Windows 7 and Photoshop Lightroom

[JMM]

I am looking at taking some digital classes this year and my old laptop is not up to it,so will have to buy a new one.I know that Mac is better with photoshop lightroom but mac's are double the cost,so has any body here used photoshop with windows 7

 

[indeedies]

I'm using this setup and it works great. Although when I switched from using my laptop to edit photos in LR or PS to a desktop with a calibrated monitor I found my work was much better quality when it came to printing.

 

[ANDS!]

I am looking at taking some digital classes this year and my old laptop is not up to it,so will have to buy a new one.I know that Mac is better with photoshop lightroom but mac's are double the cost,so has any body here used photoshop with windows 7

Lightroom works fine on my sub-standard Windows 7 PC. Seriously what do you need it to do that it supposedly performs better on a MAC than on a PC? The two platforms should be identical.

 

[NateWagner]

Ditto, I use LR on Windows 7, works just fine. I don't think I've ever had it crash or anything.

 

[DemonAstroth]

Actual, per price paid, a Windows 7/Lightroom machine will perform much better than a Mac/lightroom machine.

For whatever price you pay to have a white glossy and pretty icon machine, you can get a much better performer Windows based system.

I'm running a two year old machine, KA3-mvp motherboard, 4 gigs of corsair ddr2, X1950 pro in crossfire (doesn't help with LR), and an AMD Athlon 64x2 6000+, and 2 Hitachi 750 gig HDD in a mirrored raid 1 configuration.

With that set up, I run lightroom very well without any problems, and my components are already aging. I'm sure if you piece together or buy any newer machine you should do great.

 

[FemFugler]

I also use Lightroom with Windows 7 and have had no problems.

 

[cfusionpm]

I am looking at taking some digital classes this year and my old laptop is not up to it,so will have to buy a new one.I know that Mac is better with photoshop lightroom but mac's are double the cost,so has any body here used photoshop with windows 7

Macs being better may have been true 10 years ago, but its more or less a myth now. Any difference mostly comes down to personal prefrence and placebo effects. I use Win7 at home with several Adobe CS4 programs (PS, LR2, After Effects, and Premiere) with absolutely no issues and all run smoothly on my ~year old desktop.

 

[Gaerek]

I am looking at taking some digital classes this year and my old laptop is not up to it,so will have to buy a new one.I know that Mac is better with photoshop lightroom but mac's are double the cost,so has any body here used photoshop with windows 7

Macs being better may have been true 10 years ago, but its more or less a myth now. Any difference mostly comes down to personal prefrence and placebo effects. I use Win7 at home with several Adobe CS4 programs (PS, LR2, After Effects, and Premiere) with absolutely no issues and all run smoothly on my ~year old desktop.

QFT

Hardware in Macs an PCs are identical now. Back when Macs used PowerPC processors, this may have been true, but the exact same Intel chip in the Mac is the same one you can get in a PC (at a lower price to boot).

The only real difference is preference. Do you prefer OSX or Windows? If you are thinking about switching, remember, the grass isn't always greener. If you're used to using Windows, save yourself the learning curve and the money and stick with Windows.

Also, I use LR and PS just fine on my two year old laptop with Windows 7. It could be a bit faster, but it runs just fine for me.

 

[KmH]

About 85% of all computer users use a PC. Only 15% use a Mac.

You'll have a few problems using a laptop for editing.

Laptop screens aren't really up to the task because of limited usable viewing angles, and if you don't configure the laptop properly you'll have issues with editing speed.

Plugging your laptop output into a standalone calibrated monitor is the common practice for quality image editing.

Images are huge files compared to text and you need substantial memory capacity and processor speed to edit them.

You will need a minimum of 4GB of RAM memory and a 500GB hard disk is recommended.

As far as processors, since you're buying new, get a quad processor.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

The studio I intern at is in the process of switching out their macs in favor of cheaper, faster, and unusually more stable quad core windows 7 machines.

It's interesting because CS4, LR, Phocus, they all open almost instantly, which on the macs, it was like "ok start it up, and while it's getting started lets move some stuff". When shooting with EOS utility, photos transfer to the computer faster and EOS utility doesn't crash all the time when we use the 1DsIII.

Funny part is when we first started testing, a Frankenstein PC built from random older parts that one of the owners had (older core 2 duo, 4GB DDR2) was still faster than the newer 24 inch imacs. :/

[opinion]
i dunno, macs aren't bad, they're just kind of a waste of money nowadays for getting something that just has a sleeker design to it. [/opinioin]

 

[Gaerek]

QFT

Hardware in Macs an PCs are identical now. Back when Macs used PowerPC processors, this may have been true, but the exact same Intel chip in the Mac is the same one you can get in a PC (at a lower price to boot).

The only real difference is preference. Do you prefer OSX or Windows? If you are thinking about switching, remember, the grass isn't always greener. If you're used to using Windows, save yourself the learning curve and the money and stick with Windows.

Also, I use LR and PS just fine on my two year old laptop with Windows 7. It could be a bit faster, but it runs just fine for me.

I just want to comment on my original post, because I don't want it to come off as Windows snobish. I have nothing against Macs, and there are a lot of things about OSX that I like more than Windows. I just simply can't justify the cost of a Mac, especially when there is really no benefit to buying one over the other. I'm an IT professional by trade, and in the end, it's all about the hardware. I can't understand why people pay several hundred dollars for a similar Mac, just for OSX and iLife. And speaking of iLife, no matter how good it is, it's still bundled software that is NOT free (like they make it sound like it is).

If the OP had said that he had a Mac already, but was thinking about moving to a Windows 7 machine, I probably would have told him to stick with what he knows. I like Macs, I just think they are WAY too expensive for what you get.

 

[Iron Flatline]

Lightroom works just as well on Windows as on Mac. Have fun, it's a very good application.

 

[DerekSalem]

Actual, per price paid, a Windows 7/Lightroom machine will perform much better than a Mac/lightroom machine.

For whatever price you pay to have a white glossy and pretty icon machine, you can get a much better performer Windows based system.

I'm running a two year old machine, KA3-mvp motherboard, 4 gigs of corsair ddr2, X1950 pro in crossfire (doesn't help with LR), and an AMD Athlon 64x2 6000+, and 2 Hitachi 750 gig HDD in a mirrored raid 1 configuration.

With that set up, I run lightroom very well without any problems, and my components are already aging. I'm sure if you piece together or buy any newer machine you should do great.

I'm boasting a Q9550 OC'd to 3.61Ghz, 4Gb of CAS4-4-4-12 ram, a GTX 260 Core 216 OC'd, and dual 25" 1080p monitors that are calibrated correctly...and I still do about half of my editing on the aluminum unibody macbook (with a 2.2Ghz C2D and a 9800GT). Truth is, although I'd rather do the editing on my PC a lot of the time I'm just not home.

Now, for the OP we're looking at probably around equal-power machines for most likely $200-$300 more for the macbook. Which do I think he should get? The Macbook.

Windows 7 is phenomenal (I use it on 2 PCs and my macbook in bootcamp) but the Adobe line of products run *MUCH* better in OSX. If 2 machines are the same spec but one's using W7 while the other is using OSX...the OSX machine will perform much better in Photoshop/LR purely because of the way it was designed. I had a Dell M1330 before the macbook (almost identical stats except 4Gb in the Dell instead of 2Gb on the mac) and Photoshop/LR performed *MUCH* better on the macbook. Yes, even with half the ram.

 

[NateWagner]

200-300 more? yeah, not likely.

Funny thing is that from different OS users I have heard that it LR runs well, and that it doesn't. Typically it seems to be rather subjective and not at all a sure thing.

Same for on a Windows machine, for some it runs quite well, and for some it doesn't. Sometimes it depends on other things running at the same time, size of hard drive, speed of hard drive whether or not you render full previews early type of camera (file size) etc.

Honestly, on my 3 year old machine LR2's brushes still run instantaneously.

 

[JMM]

I am looking at taking some digital classes this year and my old laptop is not up to it,so will have to buy a new one.I know that Mac is better with photoshop lightroom but mac's are double the cost,so has any body here used photoshop with windows 7

Lightroom works fine on my sub-standard Windows 7 PC. Seriously what do you need it to do that it supposedly performs better on a MAC than on a PC? The two platforms should be identical.

I was talking to some of the folks at the Rocky Mountain School Of Photography where I am looking into taking classes,and they are all mac people,but it kind of looks like the ford--chevy thing.Thanks for the info