Macs and Graphics

[waphle]

I often hear that Macintoshes are better than PCs when it comes to graphic design and other "creative tasks." I'm fairly geeky and I tech-knowledgeable and as far as I know, there is no good reason to believe that is true.

Does anyone have anything to say to prove that it is true or false? I hope I'm not starting a flame war or anything - I'm just interested.

[Wickedkitten Veteran]

I often hear that Macintoshes are better than PCs when it comes to graphic design and other "creative tasks." I'm fairly geeky and I tech-knowledgeable and as far as I know, there is no good reason to believe that is true.

Does anyone have anything to say to prove that it is true or false? I hope I'm not starting a flame war or anything - I'm just interested.

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It prolly to do with the colour calibration.

[HareshKainthUK]

I performed a few tests, PC VS MAC

Although imp strong PC user, the tests showed a slight margin of performance between the PC and MAC, the MAC won by a few points in the Graphics Test (Not gaming but intensive visual processing)- such as using adobe software.

The PC gained better performance in the rest of the Tests which were Sound, Compression, and Gaming & Networking.

From my tests, I believe, the reason that Mac?s are associated with Graphics is because the CPU architecture the Mac?s have, a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set) CPU, while the PC's (AMD & INTEL) have CISC CPU (Meaning the PC's CPU's have more instruction sets).

With less instructions set a CPU has, less cycles the CPU can has to perform on a task (meaning the task is done more quickly - the Mac CPU have a concentrated visual instruction sets and less of the others) - but this leaves a limited flexibility of the CPU.

While a CPU with more instruction sets, more cycles the CPU has to perform (because the CPU may have to cycle through more instruction sets) in order to complete task, but the CPU is capable of doing more (do to increased instruction set)

Although i may have written to much here, I?m not to say Mac or Pc are "rubbish" I think both types of machines are great!

But I believe that Pc?s are capable to do a lot more than Mac's but again I do like the MAC architecture.

But as more advanced peripherals are coming out for the Pc such as graphic cards etc, The PCs will have the same or better performance than the Mac (in graphics) the entire Mac architecture (including motherboard) is more suited to the graphics section i.e. the whole system is used, in PC's, the graphic card mainly takes over the graphics, so the pc is only kind of using the graphics card for the graphics, leaving the rest of the machine idle.

As more companies are writing newer & better software to utilize the entire PC architecture more, i.e. using the CPU to do more processing for the graphics as well as using the graphic CPU/VPU.

So to outline this post, both machines have advantages - if you just need to do ONLY visual work such graphics design, art work - go for the Mac,

For anything else go for the PC (also including graphics i.e. the same level and quality will be equal to that of an Mac, but more time is taken also Mac has better software for the graphics).

I hope I haven?t provoked anyone, this is not my intention. I performed the test ligitamently and show no favoritism (i.e. tweaking) to either machine while performing the tests.

[ph3412t3h13]

whoaaaaaaa ok buddy too much time on your hands

ummmmmmmmm...: i think macs are better at graphic designs and whatver becuase they are prettier :D

or maybe theyre not u know?

maybe its just becuase most people who buy macs are graphics designers and artists becuase theyve heard that pcs are too complex and dumb to do anything

and besides: im an artist also and i just find that mac is waaaaaayyyyyy simpler to use

all the stuff i need (photoshop etc...) is on the dock and it just creates a much friendlier environment

also it may be that people are just biast and stay away from pcs in general and stick to macs

thats what my dad does anyways

[amdme3200]

whoaaaaaaa ok buddy too much time on your hands

ummmmmmmmm...: i think macs are better at graphic designs and whatver becuase they are prettier  :D

or maybe theyre not u know?

maybe its just becuase most people who buy macs are graphics designers and artists becuase theyve heard that pcs are too complex and dumb to do anything

and besides: im an artist also and i just find that mac is waaaaaayyyyyy simpler to use

all the stuff i need (photoshop etc...) is on the dock and it just creates a much friendlier environment

also it may be that people are just biast and stay away from pcs in general and stick to macs

thats what my dad does anyways

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<snip>

don't be immature

Edited December 19, 2004 by Chad

[Freakz]

i agree with the above post...

i believe, the difference between a PC and a Mac chip means that the Macs tend to have a stronger graphical ability. This is also enhanced by the Mac operating system. There is also the fact that companies such as Adobe, develop powerful graphical applications for Macs..

[Southern Patriot]

Features like Core Image and Core Video that are coming in Tiger will make the Mac even more suited to video and graphic processing.

[Theta138]

I belive this line of thinking originated quite a while ago. Macintoshes had graphic editing software that PCs simply did not have. Keep in mind, Macs have had GUIs since the beginning. PCs were not always that way. Some of you people might be too young to remember the days when everything was command line based. Well, the idea of Macs being better started there and just stuck around. But, ever since Photoshop has been available on the Windows platform, there really is no difference. PCs and Macs are equal now.

[Steve]

In theory, there's little in my view to pick one from the other. However, if you think about it, there are other angles to look at. Sure the machines are similarly spec'd maybe, or run the same software, but i would say the kind of people (Creative Professionals) running the machines, need them running as much as possible. This is a lethal thing to say on these forums, but in my experience, Mac OS X is a more stable environment to work in, than Windows XP. I would like to think with 5 years of development, Longhorn will bridge the gap i notice. Moving my own personal judgement aside, and backing up my own ass. Consider this, Apple picks select hardware, and writes the OS to match it. It controls pretty much all driver installation too via minor / major OS upgrades. It's a closed system Apple controls - somewhat comparable to say how a Games Console is, but not to the obvious same level. Microsoft only can really control half the picture, and have a MASSIVE amount of hardware to try and support. With that in mind, it's not hard to see which system should feel more integrated, and stable.

Another thing, i've heard is that Apple's displays are brighter. I notice this personally on my Apple Studio Display, and its something i consider in my works, but for some reason, this is another tale i've heard. Whether its true, in most cases, against other major vendors, i have no idea.

[Elliott]

I think the document-based nature of OS X improves productivity (especially with graphics) as well. Being able to easily see all the documents open without being enclosed in one main window, and being able to easily drag a file from a Finder window to, say, InDesign is a huge advantage in productivity.

[shodan]

I agree totally with Steve and jagedEdge there, they both have strong points, plus I have to add this one. I've read that Mac's color calibration is much better than Pc's, so colors on than screen looks like the ones printed. On Pc, they're slight different... that's why graphic designers prefer to choose mac.

Just my 2 cents...

[insanekiwi]

the main reason macs used to be better was the option to assign more memory to graphic programs.

but as witchedkitten said, it's teh color calibration thingie nowadays.

[waphle]

Thanks for the thoughts and time everybody! Especially HareshKainthUK who (on his first post) took the time to do tests.

I am curious about the color calibration thing however. With PCs doesn't it just depend on the graphics card and monitor you choose? And wouldn't serious graphic designers buy color calibration devices (whether they're working on PCs or Macs)? Just a thought...

Oh and I get the sense that the idea mainly originates from back when the difference between PCs and Macs were more dramatic - is that what you guys are saying?

[tapo]

Here's why I think the Mac is better for graphic design:

1. It's always been that way, as IBM PCs at the time didn't have a GUI, only DOS. So, Photoshop and many other tools were initially for the Mac. They may not be better now, but the belief stuck.

2. Color Calibration.

3. Expose. When you're working with a bunch of Photoshop/Painter/GIMP/whatever windows, it's very, very, very nice to have them all shrink, so you can find what you want. It's tough to describe in words how awesome this feature is when you're working with a lot of windows.

4. Mac OS X. It tends to be a lot better at multitasking then Windows XP, not just performance wise, but also interface wise. In Windows, the UI is basically forcing you to have one huge window open for every application, this is why you have the MDI (Multiple Document Interface) in Photoshop and other products (Excel, Word). The Mac has, and always will, have a focus of multiple things on the screen at once. It's a lot easier to navigate through all these things then Windows is, especially with the MDI, where you need to look for your documents inside the program's main window.

Well, those are my thoughts. As I'm not a graphic designer, feel free to take them with a grain of salt.

[chameleonic]

the company i work for has the contract to produce the yellow pages for the UK, we've had the contract for over 20 years now and since the earliest computers came into prodcution we have always used apple macs.

several years ago we won the contract to produce certain directories of the american yellow pages and we were asked to use PC's for the typesetting of the adverts, (something to do with the american printers) from day one we had no end of problems with the PC's, constant crashing, poor colour calibration, software problems

thankfully the management decided to send the production of the american books to india (i bet you guys didnt know they were designed there :D )

anyway, we're now at a point where the company wants to upgrade the macs (1st generation G4's) for new computers, but they're keeping us in the dark as to which platform we are going to use, PC or Mac

hopefully we will have some nice shiny G5's under our desks after christmas, i have one under my desk at home and i swear you could take a crap in this thing and it would still keep working :laugh:

hope that all makes sense :blink:

Edit: im neither a mac or a pc fanatic, PC's rule for gaming but Mac's rule for DTP, graphic design and stability

Edited December 24, 2004 by chameleonic

[waphle]

You say you had to work with PCs several years ago - I assume you're talking about a pre-Windows XP operating system then?

Let us know when you find out what your computers have been upgraded to!

[chameleonic]

You say you had to work with PCs several years ago - I assume you're talking about a pre-Windows XP operating system then?

Let us know when you find out what your computers have been upgraded to!

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we were working with Windows NT on the PC's (apparently this was to do with its "reliability"!!!) and we still work with OS9 on the Macs (for the english yellow pages), i'm pretty sure that the american contract went to india around the same time that Windows XP was released, although this is probably just coincidence

i'll keep you all updated as to which OS/Platform we receive, watch this space...... :)

[nerdfiles]

When it comes to what is better pc/mac its all personal preference.

I have a pc, i have however spend serveral hours (probably weeks and weeks worth) using macs for design work, and i can say they are nothing but a joy to use.

They may not generaly be 'faster', they may not run every application under the sun, but for design/print and 3d work they do just that they Work!

A mac works on one principle, "let the user do what they want to", for example, if you are rendering in maya (high end 3d application) and you want to jump back to photoshop and work on a texture or a layout, then you can. Expose works at full speed, and so does photoshop. Now sure in the background maya is rendering slower, but i can still work on what i want to while it does.

A pc doesn't do this, again if i am rendering on my pc and want to go to photoshop, maya will white out making you think its crashed (it hasn't) and not allowing you to see the rendering progress (this is common to ALL windows based pcs), photoshop also responds noticably slower. Maya is rendering as fast as it can, but my machine is almost unusable during this time.

Large file sizes such as half a gig photoshop file and multiple gig indesign files do not slow you down either, applying a filter in photoshop to a large print res image may take a whille, and once again i can work in illustrator/indesign with no slow down.

It just makes sense!

OSX is the key to all of this, and whilst it may take a while getting used to in the change over, it works a lot more logicaly than windows xp/2k.

So a mac may be the free computer that comes with OSX the $2000 operating system, but for heavy duty design work (this includes video editing, final cut is a truely great video editor) its the best damn computer you can get.

Hope this helps you understand how macs have a well deserved reputation for being a creative professional tool.

:)

[chameleonic]

couldn't have said it better myself nerdfiles :)

i've thrown some really heavy work at my G5 since i bought it a year ago and it has only crashed once!!!