Menu
What's new
The GetDPI Photography Forum

Great to see you here. Join our insightful photographic forum today and start tapping into a huge wealth of photographic knowledge. Completing our simple registration process will allow you to gain access to exclusive content, add your own topics and posts, share your work and connect with other members through your own private inbox! And don’t forget to say hi!

Is the new 27" iMac the replacement for the Mac Pro?

Woody Campbell

Woody Campbell

Workshop Member
The specs for the 27" iMac are pretty impressive. Serious storage expansion is available via the Thunderbolt ports.

My fully loaded Mac Pro is getting old. Really old by digital standards. I'm concerned about reliability. Apple doesn't seem to have much interest in it. Apple really does prefer closed boxes like the iMac. Should I give up on the wait for an new Mac Pro and order the 27" iMac when it becomes available?

The setup for the new system will be a lot of work - will require all new mass storage . . . .
 
Shashin

Shashin

Well-known member
I use 27" iMacs. They are really nice machines. I also store my images on a external RAID drives and so the setup is rather easy--I also have a TimeMachine for the computer backup.
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Myself I prefer a high end laptop and a wide gamut monitor like a NEC or Eizo. These monitors are RGB
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Quoting a post but I seen this in official form just can't remember where.


Apple Cinema displays will display millions of colors and roughly represent the sRGB color space. They don't have onscreen controls so there aren't any adjustments for contrast or for the R, G or B values. If you are working in sRGB they should be fine. If you are working in Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RBG, you'll be losing a big chunk of the gamut. HP has a 27 inch display (ZR2740W) that will display billions of colors and will display Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB, but they omitted the onscreen controls (to reduce cost), just like the Apple displays. If you are working in the larger color spaces, why buy either one? Neither can be accurately calibrated, and in my opinion can't be used for critical color work. You won't find these shortcomings with real color accurate displays.
 
A

adhc

New member
I'm in the same boat. I have an 08 tower. Been waiting for USB3 and Thunderbolt.

The new iMac does look great. That plus a multibay Thunderbolt or USB3 external enclosure would be quite a nice setup.

The only downside I see to the iMac is the time required to swap out an internal hard drive, in the event of failure. But using SSDs inside would make that less of an issue. (As I use mine for work, downtime is something I think about.)

Also with 4 RAM slots, it can handle 32GBs, which is great. A tower can currently hold 128GBs, which is obviously a ton.

Here is a glimpse of what future Mac Pros could offer:
ProMax One 16-core versus Mac Pro

Stay dry today neighbor.
 
Woody Campbell

Woody Campbell

Workshop Member
adhc said:
I'm in the same boat. I have an 08 tower. Been waiting for USB3 and Thunderbolt.

The new iMac does look great. That plus a multibay Thunderbolt or USB3 external enclosure would be quite a nice setup.

The only downside I see to the iMac is the time required to swap out an internal hard drive, in the event of failure. But using SSDs inside would make that less of an issue. (As I use mine for work, downtime is something I think about.)

Also with 4 RAM slots, it can handle 32GBs, which is great. A tower can currently hold 128GBs, which is obviously a ton.

Here is a glimpse of what future Mac Pros could offer:
ProMax One 16-core versus Mac Pro

Stay dry today neighbor.
Click to expand...
This is exactly where I am.
 
Jack

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Color me three waiting for this too -- and it's getting old waiting!

I do not like the iMac option as getting inside to make updates is a huge effort (have to remove the front glass monitor cover) and having a too-small, narrow gamut monitor as my main box does nothing to excite me. The iMini option is no great shakes either, but I actually like it better than the iMac option -- at least you can get into it a little easier, and 'the box' is out of the way wherever you store it. But then it is a laptop processor and main drive.

Seriously, if Apple can't get off the pot on this one and get a CURRENT, FULLY LOADED Mac Pro option soon, they may loose me back to PC...

/rant
 
Godfrey

Godfrey

Well-known member
I've read the other thread and my position on this hasn't changed.

- you don't calibrate and profile a display to sRGB, Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB. those are device neutral color space standards used for consistent color translation.

- I calibrate and profile the ACD 27" LED and Thunderbolt displays. They don't have the on-screen RGB controls or knobs, but they are very adjustable via software controls. My targets are quite distinct from the factory setup (110 cdm^2 luminance, 1.8 gamma, 5600k white point. They image my work in the rendering task very well.

- The device specific display profile presents the translation matrix from the image's colors, in whatever your chosen working space might be (I use ProPhoto RGB) to the display, making the relative color values fit as closely as possible to what is capable of being displayed. Sure, on a wide gamut display, you might get some more values on screen ... I haven't seen so great a difference that I could not get what I wanted for a given photograph.

- My target calibration and display profile images my photos to a very high fidelity match to the output on paper, using the paper profiles and Epson 2400 and 3880 printers in a color managed workflow.

So it seems the goal of my photographic print processing workflow ... being able to adjust and render faithfully what I see on the screen to paper ... is being met. Perhaps there's some small percentage of subtle yellow and greens (according to the plots presented in a link from that page) that the 3880 and some papers can achieve but which I'm not never going to see.

To me, that loss isn't significant. The goal is to produce compelling photographs, which have always been constrained in one way or another by the capture medium and rendering process. A couple of percentage points loss where I can't reach a few tonal values at the edges of what's possible for my printer to output doesn't warrant my moving to a much more expensive monitor and computer system.

Perhaps it does matter for others, at which point add a second monitor to your iMac or use a Mac mini once the Mac Pro is no longer functional. Both the iMac and the Mac mini can support two display outputs (as can the Apple laptops).
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Have you put them side by side. I rest my case. It's huge

What you are missing here is your not seeing your Prophoto color space it's out of the SRGB color gamut which is very small. It's a big difference and when processing I am far more accurate in my shadow areas and highlights. Frankly why you even bothering with Prophoto color space images if you can't see the whole gamut. Wide gamut you can see it and process to it.
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
So you spend thousands and thousands of dollars on gear than you limit the color space to SRGB that your missing the rest of the data to your images. Sorry that don't compute. I wanna see every bit of color space my gear can capture.
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
All I can tell you when I made the switch from a apple cinema to the NEC the difference was significant and obvious. Your money do what you want and believe is good enough for your workflow. Ill stick to wide gamut monitors.
 
Godfrey

Godfrey

Well-known member
Guy Mancuso said:
So you spend thousands and thousands of dollars on gear than you limit the color space to SRGB that your missing the rest of the data to your images. Sorry that don't compute. I wanna see every bit of color space my gear can capture.
Click to expand...
I produce 70% B&W photos, and half of my color work is intentionally reduced-gamut color... Our viewpoints differ. :)

Our eyes are not sensitive or discerning enough to see all the tones and colors that a digital sensor can deliver...
 
U

Uaiomex

Member
You have all that color information on your display, now what? Will you see all that gamut in a glossy magazine? What about ink-jet prints. Will the finest printers recreate all that color space? If not, what's the point?
Eduardo
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Our viewpoints may differ but I can tell you this Jack, Bob and I bought our NEC. Monitors at exactly the same time and we all had MF backs and what we were missing when viewing our images was SIGNIFICANT. Any color expert will tell you exactly the same thing. First thing they will say is buy a Eizo. LOL

I'm just pointing this out the apple cinemas are nice monitors but they are NOT wide gamut and they are SRGB. There is a difference . How you work is meaningless , these are facts.
 
Woody Campbell

Woody Campbell

Workshop Member
So I'm sitting here reading this post on my Eizo. As far as I can tell I would be able to plug it into a 27" iMac and recalibrate it, giving me two really big displays, one of which is my Eizo.

My point on this thread isn't the display but to figure out whether I should replace my five-year old desktop now (actually in December) or continue to wait in forlorn hope that Apple finally updates the Mac Pro line.

BTW I believe that a good calibrated monitor is at least as important for B&W work as it is for color.

There are a substantial number of high end design professionals who must be in the same boat that I'm in. Any insights on what they are doing?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top