Computers For Photo Editing?

What is your budget?

Opt for one with a fast quad core processor if the budget permits. Storage, RAM, and graphics cards can always be easily upgraded later.

Trying to keep my budget under $2000

Amy,

Does this include the monitor,keyboard,external hard drives,etc.? Still, plenty of money. Take a look at my stuff and if that meets your expectations than you can get a great system for around $1200-$1500. ALL my images were done on a under $800 system! Monitor included. BUT after a few years, TODAY I had 2 computer guys here, to work on the desktop and the laptop and I'll be getting a new "box" for that price range I mentioned. I would get a Windows 7 OS and then wait for the new WIn10 to be released in a few months. A 24" monitor, OR two, about$150 each. 16g RAM, nice video card and a good motherboard. I'll get Tigerdirect to put something together for me, like they did on this. With ALL the money left over, I'd get the Photoshop Elements 13, the amazing plugin for that from XXL2, $50 and then Topaz Impression, $99.

Let me know if you have any questions. You can always go for an iMac, but that will push the budget,

Rich

Generally, you can get the most bang for your buck with "build-you-own" generic machines once called clones. (Have the store build it, though.)
Go to Frys.com, or a local store, or the local generic "computers plus" no-brand computer store with a good reputation, and get a good case, power supply, memory card reader, 3 tb hard drive, or two, for convenient backup, perhaps. Make sure it has at least 3 or more processors, and is 64 bit capable (motherboard/memory/cpu) Add a good flat screen monitor, and the most memory possible, and perhaps a SSD Solid State hard Drive (for fast OS and software loading).
Make sure the power supply is very quiet (perhaps even water cooled CPU), and be sure you have USB 3.0 ports and a firewire port. Compare the price for such against a mid-range graphics machine, and you should be quite happy with the result.

The os: probably Windows. Everything apple tends to be twice as expensive. I'd try to get W7, and then leapfrog to W10, which will be the next version. W8 stinks, and W9 will never be released. Win10 will have many of the lost features of Win7 restored. Make sure you install anti-virus software and spyware removal software. Tell your machine builder to NOT put any "Cramware" on your machine (software that you don't ask for specifically, usually with a downside.) Make sure you have drivers on CD/DVD, and the windows OS. Having it on a seperate recovery partition on your machine is NOT adequate. (If your hard drive crashes, you need to be able to restore it, and more so if the computer itself is lost, broken, or stolen.)

Onlinebackup is NOT adequate for a prolific photographer. IF you shoot more than I gigs a day on a regular basis, you need a secondary or external hard drive of sufficient size to allow backups.

$2000 is plenty to accomplish all or most of the above.

What do you have now? Harder to find computers with Windows 7. Windows 8.1 you;ll have more choice, and when Windows 10 is released it's a free upgrade

Apple may be expensive, but I've never had one that was a lemon. Can't say the same about PCs.

I went through the same thought process a couple of months ago, Amy, and finally settled on this:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1059535-REG/dell_x8700_3130blk_xps_8700_7_i7_4790_16gb_2tb_windows8_164_black.html

Paid $1029.99. Added an Asus 27" monitor for $459.99. $1489.98, total.

Free shipping on the whole package.

It's working out for me.

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-8700/pd?oc=fdcwgs108s&model_id=xps-8700


799.00 at Dell

Thank you all

Yeah, I'd suffer with Windoze 8, be sure to upgrade to 10 when released. If you have a win7 DVD from your old computer, you might install that, and see how good reviews are for win10. That might or not work if it's an OEM version, tied to a specific PC, however.

You can definitely get a lemon and bad computer and bad support at the majors, like Dell et al. If you want the widest selection of software, Win is preferred. If you are just running Adobe, mainly, Apple is good, though in my opinion too expensive. Apple is generally Stable, though, and that's a big plus.

I got an ASUS with a super fast i7 quad core processor, 12 GB of memory, a 2TB hard drive and NVIDIA GTX750 1GB graphics card. The current cost is $949 at Best Buy.

I just use an ASUS laptop with an i5 processor and 8 gigs of RAM.

It was around $700.00 a few years ago.

I'm transitioning all of my editing to the iPad. Quite impressive. Look into it ... it's definitely the future.

I've noticed that Apple hasn't done any updates on the iMac and the Mac Book Pro as much as they have the iPad.


EDIT: I've mostly done this because Apple Aperture is now discontinued. So I'm moving with the flow of it.

I'd go with the 27" non retina iMac, which I believe is your price range.

What software will you be running or is that part of the budget?

I think it's less about the computer and more about the software no? Pick the software you want and then buy your computer to meet the requirements. I am in the same process right now and am still trying to play around with free trials to see what software I am going to land on first. Of course, I have champagne taste and a beer budget, but I may just have to splurge on this. If I add up all I've spent on canvas, metal and inks in the past few years, it is so much cheaper to work with digital art and sometimes, more fun, depending on the mood.

Apparently I'm pretty cheap. I do all my editing on an hp win 8 laptop I got on sale for $300. Have a acer 24" monitor I bought a few years ago... (~180.00 at the time...)

I would go with a gaming computer. They usually have the fastest processors,fastest and best video cards, and also built for large amounts of storage with high speed hard drives for video use and photos..