Macs vs PC for Graphics

[alfa dailey]

I currently work for a publishing company in marketing which involves designing promotional material for print (small company) and I have never really figured out the whole mac vs Pc debate.

At home I have a G4 mac from 2000 and love the operating system but I need to get a laptop and comparatively you appear to get more for your money in a pc. What cant PCs do that macs can, eg can PCs work in CMYK as I know windows doesnt seem to like files done on my mac in CMYK. Are fonts truly compatable, will printers hate me for creating the files on the PC in Quarkxpress and Photoshop CS

Thanks for any advice

Simon

[cuneus]

Worked somewhere where all the "designers" swore by their Macs

We arranged a demo vs the Intel platform for Photoshop - game over

Dead buried and long forgotten

[Davi]

alfa dailey said:

I currently work for a publishing company in marketing which involves designing promotional material for print (small company) and I have never really figured out the whole mac vs Pc debate. At home I have a G4 mac from 2000 and love the operating system but I need to get a laptop and comparatively you appear to get more for your money in a pc. What cant PCs do that macs can, eg can PCs work in CMYK as I know windows doesnt seem to like files done on my mac in CMYK. Are fonts truly compatable, will printers hate me for creating the files on the PC in Quarkxpress and Photoshop CS Thanks for any advice Simon

I'm one of those die-hard Macs rule in graphics people I'm afraid. I have 2 PC's for designing on, one Mac. Nowadays, most noticibly if you use Adobe software, the PC can do pretty much everything that the Mac can, but on a like for like basis PC's simply DO NOT compare in speed or processing ability with large graphics files. I've had many try and convince me otherwise by putting a brand new "latest" PC up against an ailing overdriven mac, but if you get a top range Mac it simply cannot be beaten in graphics handling, period.

Fonts can be a serious issue cross platforming but things like CMYK not usually a problem, however you need to know the colour space you are working in to get accurate reproduction anyway, so that involves talking directly to the printer you are going to work with on a project. If you dont do this then the difference between handling is not even worth mentioning as your files could be out either way. When I started in graphics (15 odd years ago) if you took a PC file to a printers you would be shot on sight or laughed out the building, now, it doesn't make a huge amount of difference, but of the 2 print shops I managed PC files were still treated with derision as second rate stuff. Even my IT specialist, who was anti mac for most of his life, now accepts that the Mac will beat a PC in this area every time and indeed now owns 2 quad processor G5's!!!

It's certainly true you get a lot more for the money with a PC laptop - it's like anything else in life, mainstream = cheap regardless of how apt it is for the job at hand, and if you already have a Mac then it would of course mean you can go whichever route was most appropriate for the job and printers in hand. I'd say it comes down to the size of your wallet and how much you want to empty it at the end of the day - you could get a PC laptop and spend some of the money you save increasing the spec on the Mac desktop.

>> Edited by Davi on Monday 2nd January 16:17

>> Edited by Davi on Monday 2nd January 16:19