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Author Topic: Graphic Board for Photoshop  (Read 9400 times)

v0erpco

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Graphic Board for Photoshop
« on: September 28, 2006, 05:17:06 am »

Hi, i've been searching but found no answers.
I'm building a PC mainky for Photoshop CS2 work.
I'm trying to nail the variables into constants, but it's not easy.
So, i would like to know from you what is a decent/good/very good (is that exists) graphics board for this purpose.
As i understand only 2D work is needed from the board, but with all the game scene everyone is concerned with 3D, so opinions are rare.


Thank You in advance
Rodrigo Coutinho
Lisbon
Portugal
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jamie_m_

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« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2006, 05:56:15 am »

Photoshop itsself places very little demand on any modern graphics board.

From one view point almost any graphics card will do everything needed to get the most out of photoshop withing the constraints adopted by the mass market suppliers.

There is a possible colour quality issue with mass market cards. Almost all mass market cards have limited colour depth. This is not an issue for games and "standard" monitors, but for hi-colour-fidelity work, especially with some LCD's that have 14-bit colour processing you could look at "workstation" graphics cards.

ATI have a range of "FireGL" cards, these cards are WAY more expensive than ATI Radon X..... cards but offer internal 32 bit per channel colour depth which I guess would be usefull for softproofing on wide-gamut monitors
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v0erpco

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« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2006, 06:27:49 am »

Quote
Photoshop itsself places very little demand on any modern graphics board.

From one view point almost any graphics card will do everything needed to get the most out of photoshop withing the constraints adopted by the mass market suppliers.

There is a possible colour quality issue with mass market cards. Almost all mass market cards have limited colour depth. This is not an issue for games and "standard" monitors, but for hi-colour-fidelity work, especially with some LCD's that have 14-bit colour processing you could look at "workstation" graphics cards.

ATI have a range of "FireGL" cards, these cards are WAY more expensive than ATI Radon X..... cards but offer internal 32 bit per channel colour depth which I guess would be usefull for softproofing on wide-gamut monitors
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=78090\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]



I forgot to mention that i'm an amateur.

By that i don't mean i don't want good material, but i don't need the best possible available and from what i know only 8bit is supported in the entire workflow (OS,card,monitor, photoshop), correct?
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Phuong

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« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2006, 11:22:17 am »

for Photoshop work, you generally need more RAM, processing power, and faster disks. high power, fancy priced graphic cards are generally for 3D works.

currently i have this computer setup (im actually looking for someone to buy it, because i just bought a Mac Pro just last week)
I built it from the IBM IntelliStation Z Pro, Model 6221
basically:
-dual Xeon 2.8GHz
-2GB of ram (which is maximum for Windows 32 bit)
-30GB SCSI hard drive contains boot OS (windows xp sp2)
-2x147GB SCSI Fuji hard drives. one of them is used as scratch disk.i chose SCSI drives for their stable performance and fast read/writing speed (they can read and write at the same time, which alone is superior to normal HDDs. not to mention the 15000rpm speed)
-1x250GB IDE hard drive for general use.
-nVidia 980 quadro 128mb, has 2 DVI ports (this is actually a card made for 3D works)
-and a PCI ATI graphic card (7500 i think, but i dont remember). this card is for outputing to the second display. the reason is, although the nVidia 980 has 2 DVI outputs, they use the same calibrating settings.
-oh, not adding any more power to PS, but there's also a Sony DVD writer

if you are interested, you can PM me
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Peter McLennan

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« Reply #4 on: September 28, 2006, 12:43:14 pm »

In the past, Matrox has had a very good reputation for image quality.   I use a Matrox G550 with dual 17 inch LCD panels and I'm very happy with the image quality.   Cost effective, too.  That way you can spend more on RAM and drive space.
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Serge Cashman

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« Reply #5 on: September 30, 2006, 09:20:58 pm »

It entirely depends on the kind of monitors you are planning to use (type, brand, resolution, how many monitors and so on). It also depends on the kind of calibration solution you already have or are planning to buy.

You are mistaken about the "8 bit workflow". Normally you should try to stay at more than 8 bit color transformations throughout your workflow.
« Last Edit: September 30, 2006, 09:29:49 pm by Serge Cashman »
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jjj

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« Reply #6 on: September 30, 2006, 10:01:10 pm »

If you are using dual monitors, avoid ATI their Dual software is remakably appalling.
nVidia Dual Monitor sofware is thankfully way, way better.
And I was also unable to get aftersales support with ATI as you have to register to do anything and a glitch/issue their end meant I couln't register and as I wasn't registered, then I could not complain about not being able to register. Or indeed about the problems I was trying to register to complain about.
It was easier to buy a different graphics card.
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Tradition is the Backbone of the Spinele

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« Reply #7 on: October 01, 2006, 11:26:49 am »

I use a Matrox dual head card. No good for games whatsoever as it is too slow, but for Photoshop it is spot on
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Serge Cashman

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« Reply #8 on: October 02, 2006, 12:07:27 am »

With dual monitors on a PC I start to come to a conclusion that having two cards may be the best solution for calibration. Colormanaged apps on XP really do not work the way they should even with the color applet and it's loader. Thankfully there's a bunch of motherboards with dual PCIe slots.

I use Nvidia myself,  perhaps ATI and Matrox PCIe card have a capacity to appear as two separate cards to XP. Which would make them a better choice.
« Last Edit: October 02, 2006, 12:09:34 am by Serge Cashman »
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knobadi

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« Reply #9 on: October 05, 2006, 11:06:30 am »

i have 2 20" monitors (crt and lcd), and noticed that the performance(graphics refresh rate) on the crt(vga) is slower than on the lcd(dvi).  i have a cheapo nvidia g6200 card on agp slot.

if you plan to have 2 large monitors, get a good nvidia gpu(pcie cards with dual dvi) around $100-$150 range.
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benInMA

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« Reply #10 on: October 05, 2006, 12:51:07 pm »

Quote
You are mistaken about the "8 bit workflow". Normally you should try to stay at more than 8 bit color transformations throughout your workflow.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=78494\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

That has nothing to do with how expensive your graphic board is though, so as far as the original poster is concerned we really are limited to 8 bits.

You could run photoshop tasks with a 16-bit per pixel workflow on a box with no video card at all.  You'd just need a different user interface.

Monitors only display 8 bits per channel of Red Green, and Blue.   The display adapter runs 32-bits total instead of 24-bits to pack the data into word sized boundaries for performance, and it can also use the last 8-bits for an alpha channel.  AFAIK Photoshop does not use hardware alpha channels.. it does it all on it's own, using the CPU.  

If you're using a 16 bit per pixel workflow you can never actually view that on your monitor, as monitors are not capable of that level of precision currently.  Everything you are doing with your 16bpp image data gets converted to 8bpp by photoshop before it draws it on the screen.  All 16bpp buys you is more ability to manipulate the data without quantization errors.  The camera can't generate 16bit  data to start with, your monitor can't display it, and the printer can't print it.  This is a very important consideration.  (See Michael's article about the pointlessness of the super expensive monitor he tested that can display more then 8bpp - there is no PC hardware to drive it so it really can't be tested or shown to work any better then a regular monitor)

So basically any video card which drives the monitor(s) at ideal resolution for your work at 32-bit color depth is going to be fine.  All modern boards have plenty of 2D acceleration for Photoshop and general windows work.  If you want to drive a 30" flat screen monitor make sure you get a 256MB card with Dual DVI, etc..

When Microsoft/Apple produce an OS that can support a (non existent currently) video card that runs 16 bits per channel plus a 16-bit alpha channel, we'll all have reason to go out and drop huge money on a very expensive new video card, one of the very high end monitors, and a new version of the OS.   This would probably be very very nice for Photographers.. unfortunately it's not going to happen for a while I bet, because 3D gaming drives the market far more then Photo applications, and higher 3D performance will sell a lot more hardware & software then 16-bits per channel 2D capabilities.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2006, 12:58:02 pm by benInMA »
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svein

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« Reply #11 on: October 05, 2006, 03:43:19 pm »

I'm afraid I don't have an exact answer to your question, but I bought a new computer in May. I'm a software developer and not a photo-professional, but I use my computer a lot and want good picture quality both for long hours in front of the screen(s) and for some image editing.
My previous PC had a Matrox P650 AGP board which I was happy with. It has almost no 3-acceleration but support my dual screen setup with one 20" and one 24" monitor. Both are connected with dvi, and the P650 support either 2 DVI or one DVI and one VGA screens.
Unfortunately my old board couldn't be used in my new PC with PCIe-interface, but the P650 is (still) available and now also comes with as a PCIe-card. Unfortunately it's fairly expensive (not compared with high end "games-cards", but compared to other boards with similar 3-d performance). The AGP-version was without a fan but the new version has a fan (I've haven't found info about noise, but assume it's not that bad as the old version managed without a fan).
I also asked questions similar to yours, and got some answers, but nothing that made for an easy conclusion.
So I searced on the web. Found two articles (could dig up links) about DVI-performance on Nvidia-boards not being as good as on ATI-boards, but they were published at least two years ago and I decided to keep Nvidia as an option.
I looked specifically for double dvi-boards, preferably without a fan and with some 3d-acceleration (in case I wanted to use the new Vista interface when it comes out).
Not many boards had double dvi ports and no fan, but I found some and just before I had to decide Nvidia came out with the 7600GS chips. These boards fit my requirement well, with an up to date technology and low to mid level performance which mean fairly low power consumption. Several manufacturers launced 7600GS boards with passive cooling, and I got one from XFX (the only 7600GS-card at the time with dual dvi).
It works well so far, can't se any difference from my old PC with matrox card and support dual screen with high enough resolution for my system. Can't say that the picture quality is better or worse than other cards, but at least it's a fairly cheap card and completly silent.
Someone commented on Nvidia vs Ati dual screen support, and I must say I prefer the Ati version, but it's a small issue and I wouldn't let that be a deciding factor.
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David White

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« Reply #12 on: October 05, 2006, 04:16:51 pm »

Quote
  The camera can't generate 16bit  data to start with, your monitor can't display it, and the printer can't print it. 
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=79205\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

This is not correct.  The Canon EOS 5D captures 12-bits/channel and converts it to 16-bits in RASW which can then be passed into Photoshop for processing.  The Canon IPF5000 printer can print with a 16-bit driver and the printer itself uses 12 bits to generate the print.
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David White

benInMA

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« Reply #13 on: October 06, 2006, 12:11:37 pm »

You sure that makes any sense?

12 bits per channel is 68 billion colors.

How the heck do you represent that on an inkjet printer with 12 inks that is only 1200dpi?

There's so much speculation on what is and is not coming off of sensors like the 5Ds, it's hard for me to buy much of it without hearing it from Canon.

If it's 12 bits per channel before the data is de-bayered, it is not 12-bits of useful RGB data coming off the sensor, and it sure as hell is not 16-bits.

The extra data is really useful for working with the data.. but it's not necessarily what people think it is.
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