Help me match a CPU to Aperature:

Question

I'm in the process of looking to upgrade my aging G4 system. I am a photographer/writer. I make use of photoshop and InDesign a lot (approx. 8 hours a day). My old eMAc G4 has served me well, but the G4 even with 1gb of RAM, the small screen and lack of hard drive space has left me wasting time watching the clock tick, making me wear maginfying glasses and sent me to the store buying external hardrives (of which I now have three).
Which leads me to Aperature.
I've been somewhat following it's release. Initially I was going to buy it when it was released but I held off after reading the first wave of reports coming in.
Now, with some time having passed, how do you all feel. Does Aperature enhance your photoshop workflow, replace any of it ... or is it really apples and oranges; in other words, do you think that ultimately, you'll be using aperature or photoshop more than the other. And if this is the case, which way would you see yourself going?
I am leaning towards purchasing Aperature; and if I do, I'd best select a CPU that integrates well with it.
What would you all think is the best combination of efficency/practicality and price. I was originally going to get a 2ghz 20" iMac,. max the RAM out and continue on. But if I use Aperature, if I do get it, I am under the impression the video card on the IMac won't interface with the program and that card cannot be changed. With a budget of $1800-$2300, what would you all do?

Answer 1

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Now, with some time having passed, how do you all
feel. Does Aperature enhance your photoshop
workflow, replace any of it ... or is it really
apples and oranges; in other words, do you think that
ultimately, you'll be using aperature or photoshop
more than the other. And if this is the case, which
way would you see yourself going?
I think the answer to that last question depends on what you are doing - if you tend to edit pictures a lot, then you'll spend more time in Photoshop. If you tend to mostly be making levels adjsutments or color tweaks or quick spot repair, you can spend most of your time in Aperture. In my opinion even if you are doing a lot of Photoshop work Aperture makes a good tool to organize those images, you can import the PSD files directly sa a starting point intead of RAW if you wish.
I really do feel like Aperture is a huge boon in terms of time, as it makes it much easier to keyword images and also compare them. You might think you do not need comparing tools if you are not culling many pictures out but powerful comparison tools are useful in other situations as well. You mentioned using InDesign a lot which to me says publications of some sort, perhaps newsletters or full books. Aperture has a "Light Table" where you can do rough layout of photos just to see how they look together before moving to IndDesign, and you can use the direct image comparison tools to try out different crops or color adjustments to an image to see which you like better bfore exporting for InDesign.
One feature of Aperture that will get in your way a bit is on output, by default Aperture will not overwrite files and so you have to remove them before you export again. The reason this may get in your way is that in the book work I have done I did a lot of cycles where I was in the book, then back to Aperture either making or seelcting a new image, then exporting out again. By default Aperture will still export but under a slightly different name (adds a _1 to the end) which means InDesign will not see the new file.
A good workaround for Indesign is to delete all the images, re-export and then I think InDesign will ask if you want to repair image references.
I am leaning towards purchasing Aperature; and if I
do, I'd best select a CPU that integrates well with
it.
What would you all think is the best combination of
efficency/practicality and price. I was originally
going to get a 2ghz 20" iMac,. max the RAM out and
continue on. But if I use Aperature, if I do get
it, I am under the impression the video card on the
IMac won't interface with the program and that card
cannot be changed. With a budget of $1800-$2300,
what would you all do?
You are right about the card not being able to be changed. However the good news is that the new Intel iMacs have a different card that is more powerful - while I do not think the new iMac would be quite as good an Aperture box as a Powermac with a newer card in it, it's more practical and a lot cheaper. Luckily the new iMac also supports monitor spanning so you can get a second display which Aperture makes excellent use of. They were running Aperture on an iMac at PMA and it seemed to perform fairly well.
One last note is that Aperture will work on the Intel Mac only after Aperture 1.1 is released, which if you've been reading the board much you'll not should be Any Day Now.