Architectural Designs

What should I look for in a computer that will be used for photo editing and graphic design?

I need a computer suitable for a small business. In this business I will be editing photos with adobe photo shop. I will combine clients personal family photos/slides/home movies etc. into a digital photo disc set to music and I may include animation and flash. Potential clients will also be businesses who hire me to edit photos for printing in booklets, flyer's, brochures etc. or for web sites. I am making a savings plan / budget for when I finish college next year. I need some input. I don't really know what you need for a professional grade computer. Is there an online custom computer builder that I can chat with?

Public Comments

1. check this link out. might help you. =/ A good monitor, good graphics card (smth that doesnt mess up the colours or the colour seems different after printing). Good speed.
2. you'll need a HUGEEEE video card HUGEE RAM and HD and bascly an expencive one and i recomand for you DELL or HP
3. dell has all your needs build your own, graphics card 512 "dedicated" memory , large hard drive you know the rest
4. high end graphics card & recommended 4GB of RAM (atleast) .... don't go Online.. you won't see & try personally what you're buying ... also, if possible, first purchase the software that you'll use, so atleast, you can test the performance of that software to your customed PC ... no regrets ayt! =p
5. ahh, the bad news is, your computer will be outdated within a year or two, and you will need to constantly upgrade if you want to keep top of the line computers if not, i recommend getting a mac if u dont really wanna build anything, there is a learning curve, but many macs are built for photo/video editing and processing. as for components ur looking for you need a good processor, a dual core is good, quad core of course better, i'd say you need about 2.4 - 2.6 MHz. in terms of RAM, i'd go for 3-4 GB ram just to be safe you'll need a good GPU (graphics processing unit, or graphics card bascially), i'm not too good with these, but ur looking for higher end. these are all based off that you'll be using windows vista.
6. I would go off the product you are using and find the system requirements for it. I have a mac and pc. I do exactly what you are wanting to do. I use a dell 4.0 vista with 2 gb of ram with a gforce 7800 sli connection 512 memory 3.0 shader. and my mac is a G5 4 core 3.0. 4gb of ram with an ati video card 512. Both are running fast on all aps. I defiantly would recommend lots of ram and a good video card for video.
7. Although it will not provide all that you need, you might try Cropmom.com at http://www.cropmom.com a digital scrapbooking web site that provides thousands of graphics to create one of kind layouts. For commercial use I think you might want to contact the website. You can also add your own text while creating your layout. You can purchase the print-quality JPEG file of your layout (it doesn't cost much) and download it to your computer. From here, you can either print your layout at home. Or - what I usually do - is have my layout printed on a 5" by 7" greeting card by Shutterfly or Snapfish or photofinisher of your choice.