If you’ve ever wanted to build a “digital darkroom,” Joe Farace, contributing editor of Currents.net tells you how in an online article.
Farace, a photographer who went all digital three years ago, tells you how to “build a system for under $1,500, or spend more than the cost of a shiny new Infiniti G20t.” He tells how to set up a digital darkroom with either Macs or Wintel systems.
Among the Apple hardware he recommends is an iMac DV (with a minimum of 128MB of RAM, preferably 256MB. Although Farace writes that bigger monitors are better, “the iMac offers space efficiency, which may compensate for a lack of screen real estate.” As for peripherals, he said digital photographers should have a digital camera (naturally), a flatbed scanner, good inkjet printer (“as producer of over three-fourths of the photo inkjets sold, Epson owns the market”), high quality paper, imagebase software to organize your photographs into digital albums, and “at least one” form of recordable media.
Farace also recommends such cross-platform software as Kai’s Photo Soap, and Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop LE.