobe that being said adobe committed to making versions for the M1, just depends if they're any good. Also the Mac Mini is a much better value than the Air.