So lately I've needed to do some sort of basic imaging processing on very large (300-500MB) files at work, and both my newish work PC and my C2D MacBook take a loooong time to open, crop, clean up "blank" areas of the images and save compressed versions of such files. I'm currently using CS3 on the MacBook, and CS6 beta on the work PC. I've tried Graphic Converter, and 1) it doesn't seem much faster and 2) for whatever reason, it saves these odd files (JPEG2000/jp2) files at half-resolution.

Anyway, on eBay I found a 3 year old Intel PowerMac with an SSD, gobs of RAM, and a bunch of programs installed for what looks like a good price (~$1500). I really only need Photoshop, but it's got a bunch of other software. Any legal/practical/ethical issues (re the software) I need to be aware of in a deal like this?

Um, yes. None of the software is legit. Adobe doesn't transfer licensing. Period. Unless a company is bought out.

IF it was retail boxed, and you got the original box, serial numbers, disks, etc. and it was never licensed. You MIGHT be able to get away without any problems.

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C(-)ris

I've transferred licenses of Adobe software before...

YMMV I guess.

However, the software is likely registreted to the seller and he won't it to you and give you the serial number so it's basically like getting "trial" software... i.e., it's worthless.

~A

If I had a choice, I'd take Photoshop, over PS. It's more full-featured.

99.9999% that software is illegal. you might as well get a CD-R off CL or find some torrents

Thanks for the info.

If you have a $1500 budget and are just looking for a photoshop machine -- any new PC with an i7 chip and 16 or so gigs of ram should fly. you would want to add a SSD as a scratch disk -- NOT as a boot disk -- and even a small 60 gig SSD would be plenty.

easily under $1500/

If it has to be a mac -- I would pickup a new 21" iMac for $1100, then drop in another 16 gigs of ram for $110 (for a total of 20 gigs) and buy PS 5 upgrade for $200.

would run circles around what you have now.

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The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs [www.fakesteve.net]

For $1500 you can get a 2011 macbook pro that is just as fast as the 3 year old mac pro and has a warranty.

I’d check your scratch drive size to make sure it’s set to auto and/or that you have enough room on your drive for adequate space.

I just downloaded several pics that were so large, they are beyond the JPG spec (64000 x 6200 = 400 million pixels)
and my Core2Duo in a 4.5 year old MacBook handled it just fine. They are in TIFF format - panoramas, and I
use CS3 as my daily version of PS.

Did I have to wait? Yes… I had to wait ~10 seconds for various functions, but not for undo, etc. Only moving
several frames left/right took some extra time (20-30 seconds?) to render parts that hadn’t been on screen yet,
but once I cropped off the black parts of the stitching, the file went from 408MB (1.1GB LZW expanded)
to 700MB expanded, and was very instant in its response.

If I had an SSD, I wouldn’t have had to wait for anything. You should consider that for your own machine,
and if you are going to replace your own machine any time soon, be sure your SSD is a SATA 3. I’ve just got
SATA 1 on this machine, but an SSD would take me from 53MB/sec to 180MB/sec. Note I also have 6GB
of RAM in this machine, the max for it, and you should give PS as much RAM as you can for those renderings.

Don’t skimp on an SSD that will work at 500MB/sec vs 275MB/sec, for $20 (120GB) - because you’ll be sorry
when you get a machine with SATA 3 (Feb 2011 forward). Note that Mac Pro’s still only have SATA 2 ports.

Is an SSD drive a good choice when you need a big chunk of free disk space for Photoshop?

I'm guessing there isn't much free space on the MacBook's HD. But "big" SSD's are very pricey.

The price on that MacPro (there is no such thing as an Intel PowerMac, is there?) sounds decent if it does indeed have gobs of RAM (like 16GB?). You can throw in a couple of big SATA drives and have plenty of scratch disk space. If it's a 2009 model, then adding more RAM yourself would not be horribly expensive. If it's a 2008 or earlier model, you would have to shell out a lot more money for RAM.

But unless the owner of the machine is officially transferring his software licenses to you (I think a signed document is required), the installed software is not legit and will give you headaches. For example, if the seller also has two installed and activated copies on machines he's keeping and using, you'd need a way around the Adobe activation scheme to use your (possibly de-activated) copy of PS, and something like Little Snitch to keep the software from ever communicating with the mothership. Doesn't seem worth it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/14/2012 11:16AM by ka jowct.

Just to clarify, running Photoshop from a SSD is no faster than a platter based drive. Yes it will launch faster, but photoshop actions will stay the same speeds...

for large files, its all about the scratch...

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The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs [www.fakesteve.net]