Advice from Imac owners please.

[GrahamS]

Hey all.
i recenty bought a 13" Macbook Pro and after bashing Apple products for years I have to say I absolutely love the Macbook, so much so I am considering replacing my PC. My question is which imac to get for PP, I will be using Photoshop 5 extended, Lightroom 3 and various Nik software.
What setup do you guys recommend, 21.5" or 27", i5 quad core or i7 quad core, I wiil be going with 4gb of ram 1Tb drive.
Hope you guys can help sort out the best system for me.
Also apologies to the many Mac user i may have offended over the years with my ignorance, I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT BROTHERS AND SISTERS!
Cheers.

[ksolomon]

I would suggest if you have the funds available go for the 27" because as I have recently found out that is the only imac that will connect into your Macbook so you can use the monitor for external display of your Macbook. I am not sure about the i5 or i7 I don't have first hand experience on that point yet :)

[Calxoddity]

I've got the 24" imac from a couple of years ago and would go the 27" if I was buying today - all that glorious extra screen real estate is blisssssss.

All the new iMacs are nice as far as performance goes - see: http://www.macworld.com/article/159765/2011/05/imac2011.html

[peterking]

Personally I have the 27"Core 2 Duo and love it. Just upgraded the RAM to 16gb from 4 and it behaves very nicely.
From what I have read recently the newer machines no longer have the ability to use the screen as a monitor but I may be wrong in that.
My way is to put everything on an external drive then it doesn't matter what machine you use. Just connect to the drive.
Thank god for NAS.

[JM Tran]

I personally went for the external monitors to be used with my macbook pro as I do not like the glass screen of the iMacs for professional photo editing. It is fine and oh so pretty to look at but the reflections is bad for judging shadows and colours etc.

You would need to calibrate an iMac asap too if you were to buy one, I find them a bit over saturated from the factory.

Or if budget isnt that much of a problem, you can source an 8 core Mac Pro desktop that has been refurbished from the Apple store for around 3.5k and under. Or a new one etc.

[GrahamS]

Awesome info guys, much to think about. Thanks for all the replies.
Cheers.

[Calxoddity]

I personally went for the external monitors to be used with my macbook pro as I do not like the glass screen of the iMacs for professional photo editing. It is fine and oh so pretty to look at but the reflections is bad for judging shadows and colours etc.

You would need to calibrate an iMac asap too if you were to buy one, I find them a bit over saturated from the factory.

Or if budget isnt that much of a problem, you can source an 8 core Mac Pro desktop that has been refurbished from the Apple store for around 3.5k and under. Or a new one etc.

Yes - a bit oversaturated and a bit too bright. Great for the showroom floor, but a shocker for the eyes at home. BTW - I believe the new iMacs can still act as monitors - there was some bad information circulating at the time of their release.

[agb]

No really knowing anything about them I had a look on the website and thought that they were particularly lacking in specs on the monitors. It just says tft and millions of colours. If I was buying a new computer I would be looking to get the monitor that gave the best possible display, best possible gammut especially if I was using it to display my photographs.

[Calxoddity]

Ask and ye shall receive: they're 8-bit S-IPS panels, with led backlighting. Resolution on the 27" is 2560x1440 (ie lots!)

[reflect]

I recently got the 21.5 budget version due to....budget, and I love it. I dont try to do to much PP ( not very clever), but as with all things bigger is better, so I would guess budget can be your guide. I am sure you will find any Imac a joy after the other box on desk thingy.

[GrahamS]

Hey Guys.
Well after much debate and trips to view various Mac configurations ordered my Mac. 27" i7, 4Gb ram, 6970 ATI with 2Gb of oncard ram, 1Tb drive, magic mouse and trackpad. As it will double as a home PC and occasional gaming rig, I think this is a good compromise. The ram I can upgrade a later stage if I feel I need more.
I can install Bootcamp and give Windows 50 Gb but purely to run games on the rest of the system will be for PP and general computing.
Now all I have to do is wait till the 7th of next month till it arrives :(
Cheers.

[agb]

Hey Guys.
Well after much debate and trips to view various Mac configurations ordered my Mac. 27" i7, 4Gb ram, 6970 ATI with 2Gb of oncard ram, 1Tb drive, magic mouse and trackpad. As it will double as a home PC and occasional gaming rig, I think this is a good compromise. The ram I can upgrade a later stage if I feel I need more.
I can install Bootcamp and give Windows 50 Gb but purely to run games on the rest of the system will be for PP and general computing.
Now all I have to do is wait till the 7th of next month till it arrives :(

Congratulations on your new purchase. I am sure you will enjoy it and that monitor will no doubt be a pleasure to view.
Cheers.