A900 HDR size ,,, and run time

[DonSchap]

David ... have you determined the size of HDRs with the A900's output. Are they significantly longer in Photoshop runs than the A700 files?

Thanks

[David Kilpatrick]

I don't really know. The file size is exactly double. My own impression is that this produces MORE than a halving in speed - my machine is struggling with these files, despite 4GB RAM etc.

David

[Javelin]

I don't understand this question, what do you mean about PS runtime? and what do you mean about halving speed?

[DonSchap]

Sauce for the goose ... eh? You have to upgrade your entire computer system just to handle this baby.

Whoa ... I'm rethinking this. Ok ... I'm done.

[David Kilpatrick]

Once raw converters are equipped to handle the cRAW files, I would start shooing cRAW only - no JPEGs, no uncompressed raw. That would change the situation from approx 90 full size RAW+JPEG images (around 40MB per shot) to around 150 shots per 4GB/300 per 8GB given that 8GB cards now are becoming very affordable. 300 per 8GB is reasonable.

Adobe Bridge CS3/4 takes a long time build thumbnails from files of this size, but it can be set to use low quality and only build a good preview of selected images. Taking some time to set maximum cache size, compact the existing cache and alter the settings for best speed can help.

I've done some experiments with the files I have shot, and right now, I am thinking that I may stick to the 48MB size for filing images (the Alamy size, which requires upscaling for A700/A350 etc). The 70MB D900 files look incredible when scaled DOWN to 48MB - hyper-detailed. To my eye, the sheer quality obtained by supplying this size (A3+) repro as standard rather than using the full 70MB could make a big different to how a viewer/user/client sees the work. This would mean my library, currently containing 7500 finished images mostly at JPEG 10-12 all keyworded and captioned, did not suddenly need 50% extra space for all future images.

There is only one flaw in this logic - a JPEG 10 from a full size 70MB might not be, on average, much bigger than a JPEG 10 from a reduced 48MB size version - the extra detail would prevent the JPEG from being compressed as much as normal.

I do have a spare twin G5 processor Mac Tower which was configured to handle Photoshop really fast (CS3 though ONLY - CS4 will not be Mac G5 compatible, Intel only - but hopefully Adobe will release a CS3 version to handle A900 files). It is a very noisy machine with massive fan cooling for the twin 2.0GHz processors, and runs a twin screen setup with a 256MB graphics card. I could end up setting this up for photo workflow only, no other programs open. My regular Mac I use for workflow can have 10-15 programs open simultaneously and this may slow it down - three or more parts of the CS3 suite, FileMaker Pro, AccountEdge Plus, Firefox, Thunderbird, the NeoOffice suite, Appleworks, Cyberduck, TextEdit, TextWrangler, Acrobat 8 Professional, Retrospect, maybe two or three other raw converters, Microsoft Expression Media Pro - it all adds up and they block up disk based swap file space when not active.

David