[Michael Harris]

Let me apologize from the outset since this sound more like a PC question than a photography question but I figured that digital photo folks would best be able to answer.

First what do you think are the optimal requirements for processing, editing, manipulating, etc digital pictures on a Windows PC. Please just don't tell me to throw it out and buy a Mac. Can't afford it yet so I must do with what I have. Currently I have a 1Ghz PIII with 512meg of memory. Hard drive is only 40Gig but that will increase.

For printing photos I am looking at the followng Epsons since I like the fact that they have seperate ink cartridges for the colors: R200, R300M, and the R800.

I am also looking to buy a dedicated negative scanner. Any suggestions under $400? There is one by Minolta that caught my eye but I can't remember the model number.

Lastly what about photo editing software? Certainly don't need the full power of Adobe photoshop. Mostly need something that can correct mistakes like under/over exposure, cropping, correcting colors, etc.

FYI, my new digital camera is a Nikon D-70 and I love it.

[Thomas Newton]

1 GHz and 512 MB of RAM are more than enough for basic photo editing. 40 GB of HD space (total, including applications and OS) is plenty for editing one batch of photos, but way too small if you want to archive scans of many years worth of negatives on your PC.

Epson photo printers print real nice looking output -- when they are working. The biggest drawback to Epsons is print head cleaning. The print heads are permanently attached to the printer, and the only way of cleaning them if they get fouled (which they do!) is through software. Sometimes it may take many cleaning cycles before you get clean output.

For inexpensive photo editing, Adobe PhotoShop Elements version 2.0 is only $100 and has many of the features of Adobe PhotoShop. Adobe left out a few things the print publishing industry cannot live without (e.g., CYMK support) and a few nice features (e.g., 48-bit color and the "Healing Brush"). I got v1 for free with my negative scanner, and bought v2 for the ability to run natively in Mac OS X.

[Ari]

The first thing you should do is head on over to DPReview and go to their forums. Lots of information on exactly what you are asking.

In terms of your computer, what you currently have is adequate but I bet you'll soon find yourself wishing for more. People have built dual Opteron rigs, RAID, 2GB of RAM, etc. just for photo editing. Most people end up with something like a relatively recent P4 (~2.5 Ghz), 1 GB of RAM and 160GB of HD space (2x80GB).

There is also a lot more software that you'll probably want besides Photoshop. I personally use the following:
1. Pixort - culling junk images from shoots
2. Capture One - conversion of RAW (or in your case NEF) files to JPG or TIF; exposure and white balance correction
3. Photoshop CS
4. Downloader Pro - automatically saves and renames downloaded images
5. Breezebrowser - image viewer
6. Neat Image - clean up high ISO images

It's probably going overboard to get all of these when just starting. Most of them are available as free demos (pixort is totally free) so you can try them out that way.

[Scott Kimball]

If you've acquired a D-70, then you are serious enough to consider Photoshop CS - if not now, then down the road. If you are a student, or know a student or staff / faculty, you might look into the educational discounts... you can get the real deal for less than half price.

For now, Photoshop LE ought to hold you.

I highly recommend Epson printers, and have rarely had issues with clogged heads. On the rare occasion it happens, running the cleaning utility solves the problem. You might want to look at the Epson 1280. It's consistently rated the best in its price class.

Sounds like you've got enough PC to get you started, but you'll want to upgrade or add HD space soon. The 512MB of RAM should do okay for you, but if things start to bog down, that will be your bottleneck before processor speed.

As for the negative / slide scanner - new scanners in the price range you specify will do you no better than a flatbed with transparency adaptor at roughly the same price (the real advantage to dedicated film scanners is a greater dynamic range... the cheapers ones don't have that benefit). Do yourself a favor and either pick up such a flatbed (more versatile), look in the used market for a Kodak RFS 3600 (you should be able to find them used at under $500), or save your pennies for a modern, high end dedicated film scanner - the decent ones will run you $1000.

-Scott

[Thomas Newton]

Other accessories:

1. Flash card reader (CompactFlash or multi-format) -- preferably one that is built-in, or that has a FireWire or USB 2.0 interface (for speed).

2. CD or DVD burner (to backup/archive photos).

3. (Optional) 3" mini-CD-Rs. (Large enough to hold copies of many photos & small enough to mail inside greeting cards you send to family or friends.)

[Man-Fai Wong]

I don't have much to add to what's already been said. I would say though that Photoshop 5.0 LE may be too crippled to use on a PC due to the hardcoded, incorrect gamma setting in the software. The internal gamma setting is correct for a Mac, but not for Windows-based system. PS Elements 2 would be a fine start, but anyone who wants to use RAW for greater postprocessing latitude should look elsewhere since you need more than 8-bit/channel editing to do that, which PSE2 does not offer. You could probably go w/ PSE2 + Nikon Capture or some other RAW converter that allows 16-bit/channel postprocessing and only use PSE2 for stuff that doesn't need the latitude. PSE2 is very cheap nowadays w/ their rebate offer -- maybe ~$50 after rebate.

Yeah, a much better equipped PC would be good, especially if you want to do 16-bit editing. If you stay in 8-bit mode, then it's not as important and what you have would be ok.

For RAW conversion, you might consider other alternatives over Nikon Capture. Seems that Nikon Capture is not as good at recovering highlight details as some other software out there. It also may not be as good at handling moire/aliasing artifacts than some others -- the D70 is more prone to moire/aliasing than most other <$2K DSLRs. Of course, things can change as Nikon releases newer versions.

For photo archiving, I wouldn't rely solely on CD/DVD burning. I would keep everything on HDD in addition to archiving to CD/DVD -- probably go w/ DVD, especially if you shoot RAW -- and then redo the backups every year or so. Seems like optical media are not all that reliable.

For printing, I'm not crazy about fussy inkjet printing and actually use dye-sub for my 4x6 prints -- I use a Hi-Touch HiTi 640 now. I like the continuous tone of dye-sub, but it doesn't seem to yield as strong contrast as inkjet and often *appears* less sharp because of the continuous tone -- it's actually sharp, but smooth, while inkjet output looks grittier w/ grain-like sharpness and less smooth color transition that adds contrast and thus apparent sharpness. Sometimes, I do prefer the inkjet look while others the dye-sub look. If I were to go back to inkjet, it would have to be a large format one like the Epson 1280 (or the newer 2200). The 1280 seems fairly affordable nowadays. But printing enlargements at decent photolabs is so inexpensive nowadays. My main concern w/ using photolabs would probably be theft of the photo files, not so much w/ print quality or convenience, especially if I ever do any of this for $$$.

Also, you should consider getting color calibration kit and use printer profiles. Maybe the ~$150 Pantone/Colorvision Spyder kit would be good enough -- not the ~$100 one that only handles one profile. And check out Dry Creek (http://drycreekphoto.com/) for profiles.

FWIW, I should qualify my post by saying that I'm also in the process of making decisions about many these things, so I have not actually tried all these things yet. But have done some homework on the various issues. I have Breezebrowser, but have not tried the latest version that claims RAW support for the D70. Also, tried the trial version of Nikon Capture just a little, but my PC is too slow for it -- I think 1Ghz + 512MB won't cut it w/ Nikon's sluggish software. I'm looking to upgrade to a Dell 2.8Ghz PC w/ 1GB RAM and maybe 800Mhz FSB + HT tech. Already bought one of those cheap 200GB HDDs regularly found on HTF's Deals page. I do use PS 5.0 LE, but must always manually adjust for the incorrect gamma. I really should get PS CS, but have a hard time justifying the cost for what I do. If I planned to make $$$ off my photos, then I wouldn't hesitate to get it (along w/ a few other things).

Hmmm... Guess I had more to add than I thought afterall.

_Man_

[Brett DiMichele]

I must be blessed because my 1.8Ghz P4 with 256MB of PC2100
handles 8 bit and 16 bit editing with no problems at all.

I run PS 7.0 and Sigma Photo Pro along with Helicon Noise
Filter and some other bits and pieces and it all works
great for me. My biggest drawback is ram and I will fix
that soon enough when I slap in a pair of dual channel 512
MB PC2100 sticks.

It doesn't take a Mac and it doesn't have to be a super
computer to do image editing and batch processing.

[Michael Harris]

Thanks for all you input. Greatly appreciated.

Quote:

As for the negative / slide scanner - new scanners in the price range you specify will do you no better than a flatbed with transparency adaptor at roughly the same price

The scanner I had in mind was the Minolta DiMAGE Dual IV film scanner which goes for about $300 and seems to fit my needs exactly.

Some of the vocabulary used above was definately over my head so I still have some "learning" to do.