Spec-ing a photographers desktop PC

I've already written a post about this so I'll summarise the information.

Photographers have unique requirements for a desktop computer setup. Computing is now an essential part of the photographer's standard equipment. The desktop, for many, has been replaced by powerful laptop machines however these are not able to offer the performance or the specification for the perfect professional machine.

Image quality
Performance is in different areas. One of them is image quality. No flat panel screen at a reasonable price can beat the quality of output from an old cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor. These are large but even the cheapest ones offer superlative image quality required for professional work.

Of course a large screen monitor is useful too. I'd suggest a dual screen setup with a large flat panel and a CRT. The CRT is used to see the whole image - a feature easily achieved in most good photo editing packages. The large screen can be used for the detail work and where all the tool docks are shown. Good quality, large CRT screens are pretty cheap second hand though delivery is expensive. Over the years some may have lost the quality of focus. Their image quality - colours, contrast, resolution - will still usually be excellent. A modern flat panel with a 14" CRT makes a lot of sense though.

Large widescreen flat panels have dropped significantly in price. There are three technologies: TN, PVA (and the variants) and IPS. The are increasingly more expensive going from TN to IPS technology and in quality too. Large OLED monitors are not a commercial option. The three TFT technologies have dropped a lot in price and the quality of commerically available TN screens has risen significantly using colour profiles which can adjust the graphics output to counter the problems of TN screens. With the added bonus of a CRT screen a 24" TN-type panel with a 14" CRT screen provides a good value option. A PVA screen would be a better option but the differences are small. The price of these has also dropped significantly. IPS screens are still a significant premium and they're the benchmark for high end screens dedicated to photography, video and 3D.

Calibration is also important. This can significantly improve the value of a screen. The CRT screen provides an exceptionally high quality output however a custom calibrated flat panel can perhaps beat the quality of a CRT screen. It can come very close anyway. Calibration is signifcantly more expensive than a 14" CRT screen though (note the viewing area of these screens will be about 12").

One feature often little considered is the graphics card. Most people would assume that a fast graphics card isn't required for photography work. They're right. Even integrated motherboard graphics cards can handle the output of image manipulation. What people don't know is there's a difference in image quality between different cards. There's no way to measure this and it's rarely discussed in reviews of graphics cards.

I stumbled across this when I had two graphics cards installed in my system. One was running a cheap but modern graphics card from a little know brand. The other was an ancient Matrox Millenium.  People may not recognise the brand any more but a decade ago they were very well regarded in the graphics card industry. This was in the time before people considered 3D processing a reason to buy an expensive graphics card. The Matrox cards were designed for image makers. They offered other features like inexpensive access to two monitor setups with one card - something which is standard today. Hooked up to the same monitor the Matrox displayed significantly better image quality across all domains. It was a clearly visible difference which anyone could see.

This reason alone is why Apple are good computers. Though they don't offer the choice of components or the ease of tinkering with the hardware as well as being significantly more expensive they're worth it if you don't want to have to know which graphics card offers the right quality. Their monitors are a significant premium over other equivalents too. It is possible to make a £1,500 non-Apple computer setup which would perform about as well as a £4,000 Apple setup and offer other benefits.

Computer spec
The chips in desktop machines are faster than laptops and importantly they can be overclocked. This is a way to get more performance out of the same processor. Given how quickly processor prices can rise with increasing speed the option to overclock a chip quickly becomes a money saving solution. Photography doesn't need ultra-fast processing like 3D or video which can benefit from multi-processor and multicore designs. Dual core or processor is the maxium requirement and an overclocked low-to-mid processor should be enough for a year or two. It can also be replaced by a faster processor next year which offers much better value.

RAM, of course, is important for easy editing of multilayered high resolution files. Modern file sizes are massive. RAW files are 25MB+ from my Canon 50D and something like the 7D will output even higher quality files which need more RAM. I like to step up my RAM gradually and this is much easier with a desktop than a laptop. Quick RAM is useful for overclocking and can offer small speed benefits too but it's important to chose carefully because some of the more exotic forms of memory don't offer significant benefits for photography applications.

Someone who's used consumer cameras and consumer photo editing software may not have experienced a need for a quick processor or lots of RAM. In professional digital photography the file sizes and more demanding algorithms which offer the highest quality output and maximum control mean a decent processor is required. The images from a professional digital camera aren't just higher megapixels. The files have more detail and much wider dynamic range. They're usually processed from RAW - the digital negative - rather than JPEG. Professional photographers spent a lot of time working with the filters, tools and controls offfered in programs such as Photoshop or GIMP. There's a lot of tweaking involved and this can mean rerunning a filter. One of my favourites, selective guassian blur, can take 15-30mins to run on a laptop.

Keeping data safe
Apart from performance there's one key aspect of the design of a content producer's PC: the disk system. I've had 3 hard drives fail in my years of computing. That's three too many and I lost a lot of important data. It's very expensive to recover data from a disk where the head has crashed. RAID is the primary solution for people who use large files and lots of them. These can use many disks with one to protect the data from a single drive failure. These systems are available in ultra-highend laptops but come as standard on good motherboards. They're often no implemented on consumer or even standard business PCs because there's little demand for them or knowledge about them. The system is used in any server worth its salt. Not just for better reliability and fault tolerance but because it can offer more speed too. A few disks are relatively cheap and can create a work area which will last for a couple of years of digital photography.

I think 3 or 4 1TB disks in a RAID 5 configuration should be enough for that requirement but 2 1TB disks in RAID 1 (mirroring not striping) would suffice at a push. It sounds like a lot of data but I shoot RAW and use the highest quality for all my processed image files. A 16GB card on a modern camera can quickly fill up on a day long shoot. I don't waste a lot of time clearing out old photos. I like to go back to them and work on them again. I need a very large hard drive for that workflow.

On top of this there also needs to be geographical backup which for most people means backup to an online server. I used an Idrive account to backup all the uncompressed JPEG versions of my best images. If my computer is stolen or the house burns down my images are still safe. For people who use their computer for writing documents or anything which has small file sizes the Idrive solution is enough. It's easy to use and it's free. The information is stored on their computers and can be retrieved with the right details from any computer just like web-based email.

Peripherals
A keyboard and mouse are obviously essential but a graphics tablet can be a very useful addition. It makes editing the image a lot easier though I've learned to get by with a mouse and even a trackpad. The computer forms the basis of the photographer's lightroom and it still requires good physical tools.

Obviously a memory card reader, a few USB ports (and Firewire can be useful too) and wireless are important. These are cheap or come as standard.

Budget
It's possible to build a bespoke photographer's PC for about £1,000. £1,500 would be optimum. At a squeeze one can be built for £800 with all the above considerations taken into account. A £1,000 PC with a £500 investment in upgrades over a two year period would be suitable for professional photography at the lower end though £1,500 with £1,000 spent over the next two years would be better with cameras offering really large files and for photographers used to compositiing several images together, using focusing stacking or HDR techniques.

A laptop is yet another necessity for modern professional photography. More on that in another post.