Why are Mac's preferred for graphic design?

By Ashiaveli
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Grand Master

Steve

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Dont really have to jump back and forth by minimizing and maximizing if you use alt+tab or WinKey + tab in Vista.

True true, but on the Mac you could:

Alt+Tab, Expos? (show all/current application windows), hide applications, minimize them to the dock, manage windows via Spaces (virtual desktops). It's great, because everyone works differently...

Grand Master

giga Veteran

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Dont really have to jump back and forth by minimizing and maximizing if you use alt+tab or WinKey + tab in Vista.

I don't believe flip3d was really meant to be a serious app switcher.

Steve has some great points but he's missing one: CMD+` (for cycling through an application's windows)

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NateB1

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If I ever had a large number of apps open, I'd just use Switcher - Winkey+`, then type in a few letters of the title. Incremental filtering of open windows = amazing.

Besides, I never have that many apps open at once - primarily because I am more of a single-focus kind of person. Yes, I may have Premiere CS3 rendering something in the background while I'm playing music and surfing the web, but that's about the extent of it.

Oh, and apps open so fast in Vista, I don't really need a "quicklook" feature - photoshop launches almost in an instant, and don't get me going at how fast lighter apps launch. It's about as instant as they come.

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Ashiaveli

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Dont really have to jump back and forth by minimizing and maximizing if you use alt+tab or WinKey + tab in Vista.

True if you have your hand on the keyboard on those keys. It takes time to take your hand and put it on those keys then cycle through one by one.

I've set expose to the screen corners so all i have to do is move my mouse to the bottom left, shows me all my apps, then i click the one I want. Literally takes 1 second and I only use one hand.

Grand Master

giga Veteran

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If I ever had a large number of apps open, I'd just use Switcher - Winkey+`, then type in a few letters of the title. Incremental filtering of open windows = amazing.

Besides, I never have that many apps open at once - primarily because I am more of a single-focus kind of person. Yes, I may have Premiere CS3 rendering something in the background while I'm playing music and surfing the web, but that's about the extent of it.

Oh, and apps open so fast in Vista, I don't really need a "quicklook" feature - photoshop launches almost in an instant, and don't get me going at how fast lighter apps launch. It's about as instant as they come.

I'm assuming you have some good computer specs. Things can always get faster with speedier systems but that's not to say that it's not handy to have the feature. (Regardless, we're not all working with fast computers)

Quick Look becomes handy because it's as simple as a space bar to open and close for almost any file type. The fact that there is no "application" to open or navigate around is part of its brilliance--integration is always good. It handles amazingly well no matter how large the file types I work with. (usually large tiff and cr2).

Given that, it goes beyond just the viewer and handles as a browser as well with the arrow keys and index view. I'm sure opening/closing applications to view files is fine for you--but honestly I can't tell you how much simpler and quicker my workflow has been with it when I don't have to launch Lightroom when I want to browse through my library, Pages to quickly view one of my documents, or Keynote to quickly see a specific page from a presentation I'm working on.

These are all just a few examples from my own daily workflow on where Quick Look excels. Give it a try. ;)

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NateB1

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I'm assuming you have some good computer specs. Things can always get faster with speedier systems but that's not to say that it's not handy to have the feature. (Regardless, we're not all working with fast computers)

Quick Look becomes handy because it's as simple as a space bar to open and close for almost any file type. The fact that there is no "application" to open or navigate around is part of its brilliance--integration is always good. It handles amazingly well no matter how large the file types I work with. (usually large tiff and cr2).

Given that, it goes beyond just the viewer and handles as a browser as well with the arrow keys and index view. I'm sure opening/closing applications to view files is fine for you--but honestly I can't tell you how much simpler and quicker my workflow has been with it when I don't have to launch Lightroom when I want to browse through my library, Pages to quickly view one of my documents, or Keynote to quickly see a specific page from a presentation I'm working on.

These are all just a few examples from my own daily workflow on where Quick Look excels. Give it a try. ;)

I completely blanked on this - there is a preview pane in Vista that opens on the right side of Explorer. It previews virtually any picture, word document (copy/paste works), pdf, video, and anything with a preview handler installed for it. That's even more quick and unobtrusive than QuickLook, as it doesn't block whatever file list you are currently viewing.

I guess I really don't see the benefit - all the tiny thumbnails work fine for me when I want to browse hundreds of pictures, and if I want to open one of them, then it only takes an instant to open it in whatever app I want. If I wanted to open a PowerPoint presentation, I guess I just don't see the benefit of not opening it in PowerPoint - it takes practically the same time as opening QuickLook, and I have the full editing features available if I need to make a change.

Grand Master

giga Veteran

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I completely blanked on this - there is a preview pane in Vista that opens on the right side of Explorer. It previews virtually any picture, word document (copy/paste works), pdf, video, and anything with a preview handler installed for it. That's even more quick and unobtrusive than QuickLook, as it doesn't block whatever file list you are currently viewing.

The preview pane in Vista would be comparable to Cover Flow view or Column View preview, not Quick Look.

That's perfectly fine if you want it integrated within the explorer, but my own preferences would be a separate window (HUD panel in Leopard) where one can have as large a view of the contents as they want. (The gist of Quick Look is to mimic the main purpose of the application--but without actually opening the file and thus in a speedy manner) This plays particular importance for large videos and images.

Though I will give you that the copy/paste feature is handy. That's a feature that would be nice to have [which isn't present in Quick Look]. ;)

I guess I really don't see the benefit - all the tiny thumbnails work fine for me when I want to browse hundreds of pictures, and if I want to open one of them, then it only takes an instant to open it in whatever app I want. If I wanted to open a PowerPoint presentation, I guess I just don't see the benefit of not opening it in PowerPoint - it takes practically the same time as opening QuickLook, and I have the full editing features available if I need to make a change.

I was the same at first and thought of it only as a "side" feature but it really has become one of those things that's just second nature to use now for small little things in your workflow. If i'm skimming through my large list of presentations or documents I've worked on and am just looking for a particular reference, opening Keynote just to find that small reference isn't very feasbile. (at least for my patience).

If I have several PDFs that are named oddly from one particular company that I'm looking for, opening them all up (which would then lead to a crowded taskbar) just seems "wrong". A simple spacebar press and then scrolling through each PDF with the arrow keys is all that it takes.

You really have to use it to "get it". ;)

Grand Master

sanctified Veteran

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I have one reason and a very important one:

Color management, color quality and slower profile degradation.

Specially for people like me who design works that will be printed or do photography even on a windows calibrated system. Honestly I would ever go back to Windows to do design or photoprocessing.

Grand Master

giga Veteran

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Cmd+H if Adobe would stop being stupid and just make it like every other app in OS X.

That's probably my biggest complain from CS3 :p

It stems back to the days before OS X where CMD+H wasn't standard. You can change it to the proper shortcut in the application preferences.

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giga Veteran

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Yes, I have.

But now that it IS standard, they should make it standard.

I can't change any settings on any of the Mac Pros at school, so I'm stuck with Cmd+Alt+H.

It's not THAT big of a deal, just an annoyance.

Have a talk with your sys admin. :p

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NateB1

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Again, that would be replicated via the Finder's own viewing options though...

That really doesn't do the preview window in Vista justice - it can view way more filetypes, and, unless the preview pane is available in another view, is not nearly as cluttered. In fact, on a 1920/1200 screen, a large preview pane fills up right space perfectly.

@giga

If I want to hunt for a word/phrase in my documents folder, I simply go up to the search bar on the upper right, type in the phrase, and let it filter the results. By default, it just filters the files in that particular folder and the subfolders. It searches the text in documents/PowerPoint presentations, etc., as well as the file name.

Or, I can click a column header and filter by any number of criteria. Much faster than jumping from document to document.

Grand Master

Steve

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That really doesn't do the preview window in Vista justice - it can view way more filetypes, and, unless the preview pane is available in another view, is not nearly as cluttered. In fact, on a 1920/1200 screen, a large preview pane fills up right space perfectly.

@giga

If I want to hunt for a word/phrase in my documents folder, I simply go up to the search bar on the upper right, type in the phrase, and let it filter the results. By default, it just filters the files in that particular folder and the subfolders. It searches the text in documents/PowerPoint presentations, etc., as well as the file name.

Or, I can click a column header and filter by any number of criteria. Much faster than jumping from document to document.

Can you show me what you mean? I'm confused...

Grand Master

giga Veteran

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That really doesn't do the preview window in Vista justice - it can view way more filetypes, and, unless the preview pane is available in another view, is not nearly as cluttered. In fact, on a 1920/1200 screen, a large preview pane fills up right space perfectly.

@giga

If I want to hunt for a word/phrase in my documents folder, I simply go up to the search bar on the upper right, type in the phrase, and let it filter the results. By default, it just filters the files in that particular folder and the subfolders. It searches the text in documents/PowerPoint presentations, etc., as well as the file name.

Or, I can click a column header and filter by any number of criteria. Much faster than jumping from document to document.

What filetypes does Finder not view?

The searching within documents from the search bar is also available in Finder, but I practically don't use it as much. I can sometimes have various words or phrases in multiple documents and they'd all show up. (of course boolean searches or filters are available, but I just don't find myself using it as much as QL).

Grand Master

iconboy

Posted
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i have to seriously disagree with anyone that thinks the experience between the two platforms is the same. i have used windows basically all my life and only got a MBP a couple of months ago.

night and day.

i am also a graphic designer and use adobe suite heavily. i have to say im not a tech person, but its just somethign about the way osx handles memory i dont know... its efficient. my machine never hangs. ive never experienced a crash in an adobe app like i frequently did in windows xp (even with sp2 and all the patches installed). and i work on huge huge files.

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sn00pie

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I've been into graphics and web design for a number of years and have done most of my work on the PC platform. I never hated it or thought it was that bad, yeah I've had enormous amount of crashes and errors but yeah, nothing that made me throw it out.

Mac is the way of the future of design! :p

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Ashiaveli

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I have found that OS X encourages creativity with it's bundled apps and the apps available. They are made to be intuitive and be easy so you can focus what your are trying to create rather than learning the program.

We were doing our podcast in Adobe Audition 3.0 on my PC, which was great for sound but Garageband + Podcasting is made for podcasting and works extremely well. Cut down podcast recording process to 2 steps instead of the 5 or more from before.

Grand Master

Chad

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I have one reason and a very important one:

Color management, color quality and slower profile degradation.

Specially for people like me who design works that will be printed or do photography even on a windows calibrated system. Honestly I would ever go back to Windows to do design or photoprocessing.

This is what my co-workers tell me, so I'd have to agree. It has nothing to do with usability, the 'experience', nor does it have anything to do with the systems used previously. I'm told that if it did, they'd still go Windows as the cost for a Mac doesn't justify any of those things.

They color-correct photos for the largest newspaper publisher in the US, so I tend to believe them. Our department is 100% Mac and I would say the entire company is probably close to 80-90% Mac. Unfortunately the corp IT department largely uses, and is very much in love, with Windows

Edited by Chad
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NateB1

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@giga You would know more than me about the previewing in Finder - I've just seen it handle pictures. :p

Can you show me what you mean? I'm confused...

Well...

Here's my very messy download folder (one that I will be cleaning shortly) :

post-194472-1213831700_thumb.jpg

Say I want to find a QuickTime movie I have in there. The below screenshot shows how easy it is to filter by filetype:

post-194472-1213831575_thumb.jpg

Or, let's say I downloaded an nVidia driver yesterday, in an .exe format - the below screenshot shows what happens if I filter by file type and then by date:

post-194472-1213831733_thumb.jpg

And about that preview pane? Here it is previewing a Word document with some text selected:

post-194472-1213832496_thumb.jpg

If it were a choice of QuickLook or the powerful filtering feature, I would choose the filtering feature any day.

Oh, and BTW: The filtering's instant.

i am also a graphic designer and use adobe suite heavily. i have to say im not a tech person, but its just somethign about the way osx handles memory i dont know... its efficient. my machine never hangs. ive never experienced a crash in an adobe app like i frequently did in windows xp (even with sp2 and all the patches installed). and i work on huge huge files.

And of course, if you have a choice between a older, slow PC and a new Mac, guess which one's going to run better? :p I've had friends that have switched from an ancient PC to a new Mac, and have told me how amazingly fast it is.

I've had absolutely no issues handling large files with Adobe's CS3 suite for the PC, with one exception: After Effects. However, that is a result of some poor memory-handling code on Adobe's part, not Microsoft's part. The back-end of After Effect's rendering engine feels hacked and poorly thought out.

I've opened 30K by 30K images in Photoshop with absolutely no problems.

Edited by NateB1
Grand Master

Steve

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I hate to seem like I am trying to combat you, NateB1, but again this isn't something we're without. Spotlight powers the file index and search, and as such I can do a filtered such within a folder just like you can, though the kind of data I can search by MAY be far greater? Notice the file icon preview, I really could ask for more really - well except pressing space bar to preview the full thing...

See the attachment. I know I did a 'PDF', with 'World' in the title, it had more than '2' pages, and I created it in 'InDesign'... Boom!

- I'd argue that the UI for the Finder here, looks so much simpler than that of Windows Explorer - which looks very busy, that's one thing I find frustrating when I have to jump onto a developers computer.

post-1665-1213832961_thumb.png

post-1665-1213833183_thumb.png

Edited by Steve
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NateB1

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I can search the above way in Vista as well - however, it's *much* easier to simply click a column header, check or uncheck different options, and the items are instantly filtered. As far as clutter is concerned, I don't see how it's cluttered at all. I guess it's one of those things you need to see in action to see the benefits of that way. If you noticed the "Group" option, I can group the items by different things, and save them as "saved searches" to come back to them later. Very handy. It's also very useful to see how many files of a certain type/size are in a particular folder.

Oh, and I might add - the filtering options only show types/sizes/etc. that exist in that folder - if there are no Quicktime movies in a folder, for example, that option won't exist to check/uncheck.

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