mac vs pc which is better for photo editing?

I've had a pretty lengthy discussion with a mac fanatic... Even with links to manufacturer websites with specs listed and everything he insisted mac hardware was somehow better. Like the higher quality and better functioning stuff got sent to apple, and the stuff more likely to fail was sent to PC manufacturers. There's no swaying some people - they've been brainwashed that Apple is amazing and can't comprehend anything else.
 
There just isn't that much of difference overall. In fact if you're artistic type the PC can give you more flexability because of device like Tablet PCs. Yes, there are tablet pads for Macs and Hackintosh Tablets but nothing really like a TPC. At the end of the day you go with PCs for more options generally unless you need something Mac only.
 
A Windows machine with a nice monitor is fine if you're going for photo editing alone.

The only reason a Mac is justified for graphics design is when dealing with typography, which is when OSX's better-for-print font rendering engine comes into play. For me at least, Window's font rendering is horribly aliased and what's on the screen looks nothing like on print, while on a Mac the results on the screen almost perfectly matches the result on paper. For everything else a PC running Windows is fine.
 
I have to say large libraries of RAW images load much faster on my home machine (6x750GB hardware RAID5) than than on my photographer friend's MBP. :p
 
I enjoy all the people in the RTVF department at school roaming around hugging their MBP's laughing to myself at how much they for so little performance? I will say I have not seen an ugly MAC for a long time, just dont like em.

In the past I would agree MACs were more user friendly for graphical things. But with PC's being more powerful, and a MAC becoming a PC with a retarded OS (personal feelings of Apple OS's) slapped on top the field is more in a PCs favor now, especially with 64bit support. Low end users probably wont notice much difference. Power users as this thread seems to be showing are banking towards PC's for the amount of customizing they can do, and what you get for your dollar.
 
if you have the technical prowess to have even found this forum, you should be building a much more efficient media editting machine. recommend macs to your friends who need close to what you can build for their work, and perhaps grab a mac to use as a personal laptop you don't have to think about. (and with macports, turn it into something useful if you do any network tinkering)

all else, build your own shit. throw a quadro card in it if you so desire.
 
Decepticon said:
However, if you're going to be doing series graphical work/photo editing and pretty much doing anything that isn't gaming...get a Mac, it's much better equipped out of the box to do this kind of thing, and Photoshop is slightly superior on OS X. It just works better in my experience (yes I frequent both).
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Windows may not come with something like iPhoto but anyone with 2 minutes of time can find a site to download GIMP from. :D

I also disagree with Ps being superior in OSX considering there is no 64bit exe for Ps in OSX. Someone can look at that as "oh well you can allow more memory in Ps64.exe in Windows, but that doesn't matter", well - depending on what type of files and what size of files you are working with, yes it does matter. ;)

Pylon said:
The only reason a Mac is justified for graphics design is when dealing with typography, which is when OSX's better-for-print font rendering engine comes into play. For me at least, Window's font rendering is horribly aliased and what's on the screen looks nothing like on print, while on a Mac the results on the screen almost perfectly matches the result on paper.
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Never had any font quality issues myself. 5 years of FedEx Kinkos working on both, 5 years at my current employer (privately owned print company) working on both.

Fonts used to favor Mac simply because initially PS (Postscript) fonts were Mac only; that was a LONG time ago though. Macs have practically ditched PS fonts, just like Windows never really had (unless you used ATM [Adobe Type Manager]) - now pretty much everything is either OpenType or TrueType and either works with both. I will say (on the font issue) I've had more issues in Font Book with hundreds of fonts active/installed, vs no problems in Windows with hundreds of fonts active/installed. Macs really do need font management apps (I still have FontExplorer X installed at work even though now Linotype has removed the freeware version of it), I have yet to have issues though in Windows (Vista or now 7) with a lot of fonts installed.

Again though - as it's already been said - either platform works. Designing is not a platform dependent thing anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time, actually. :)
 
It's worth noting that Photoshop is now 64-bit on the OS X side for CS5, so for the most part, Photoshop should act and perform identically on OS X as it does on Windows.
 
For photo work I see ZERO advantage to Macs.

Lightroom > Aperture
Picasa > iPhoto
Photoshop is photoshop on either platform.

For video Macs have some advantages like Final Cut and iMovie. iMovie really has no equal, all the cheaper windows movie editors suck. There is Sony Vegas and Premiere to compete with Final Cut though.
 
There is no way that doing the same thing on a mac would produce better "quality" pictures. It may be the case that some editing programs run better on a mac in comparison to a pc with similar specs, but for buckets more coin. The quality of the finished product is mostly dependent on the user, not the hardware
 
TheGamerZ said:
Since Macs ARE PC's in shiny aluminum cases, performance is identical on the hardware level. Both have Photoshop and other programs of the like. It depends on whether you want the "bling bling look at my brushed aluminum computer while i sip my $12 latte" look or the "I know what I'm talking about and spend my money wisely" look.
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Amen to that brother, well said. :cool:
 
The perceived difference may just come down to the monitor. I believe macs typically come with IPS screens? While PCs could come with everything, which tend to be TNs. So from a generalized comparison, one could be comparing a IPS screen mac setup vs. a TN panel PC setup, as the IPS panel will be better then the TN panel from a photo editing (and viewing) perspective.

However keep in mind, you could always buy a IPS screen for a PC as well.
 
OS platform doesn't matter, your looking at color accuracy of the display, ram, CPU and what will run whatever program your using. I'm currently working on an i7 Macbook Pro, love it, but It would be no different on a Windows based system. I'm also on a matte/antiglare screen, which makes all the difference in the world. As far as cost goes, good equipment will cost you. Mac or PC. On this forum, we have all had/lusted over expensive hardware, for whatever reason.
 
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