New Graphic Designer...Need help on iMac Purchase

Hi all.
I am an aspiring graphic designer who needs to purchase an iMac that will fulfill my needs. I have a limited budget, but I would rather spend the money now then have to spend more in the future. I would like to get some ideas on how much memory/ram I should get. Also, I want to hear about the 21inch screen vs. the 27 inch screen.
Primarily I will be using this computer for graphic designer purposes, so I will be using CS4 Indesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop. I will also be using the computer for downloading/playing music and movies. I do have an external hard drive but I think I should have a decent amount of memory installed on the desktop.
If anyone has any suggestions for me on what the best setup should be please let me know.
Thanks
-T

Your in luck! the iMac is perfect for CS4 and iTunes. 27-inch is perfect for HD video. And in CS4 the added screen realestate means increased performance. The display has a really great view angle, and sense it's LED back lit, the display is super bright/sharp.
The 17 comes with 1 TB of store and 4GB of ram. this is more then enough. if your working in very large files you may want to spend the 200 dollars to double your ram. that's huge bump for CS4. I would also suggested the 250 dollar upgrade to get double the storage space. 2 TB of space can be huge if you have a large movie collection. 150 dollars can get you double the video ram. If you like games this is a huge jump in performance. It will also help with things like layering in photoshop.
of corse you can always buy an external hard drive and more ram later, but your going to spend more of it. The Video card upgrade, 150, is some thing you can only do when buying the computer.
Sense your doing major work you may want to get a 2TB back up drive.
Also your talking about spending 2,149.00 on a computer. I assume your planning to hold onto the computer for at least a couple of years. Witch is why I would recommend Apple Care. It covers your computer for defect and natural wear. It's only 169 dollars.
If you had to replace one part, in 3 years, you would spend more then the apple care. Also Apple Care also get you 3 years of phone support. Normally it's 50 dollars a call. I don't know about you, but I have allot more then just 3 questions in 3 years. so it more then pays for it self.
You could also take advantage of the printer rebate. http://www.apple.com/promo/ when I bought my macbook pro having an up to date free printer was an amazing deal. It might be useful for your CS4 work. For quick scans and work prints.
You can also get 30% off mobile me. It's a great way to sync your contacts/calendars between your old and new computer. As well as an iphone, if you have one. I use mobile me to throw my PDF / Prints online. That way my clients can quickly check out and approve changes. I also use it to host my portfolio. Ones I had all my art in my computer, it took me like 20 minutes iWeb to publish my portfolio online using mobile me. It's been a great asset in self promotion; and it looks better then my friend website. And he payed some guy 800 dollar to make his website.
check out one to one. For a 100 dollars you can bring your computer into any apple store, and they will move your documents, desktop, iphoto, itunes over to your new computer.

Similar Messages

  • Graphic Designer needs help.

    Good evening.
         Not sure where to post this but I'm a Graphic Designer and I'm wanting to design and make those cool vinyl designs that people put on there Apple products. Does anyone know or know where I can get the measurements for all the Apple laptop and iPad models? Mainly the area where the Apple logo is. MacBook Pro 13,15in, Apple air and iPad. And even the size of the Apple logo itself. Is it the same size on all devices? I tried looking online but couldn't find anything off the bat. Hopefully the good people on the forum might know more about this. Thank you.

    The PDF below shows iPad dimensions, but the file is 10.8 MB so may take some time to load:
    Case Design Guidelines for Apple Devices
    ...From this Apple page found by doing THIS.

  • I am a studio graphic designer needing to purchase a color jet printer to handle small business takes.  I am trying to decide on the Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4530 All-In-One Printer  OR the HP Officejet Pro Premium e-All-in-One (need second tray for envelop

    I am a studio graphic designer needing to purchase a color jet printer, for my iMac, to handle small business tasks. I am trying to decide between the Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4530 All-In-One Printer  OR the HP Officejet Pro Premium e-All-in-One (need second tray for envelopes).   
    Do you have any recommendations?

    I am a studio graphic designer needing to purchase a color jet printer, for my iMac, to handle small business tasks. I am trying to decide between the Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4530 All-In-One Printer  OR the HP Officejet Pro Premium e-All-in-One (need second tray for envelopes).   
    Do you have any recommendations?

  • How much ram and processing power in my imac will meet my graphic design needs?

    Hi,
    I'm in the market for a new imac. I'm trying to figure out how much ram I'll need and which processor will be sufficient for my graphic design needs.
    I'm gonna need it to be robust enough to have InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator open at once along with spotify, safari with many tabs open, and a couple other apps including evernote and game from time to time. Also, I'm gonna be managing a good deal of fonts in font explorer. How much ram and processing power will I need in my imac to keep everything snappy with all these apps going at the same time?
    Any advice on this would be much appreciated. Feel free to include any other relevant information you think I should know.
    Thanks, Nick

    Computers are out of date when you open the box
    Ok, getting serious, that iMac should be a viable workhorse for what you want for a good five years, and taht depends on how much ram you put in it, add really fast external storage, and so on.
    Didn't throw this in earlier so as to not influence the discussion: my daughter is the senior art director, VP, at a graphics design firm in NYC.  Has been in the business for a number of years.  When she changed out her Mac at work, bought, or company bought, the 27" iMac model just before the latest, with maxed out CPU/GPU, and storage.  They maxed the memory to 32 GB for her, then added a 30" Apple cinema display so she has almost 5' of display in front of her.  There is nothing she cannot have open all spread across that display area.  She works almost exclusively in print media, occassionally condescends to do web stuff.  And has a massive array of RAID drives hanging on it.  But that is a setup an individual would be hard pressed to go with.
    At home she uses a MacBook Pro with top cpu and display but that is all.
    The point, just how massive do you want to go depends on how fast you have to work; in the office where time is money you need tons of horsepower.  At home, you scale it to your abilitty to juggle other tasks at the same time.
    I think your choices have been great, the discussion has focused on what is important and especially what can and cannot be changed in the future.
    Best of luck setting this up.

  • Hi. Need help. I purchased tinylegends monster crasher 2500ltd crystal pack. First purcahsed did not go in.  2nd purchased i got the crystals. my

    Hi. Need help. I purchased tinylegends monster crasher 2500ltd crystal pack. First purchased, I did not received the crystals.
      2nd purchased i got the crystals. Please check your record.  My billing came in already for 2 purchases.  Thanks

    You are not speaking directly to Apple.  Contact iTunes support for help: https://expresslane.apple.com/Issues.action

  • TS1277 I cannot remember my security question answer to authorize my new computer.  Need help to get past this.

    I cannot remember my security question answers to authorize my new computer.  Need help to establish new ones or find the answers to the originals.
    Thanks for any help on this.

    Click here for information. If you can't get the answers emailed to you for some reason, contact the iTunes Store staff via the link in that article.
    (76299)

  • TS1424 i need help finding a purchase that somebody made on my cedit card without my knowledge to itunes and i want to file a claim

    i need help finding a purchase that somebody made on my cedit card without my knowledge titunes and i want to file a claim

    You can view purchases via Store > View My Account on your computer's iTunes (and you can view subscriptions). If you want to contact iTunes support then you can do so via this page : http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact/ - click on Contact iTunes Store Support on the right-hand side of the page, then Purchases, Billing & Redemption

  • Hello all my 1.5 yr old imac has a screen getting drk from lower lft corner annd is creeping across screen apple care ended i paid 3500 for this machine and im a graphic designer pls help

    hello so i am a coolege student who saved for a decked out 27 inch imac for graphic design this was my first apple purchase ever 3500 bucks and the screen is slowly going b dark on lower left side to half way across screen i am broke and apple care is out is this really how long an apple lasts i cant get any help at all anyone know what to do or since jobs is gone is apple just garbage now?  anyone anyone

    I'd ask Apple to honor your expired apple care as this is a known issue with the 27" imac. I had the same problem with mine.
    And no... typically, macs last a long time. I have a mac book pro and an old swivel display; both are still working great. This seems to be a lots issue of bad parts.

  • Need help with previously purchased download onto new computer

    need help instaling old previously purchased photoshop elements 10 on to new computer. I do have the serial #. just cannot find where/how to do this.??

    Hi jjwillis1 ,
    Please click on the below mentioned link and expand photoshop elements 10
    http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/photoshop-elements-10-11-downloads.html
    Let me know if you need more info.
    Thanks

  • New here and need help with design

    Hello all, I am working on my son's first birthday thank you cards.  I need help removing the line in between the blue and green background.  Thanks. Stacey

    You also have a narrow black line on the lower left side.
    Increase the the magnification to 500% and select the black and the white lines with the Magic Wand (Continuous checked).  Feather by one pixel.  Sample the green right under the white line, make it the Foreground Color and fill the selection with it.
    Juergen

  • HELP!!! New ibook user needs help really bad

    I just purchased a new ibook g3 or g4 off Ebay. I'm new to the mac world but I'm getting into graphic design and the mac is the way to go...anyway....I bought this mac off ebay and all that came with it was the computer and power cord. Now I'm having issues with it and to fix the issues I need the start-up disks or the systems restore disks which I don't have. Can I get those anywhere from Apple or am I S.O.L.? Thanks

    Hi mama392! And Welcome To Discussions!
    Tiger is available for purchase at The Apple Store (U.S.).
    Panther, is no longer available directly from the Apple Online Store, as Tiger 10.4.x is the most up to date OS.
    A Full Retail Version, of the Panther Install CDs, or a Full Retail Version of the Tiger Install DVD, can be purchased rather inexpensively, at some online Apple retailers, Amazon, eBay, AppleRescue, etc.
    Be sure not to purchase grey, upgrade or machine specific CDs or DVDs.
    Panther is only on CDs, not DVDs.
    More info here Tip: Using OS X Install CDs/DVDs On Multiple Macs.
    Once Panther 10.3.x is installed, you can use the 10.3.9 Combo Update, to upgrade to the final version.
    If your Mac meets the System Requirements for Tiger, you could also consider installing that.
    And then use the 10.4.7 Combo Update.
    Tiger System Requirements
    Additionally,
    "Tiger ships on a DVD, but if your Mac doesn’t have a built-in DVD-ROM player, you’ll need CD media. When you buy Mac OS X Tiger, you qualify to purchase Tiger CDs for only $9.95."
    Download The order Form Here. Media Exchange Program
    Shop Carefully, Examine All Documention, And Good Luck!
    ali b

  • SUGGESTIONS NEEDED: Graphic Designer needing to organize my graphic library

    Ive been wanting to find a better way of organizing my extensive library of the following (Vector & Raster art): Backgrounds, Raster/Vector Patterns, Logos, Icons, Vector Design Elements, Fonts (I use FontBook), print & web templates, Stock Photos, ALOT of vector art, anything from flourishes to multi colored complex images, Web Design stuff (icons, buttons, banners...etc.) and last but not least Adobe CS native color swatches, patterns, gradients, actions, and brushes.  I am sure I left out some, but you get the idea.
    I have been building my large collection over the period of 4-5 years and has grown to 40g of internal HD space to house these in loosely catergorized subfolder (i.e., Vector Art, Stock Photos, PS plugins (gradients, brushes, ETC) backgrounds/Textures, so on and so forth.  I would love to store my Data externally but with the throughput speeds of USB, am not wanting to slow down Bridge anymore than it already is. But help with external storage and accessing files quickly would also help
    As your probably thinking it is getting to be a pain to manage and even worse finding or searching for items, considering alot are generically names from packages Ive acquired (i.e. 132456.eps. flower00234.jpg, etc.)  Bridge helps alot but I am trying to catergorize and keyword folders or images this as clean as possible hopefully thru manually doing it on a system recommended or using a 3rd party software to apply metadate like keywords that will be searchable is IDEAL!
    I am starting to use Lightroom 3 to manage and catalog my StockPhotos (not to many), but love the functionality of the keyword and meta data features within LR.
    So that is what I am trying to accompish:
    1. organize all my art in to specific catergories
    2. hopefully use metadata and keywords within the OS or a 3rd party program to make items easily searchable within the Finder or Adobe Bridge.
    3. Properly manage and store art as it comes to me several times a day to keep everything current so I can do a backup of just my Design files, every month or so to keep stored off computer or on the cloud.
    Any suggestions(software/procedures), links, or general help on this issue is greatly appreciated!!
    Thanks Again for any help lended!!! Any anyone that is willing to help me thru this and is interested in Graphic Design tools or graphics, I can definitely share ANYTHING from my collection for helping
    Drew

    Dont mind one bit, if i can pass along any advice to help someone, Im happy to do so.
    first off....My art catalog is mass collections of various file types, and media uses, so I started by keywording by some of these keywords; Vector, Web Graphics, Stock Photos, Patterns (Vector/Raster), Textures, Backgrounds, Shapes/Objects (vector/Raster), and after indifiying a sorting the various files, just in folders and sub-folders, under one main Artwork Directory, and that helped me organize them for transfering between my home office, to my work server.  After that it was pretty much a breeze except for one issue I ran into (I will explain at the end).  Since I run Bridge at Work and at home, the structure and navigation to search for files by catergory was alot easier, by mimicking the same setup on both Bridge for PC at work and Bridge for Mac at home.  the last step I did to help refine things a little better, I keyworded two things within Bridge to make the search faster, and it was just these tags, Vector, Raster High Res, Raster Med-Low Res. I also use the ranking/star system to tag my most used, favorite.  1 star for frequently used, and 5 star for my favorite art packages. When I use the word "favorite", in my terms that is art that i see potential to use in future designs and good clean art that Ive never used, so I can incorporate new designs.  That might not be the best way to do it in Bridge, but after bouncing around alot of approaches this eems to work just fine for my graphic/web design needs.
    One more thing that I do as I acquire new art, is make a Folder with a custome icon to stand out, that is labeled Un-Catergorized art.  And as I download art unless I use it right away, I drag and drop into that folder.  I was advised to not do this and label and file appropriately as soon as I aquire stuff so I dont get behind, but to aleviate that, I have made automator actions that move all files that have been in the folder for more than 5 days to move into a diferent folder (Delete Me), and have put an automation on that folder to delete files that are 3 days or older (in that folder).  It may sound like alot of work just to remind, but by adding another automator action in Mac OSX to email me when the first move is made, It trained my mind to process all new art every friday like clock work, and have since stop using the email action and the delete after 3 days action!  With the size of my library....getting close to 60gig....and consisting of a wide array of different media, I found this to work for my workflow.
    Give this a thought, because this may help you in some way, but everyones catalog is different.
    The only current problem/issue that I am trying to resolve at the moment is catergorizing and tagging (somehow) all my Creative Suite Plugins for PS, and LR.  Because it is getting pretty extensive, with patterns, actions, swatches, shapes, styles, etc...
    The issue I ran into with processing VECTOR art in Bridge CS5, was the lack of support for previwing .EPS files, and took a good chunk of my vector art and converted to a native AI file to be able to view the preview in bridge, but there is work arounds I found.
    Bridge has really been awesome for someone like me, and learn something new about this robust program everyday.
    As far as PS & LR plugins, I could theroretically just add everything I get to their respective plugin system folder on my drive, but I move them around alot and found it easier to search my folder structure and COPY/PASTE plugins in the system folder as needed and clean out the system plugin folder every so often.
    I just installed CS5.5 Master Collection last night, and even though Bridge isn't the same build as the changed DW 5.5, and indesign 5.5 (all the rest of the master collection for the most part NOTHING changed, even though its labeled as 5.1 instead of 5.0 or 5.5.  So I will be doing some research on this to see if any new features were added in Bridge but doubt it
    Hope this helps! and feel free to ask anymore questions
    Later, Drew

  • What is the best, most affordable software for a new graphic designer?

    My son is an artist and interested to learn how to be a graphic designer. Looking for the best, easiest to dive in, and most affordable software for my new, shiny iMac! Thanks....

    I would say Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Indesign are the industry standard in design. But not the most affordable if your are on a tight budget. Photoshop elements has most of major features as the full version of Photoshop but is much cheaper. You can also download a trail version of the Adobe products from Adobe's website for your son to try out.
    Also, look in the app store on the Featured page, there is a link on the right, "Apps for Designers". There you can find several image editing and vector programs he could try. There might be a few layout programs as well.
    I would say if he is serious about getting into graphic design, Adobe products are the way to go. 

  • Need help with iMac OSX backup

    Hi,
    I currently have a mac book air running osx 10.8.
    And i recently purchased a imac running osx 10.8.
    I need help with the backup feature between my imac and macbook air.
    I work with excel files a lot, using Microsoft office for mac.
    so basically what i want is to have a 2 way backup between my imac and macbok air.
    That is, when i make any changes, create or delete a file in either of the system, i want the other system to make the change automatically.
    For example when i make changes to a spreadsheet (excel file) on my imac, i want the same to be updated automatically on my macbook air, and vice versa.
    I want both the machines to have the same files, updating the files as they get modified. or deleting if its deleted on any one of the system. Like a 2 way sync.
    Kindly let me know if theres any way to do this.  or something similar that can help me, like i mainly require the excel spreadsheets to be updated, system files, other libraries are not important. 
    I can also put all my files in a single folder if thats required.
    Ps. Both the machines are connected on the same network, and i can also hook a external drive for the backup purpose if required.
    I searched google for softwares and couldnt find the appropriate ones.
    Any help would be appreciated.
    Let me know if you require any more info on this.
    Thanks
    Gaurav.
    <Email Edited by Host>

    rkaufmann87 wrote:
    They don't even need to do that, the can create a dropbox account that woudl achieve the same result. Very simple, reliable and free up to 2GB of storage.
    A few weeks after I installed Dropbox (when it first came out) I got an increase of space for a total of 5GB FREE!

  • Hi, i'm new to java. need help setting the path in win XP

    hi all,
    i'm new to java technology. i've just downloaded the JDK and ran my first java program (hello world). i love it. java's gr8. i need help. i run win XP and how can i setup the path sothat i can execute my programs from the root dir??? any help in this direction will be greatly appreciated. please email me @ [email protected]
    Best regards
    Mrinal

    Go to Start menu and select Control Panel. In the Control Panel, double click on System. In the System dialogue, choose the Advanced tab. Then click on Environmental Variables. Select Path and Edit. Put ;c:\j2sdk1.4.0\bin at the end of the Path (or c:\j2sdk1.4.0\bin;) at the start of the Path. That's it.

Maybe you are looking for