PC for photo editing

Cisco001

p00 said:

Cisco001 said:

Are you after pre-built desktop?
Is your £1000 for full set up or tower only?

Yes a ready built ready to go pc.  Could be tower only as I have the smart tv for a screen and wireless keyboard and mouse in the drawer.
I'm just not sure the lowest spec I should go and the sales people in Currys simply suggested no lower than i7.  Then tried to sell me the most expensive machine
X

With £1000 budget, you should be looking at something like.
Ryzen 7 3700X, 16GB RAM, GTX 1660 super/ RTX 2060, SSD drive
https://www.box.co.uk/Cube-Gauntlet-Mini_2962430.html?config=2335908,2472017,2647976,2725847,2793255
Customise
RAM 2 x 8GB DDR4 
Video card GTX 1660 super

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-iceman-ryzen-7-3700x-eight-core-rtx-2060-6gb-windows-10-flight-simulator-gaming-pc.html
SSD to 512GB ADATA SX8200 Pro
HDD - add a HDD for storage.

photodgm

If I correctly understand your requirements the only real improvement you need to consider from a reasonably standard home/office pc is the monitor. Reasonably large, good colour accuracy, high resolution (don't need 4K) are probably the most important criteria. Perhaps look here as a starting point.
https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/uk/buying-guides/best-monitors-for-photographers
As far as the PC is concerned I would have thought that an intel i5 with a SSD for the operating system and a HDD for data, 8Gb RAM, possibly a low spec video card if you don't plan to play games, should be satisfactory. Some photo editing software uses the graphics cards to accelerate things but some seem much more dependent on the CPU. If you don't already have one I would budget for an external usb hard drive to backup photos and other important files on to. I am not an expert on current PC specs and bought my last photo editing computer some years ago, for me as well as the performance it was important to purchase a quiet machine, that requirement added considerably to the cost.

forgotmyname

TheRightOne said:

Nope.
Typical CPU from 2000:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+4+1.50GHz&id=1053

No photo editing would be taking place with that. 

Add in the sobering effect of PC-100 or PC-133 RAM and you'll be happy to even view a photo, let alone edit it.

Benchmarks are not everything though. You think thats bad imagine back to the 80's when a printshop was using a lowly MACII
not even a colour one.  16Mhz/20MHz?  of pure power with its 1MB of RAM.  £400 for another 1MB failed until you cut metal
jumpers on the motherboard.

Think of the benchmark on that.  GHz  eeeh i could only dream of reaching 100MHz some day.  

Yet it did the job.

a

p00, press start button and type SYSTEM INFO and click on it as  the program listing appears
A box appears that is split into a left and right column. On top of left column click on system summary - it probably already there.  In right column click on ant line so it turns blue, the press Control-A to select the whole column, then Control-C to copy that column.

Now start a new comment here and press Control-V  and you should get something like this:

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home

Version 10.0.18363 Build 18363

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Name DESKTOP

System Manufacturer SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.

System Model 350V5C/351V5C/3540VC/3440VC

System Type x64-based PC

System SKU P09ABE.012.CP

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3630QM CPU @ 2.40GHz, 2401 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. P09ABE, 04/07/2013

SMBIOS Version 2.7

Embedded Controller Version 9.00

BIOS Mode UEFI

BaseBoard Manufacturer SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.

BaseBoard Product NP350E7C-S02UK

BaseBoard Version BOARD REVISION 00

Platform Role Mobile

Secure Boot State On

PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible

Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS

System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2

Locale United Kingdom

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.18362.752"

Username DESKTOP\fred

Time Zone GMT Summer Time

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB

Total Physical Memory 15.9 GB

Available Physical Memory 11.8 GB

Total Virtual Memory 16.9 GB

Available Virtual Memory 11.5 GB

Page File Space 0.98 GB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Kernel DMA Protection Off

Virtualisation-based security Not enabled

Device Encryption Support Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: TPM is not usable, PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and the device is not Modern Standby, Un-allowed DMA-capable bus/device(s) detected, TPM is not usable

Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes

Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes

Hyper-V - Virtualisation Enabled in Firmware Yes

Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

If a £1000 is not significant, buy whatever you wish.

BooJewels

I'm a keen amateur photographer and do 2 things that need decent computing power; developing RAW files and focus stacking macro photos.  As others have already commented on, three things I consider a priority are RAM, monitor / calibration and a decent amount of storage, along with a back up solution.   If you start doing tasks like the ones I just listed, you can generate a lot of files that quickly eat up your hard drive.  Especially if, as you take photos, you focus and/or exposure bracket.  RAM is the biggie (perhaps along with processor speed) for getting things done in decent time.

Rather than going in to Currys or the like and trying to buy off the shelf, do you have a local computer shop that could build you one to spec, that suits your particular needs.  My current photo computer is fairly new to me, but is actually second hand from a local shop that refurb and sell previous commercial machines.  My budget was significantly more modest than yours, but I went from developing RAW files in several minutes each to being so fast that I thought the process had failed the first few I did - so a handful of seconds per file - and my spec is lower than a's specified above.

Don't forget to allow some of your budget for software too - photo manipulation software tends to be expensive.  There are many free options, but your course may require something specific.

TheRightOne

BooJewels said:

I'm a keen amateur photographer and do 2 things that need decent computing power; developing RAW files and focus stacking macro photos.  As others have already commented on, three things I consider a priority are RAM, monitor / calibration and a decent amount of storage, along with a back up solution.   If you start doing tasks like the ones I just listed, you can generate a lot of files that quickly eat up your hard drive.  Especially if, as you take photos, you focus and/or exposure bracket.  RAM is the biggie (perhaps along with processor speed) for getting things done in decent time.

Rather than going in to Currys or the like and trying to buy off the shelf, do you have a local computer shop that could build you one to spec, that suits your particular needs.  My current photo computer is fairly new to me, but is actually second hand from a local shop that refurb and sell previous commercial machines.  My budget was significantly more modest than yours, but I went from developing RAW files in several minutes each to being so fast that I thought the process had failed the first few I did - so a handful of seconds per file - and my spec is lower than a's specified above.

Don't forget to allow some of your budget for software too - photo manipulation software tends to be expensive.  There are many free options, but your course may require something specific.

Perhaps quoting the actual specification may be useful to the OP. 

BooJewels

Not sure it will help much as it isn't a model you can buy, he tweaked it for me from the basic set up of the model shown.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro

Version 10.0.18363 Build 18363

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard

System Model HP ProDesk 400 G2 MT (TPM DP)

System Type x64-based PC

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590S CPU @ 3.00GHz, 3001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date Hewlett-Packard L02 v02.39, 11/12/2014

SMBIOS Version 2.7

Embedded Controller Version 255.255

BIOS Mode UEFI

BaseBoard Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard

BaseBoard Product 198E

BaseBoard Version Not Available

Platform Role Desktop

Secure Boot State Off

PCR7 Configuration Elevation Required to View

Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS

System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2

Locale United Kingdom

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.18362.752"

Time Zone GMT Summer Time

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB

Total Physical Memory 7.92 GB

Available Physical Memory 4.16 GB

Total Virtual Memory 9.17 GB

Available Virtual Memory 4.22 GB

Page File Space 1.25 GB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Kernel DMA Protection Off

Virtualisation-based security Not enabled

Device Encryption Support Elevation Required to View

Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes

Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes

Hyper-V - Virtualisation Enabled in Firmware No

Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

Sandtree

marksmith112 said:

According to your requirement, you can buy any one of these 

Please see List of  given below

<snip>

6. Apple iMac Pro

Love to know how you are going to get an iMac Pro for £1,000?

OP - you really need to find out a) what software the course if going to use and factor that into your budget and b) decide what you want to achieve from the course

If its in anyway a "professional" course it will almost certainly be using Photoshop, with this you have a choice of a one off large expense or a monthly subscription of circa £10/month which includes all future updates but obviously a never ending drain. There is, or at least was, a "home" version called Photoshop Essentials but this was a very different product and you cannot follow exact click by click instructions for Photoshop in Photoshop Essentials.

As others have said, colour accuracy is highly important in professional photo editing so you know when you order the image to be printed on a 20' bill board exactly how its going to look. Colour accuracy adds a fair amount of cost to monitors but if its only ever going to be you looking at the photo and rarely printed etc its not worth the investment... even if it is going to be shared but only digitally its a more questionable investment to get more than a "good" accuracy as even if its was perfect on your screen for 99% of the others that see it it will be far from perfect as they have budget laptop screens etc that are terrible at colour reproduction/consistency 

TheRightOne

BooJewels said:

Not sure it will help much as it isn't a model you can buy, he tweaked it for me from the basic set up of the model shown.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro

Version 10.0.18363 Build 18363

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard

System Model HP ProDesk 400 G2 MT (TPM DP)

System Type x64-based PC

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590S CPU @ 3.00GHz, 3001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date Hewlett-Packard L02 v02.39, 11/12/2014

SMBIOS Version 2.7

Embedded Controller Version 255.255

BIOS Mode UEFI

BaseBoard Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard

BaseBoard Product 198E

BaseBoard Version Not Available

Platform Role Desktop

Secure Boot State Off

PCR7 Configuration Elevation Required to View

Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS

System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2

Locale United Kingdom

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.18362.752"

Time Zone GMT Summer Time

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB

Total Physical Memory 7.92 GB

Available Physical Memory 4.16 GB

Total Virtual Memory 9.17 GB

Available Virtual Memory 4.22 GB

Page File Space 1.25 GB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Kernel DMA Protection Off

Virtualisation-based security Not enabled

Device Encryption Support Elevation Required to View

Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes

Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes

Hyper-V - Virtualisation Enabled in Firmware No

Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

It's quite informative, as it illustrates that the OP doesn't need the latest and greatest tower unit to achieve what he needs. Less than £200 by the looks of it.
Though it's not clear if you have a discrete graphics card fitted.

That leaves a lot in the budget for a well calibrated monitor.