PC build for working with MASSIVE images...

[kallewille]

I work with large images at work (I just shot an ~800 megapixel image today, for example).  Just opening these images can be time consuming, let alone manipulating them or analyzing them.  The computer I use at work is a relic, and gets bogged down, and when I can, sometimes I just take the work home and do it on my much faster computer there.  I mainly use photoshop cs6, some Nikon microscopic software NIS (can't remember which build off the top of my head), Image Pro Plus, ImageJ occasionally, and Helicon Focus.  I don't do any video work (yet anyways).  But I shoot a great number of images through microscopes and then stitch them together, or a lot of z-stacking with macro lenses and then focus stack them.  I also do a fair amount of time lapse photography with a D800, which shoots 36 megapixel images.  Much of the time I don't need that resolution, but sometimes I do, and applying color corrections to thousands of pictures just seems to break my computer's back.

 

What would I most benefit from in a new pc?  I've read photoshop makes use of multi-cores, but diminishing returns appear to be at 6 cores.  I've crammed as much RAM into my old machine as I can (16GB) but it's the processor that's the bottleneck I think.  I don't know how well the other software takes advantage of multi-cores or video/graphics cards.  If I were to build a monster workstation for dealing with massive image files and/or numerous image files at once to do batch commands on (color correction for example), what would I need, and almost as importantly, what would I NOT need?  Time is money, and opening a hundred RAW files from the D800 takes forever...I might as well wait until my lunch break to try anything like that.  It would be great to multi-task with the machine as well, so while it's chugging away at opening or processing the images, if I could do some other work on the side, that'd be great too.  

 

The machine would have to be reliable.  Noise isn't too big of an issue, just something reliable and powerful.  If I could get it at $5k or less, that'd be good too.  I'm fairly computer ignorant as far as components goes, I just use them a lot to get my work done, and that's all I care about.  A lot of what I could find online had more to do with smaller images (36 puny mega pixels!) or video editing.  I'm in research, and I'm not finding a lot of people with the same types of work tasks I'm doing daily.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks.

 

P.S.  I've looked at getting a pre-built system (don't hate me!).  I think I could sell the idea of getting something with a warranty much better to my boss than buying parts and getting an IT guy to help me put it together, but that's not completely out of the question.  I just don't know what I do and don't need in the machine.

 

Addendum:  I also would like to know about storage and cache drives.  We store all our images to a network drive that gets backed up frequently (daily?).  Would I benefit from having a couple SSD drives?  One for programs, and another for a cache for photoshop and other programs, and then maybe a spinning HD for local storage?  

[Momkai]

I have no opinion in this, just one question. What camera makes a ~800 megapixel image?

[Goldensapling]

Parts include their own warrantys. A PC literally has 7 parts, it's like legos with 10 cords, a monkey could do it. You can build a pretty decent photo editing PC for like $1-2k

[Guest]

Could I have the image?

 

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Sadistic_Potato]

I have no opinion in this, just one question. What camera makes a ~800 megapixel image?

 

Maybe OP meant megabyte for file size? Even 36 megapixels is ridiculous...

[Kurosaki Isshin]

So what you're looking for is a workbench?

 

$5,000 budget is fking legit. although I've never built a workbench myself, a Xeon would be the way to go.

lets hear from the other members though.

[thekeemo]

I'm going to go ahead and say a 5960x system will be beneficial to you and for prebuilts I recommend ApricityTech.com

[kallewille]

I have no opinion in this, just one question. What camera makes a ~800 megapixel image?

Any camera can make an 800 megapixel image if you stitch them together  I shot a cross-section of a kevlar reinforced component at 100x on my lab's metallograph.  I'm shooting at ~1920x1530 resolution, and I shot 21x13 images which were stitched together.  The resulting color image is ~1.5GB as a .tif.  The largest image I've shot to date was over 36,000 pictures:  30x30x40.  

[SuperPug]

 

 

Dont know a whole bunch about that specific usage scenario but id think a shitton of ram and lots of cores (maybe xeon) should do the trick...

[Momkai]

@kallewille Thanks for the satisfying answer.

[SuperPug]

ApricityTech.com

 

That can hardly be considered "prebuild"... Thats highly customized and made to order...

[Goldensapling]

Reasonable Workstation : http://pcpartpicker.com/p/X4g7FT

Super Badass Workstation : http://pcpartpicker.com/p/7p3pLk

[kallewille]

Holy crap!  That was quick!  Thanks for all the feedback.  You guys/gals brought up a point I came across but didn't mention:  Xeon vs the "i" series.  I'm not sure what cs6 is optimized for.  Some guys that do modeling in another division of our research institute have some Xeon based work stations, but our IT guy said they've had lots of problems with them.  Not sure what to make of that.  

Any thoughts?

 

Also, anyone know about dedicated scratch disks for photoshop or the like?  Benefits and costs, pros and cons?

 

Thanks again for all the feedback.  You guys/gals rock!

[Goldensapling]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ZL4fcf Wouldn't an E5, Quadro, 64GBs of Ram, and 3TBs of SSDs make more sense for a workbench?

Oh right, I'm super tired and forgot Quadros existed LOL ^^^^^ do what this guy says

[Mixzzz]

Either go with E3 for cheaper workstation or E5 if you have money lol

[Ketcchup]

Aren't AMD FirePro GPUs better for image editing, specially with photoshop?

[matwoodson]

Here you go: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/LQM7FT exclude the monitor

[matwoodson]

Holy crap! That was quick! Thanks for all the feedback. You guys/gals brought up a point I came across but didn't mention: Xeon vs the "i" series. I'm not sure what cs6 is optimized for. Some guys that do modeling in another division of our research institute have some Xeon based work stations, but our IT guy said they've had lots of problems with them. Not sure what to make of that.

Any thoughts?

Also, anyone know about dedicated scratch disks for photoshop or the like? Benefits and costs, pros and cons?

Thanks again for all the feedback. You guys/gals rock!

Your it must be kinda weird. Anyways, xeons are the way to go if you want dual socket systems, or want more than 6 cores, I know that you stated that cs6 only uses 6 cores but if you have 16, you have 10 other cores so technically you could do 2 photos at a time.

[matwoodson]

Quadro is better for what he's doing. Two xeons for his type of work is pointless[one E5 is more than enough], and he'd benefit with just SSDs as he plans to use them for photoshop via dedicated scratch drives. I'd also raise the amount of RAM to 64-128GBs.

Are quadros better? [emoji13]

[matwoodson]

For gaming no, but Quadros and Firepros are better for editing rigs/work benches.

Idk about that, all they have over GeForce is driver validation and ECC GDDR memory

[simson0606]

guys wouldn't a intel 750 ssd make more sense than the evo's

[simson0606]

Either are fine, but why exactly? I was just adding the 1TBs for the sake of dedicated scratch drives.

Pure for the sheer speed of them, would be usefull with large images to cut on loading times