Ideal computer for stacking?

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Rikisub
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Ideal computer for stacking?

Post by Rikisub »

hello all, my dear friends.

I've been doing a search in the FAQ, but I haven't found what I was looking for, thus, I'm writing this post. I'm sorry if this is something recurrent, but I can't help exposing my case. I would be very grateful if you could lend me a hand. So far, I have been stacking using a Mcbook Pro from 2010. The processor is 2,4 GHz, Intel Core Duo. Memory: 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR 3. Graphics card: NVIDIA Geforce 320M 256 MB. The main problem I've found using this equipment is that, when I want to go from one shot to another, it takes a while to charge it. This is quite embarrassing when trying to find the single shot I need to correct some stacking mistake. The photos I usually stack are taken with a Sony Nex - 6, and, some times, with a classic Canon 5D.

I'm considering buying an iMac. Which one do you think it would be enough to deal well with the stacking process?

Thank you very much in advance,

Best regards from Northern Spain

Rikisub

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

Hi Rikisub. I think the latest thread is this one:
http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... hp?t=37607
Chris R

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

As you probably know, I'm the fellow who writes and supports Zerene Stacker.

ChrisR has pointed to a good thread, especially if you also follow the link back to the older thread at http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... hp?t=22800 .

However, a new issue has come up that I believe has not been discussed in the forum.

The issue is that on some Macs, the retouching brush is intolerably slow, even though the "slow" computer is newer, bigger, and faster in every specification than other computers where the brush works OK.

For example my own iMac is late 2015, 3.2 GHz Core i5, 16 GB of DDR3, Radeon R9 M380 2GB. Retouching runs fine on it -- not as fast as Windows but certainly OK to use. But one of my users reports that on her iMac 2017, 4.2 GHz Core i7, 32 GB of DDR4, Radeon Pro 575 4096 MB -- significantly faster than mine based on specs -- retouching is agonizingly slow unless she reduces the window size to about half screen. Even then it is very slow compared to any Windows machine.

I don't get a lot of complaints about the speed issue, so I do not know how common it is. Certainly the brush on all Macs is less responsive than on Windows, and I know why that is. (It's a matter of screen repainting strategy in the bowels of the Java Runtime Environment.) But I do not know why some Macs are abysmally slow and others are OK. The issue remains under investigation.

In any case, at this time my recommendation is that if you're buying a machine specifically for stacking, and you can live with either Windows or Mac, then you should go with Windows. On Mac, it is important to at least be aware of the issue and test at the earliest opportunity, to avoid getting stuck with a lemon.

--Rik

Rikisub
Posts: 148
Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2013 3:21 am
Location: Spain
Contact:

Post by Rikisub »

Thank you both very much for your answers. I was considering migrating from mac to windows, as the difference in prices is huge and, as it seems, the performance does not justify that difference. After what you said, I've got it even more clear then. Thanks again!

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