Powerful PCs for Imaging Work
This is our comprehensive guide to getting the absolute best bang for buck when getting a new computer for imaging work. Normal office/gaming PC builds are simply not properly optimised for this work, so we show you the best approach for powerful machines, designed specifically for high performance and high quality imaging work.
We don't sell or support these systems directly here (we're not a PC vendor) - but we do design them. You can buy them directly through our trusted friends at AusPC Market, using the links below. Whilst we don't sell the PCs, we are experts in the 'studio' areas - i.e. of course you should come back to us for your high quality imaging monitor (the single most important device in the modern digital imaging workflow), calibrators, and fine art printers. More on these below.
Over the last decade, this well proven formula for performance (which evolved from our own intense use of PCs here at Image Science) - has been used by hundreds of our clients to obtain wonderful 'digital darkrooms' - without spending a fortune.
We'll be trying to find a good new vendor soon, but links below will of course no long work!
High Performance Imaging PCs
Introduction
Creating an optimised PC for imaging work - i.e. one dedicated to working with high performance in apps like Photoshop/Lightroom/Capture One/Affinity and so on - has become significantly easier in recent times thanks to recent technological advances and price drops.
That being said, there are still some significant design differences between a PC that is really designed for efficiency with imaging, and your regular office or home or gaming PC, that is designed just for general purpose use.
The modern digital imaging PC should, ideally, be highly optimised for two specific, commonly encountered, modes of work:
- Intensively working on a single, very large file
(examples: a stitch together of many RAW files into a panoramic landscape, or film/artwork scan with a bunch of editing layers) - Working on many files at once (bulk RAW processing, sorting and culling, applying mass metadata changes etc).
These two main modes of work both need consideration in the design of an imaging PC. And both these modes of work differ significantly from the day to day work off the shelf PCs are designed for (web browsing, email, Office apps etc).
Of course your own work may lean more towards one mode than the other, and you can of course factor this into your own dream machine build - AusPC are completely open to customising things to specific needs, just send them an email and get the conversation started.
Note the PCs we're talking about here are specifically designed for very high levels of performance with still imaging work. Higher end video work (e.g. cutting and mastering of broadcast, 4K level video work) will have other considerations, of course. However, the PCs as described here will also, of course, offer very good performance for the sorts of lighter and general purpose video work that content creators tend to often find themselves doing these days - it's just not the main focus of these designs.
At the end of the article, we also have some special sections to deal with some of the more fundamental questions we're often asked:
High Performance Imaging PCs
Monitors, Calibrators & Printers
With these, we of course can help directly.
You should get you PC elsewhere (see below) - but make sure you come back to us for high quality monitors specifically designed for colour accuracy, and the systems to keep those monitors accurate over time. No PC sales company has any real experience in these things, and the sort of general purpose monitors they will recommend are just not up to the job here - and nor do they offer our level of post sales support and knowledge that can be essential to get your system correctly set up for high quality imaging work.
Your budget for this side of things may of course affect your PC budget - and as your monitor is simply the most important part of your system for determining the quality of your results, it's even more important than the PC - you can live with things taking a few more seconds, of course, but from a quality perspective it is absolutely imperative you can accurately see what you're working on.
I like to compare buying a good monitor to buying a good camera lens - there are good options at about $1200 or so, and great options tend to run about $2000 to $5000. Calibrators are typically around $300 to $600, and fine art printers about $1000 to $2000.
We have recommendations and comprehensive information on both monitors and calibrators, and of course you can contact us at any time for individual advice.
High Performance Imaging PCs
How To Actually Get A PC Like This
Obviously, we at Image Science are not directly in the PC sales/support business.
We design these systems, based on our intensive in house use for all our services work - and as a value-add for our clients & customers who are working in similar areas. We purchase our own versions of these PCs from AusPC, and we strongly recommend you consider them too.
AusPC is a Sydney based specialist PC dealer with whom we have worked for some 15 years now with great success. Although they are Sydney based, they sell and support PCs to people all around the country, of course.
Direct links to our latest systems, to configure and purchase from our friends at AusPC Market:
All Systems - Image Science Designed PCs at AusPC Market
We offer two levels, basically - the first and most popular typically coming in $2000-$3000 and offering excellent performance, and the second anywhere up to about $5000, for top tier performance.
Of course, you can also take these 'recipes' for a PC to another company that builds PCs, and have them follow the design principle. Of course, they won't have quite the same level of experience with our system design as AusPC, and possibly won't have the exact parts we've chosen, but odds are they can build you something quite similar.
This can be a sensible way to go if you already have an existing relationship with a PC building company, or if you very much want to have, or support, such a company local to you. However, if you don't already have such a relationship, or a known really good, reliable local option - do consider AusPC as over the years literally hundreds of our customer have used them with success.
However you choose to have your PC built, make sure you return here to purchase your imaging monitor, calibrator and/or fine art printers, from us here at Image Science.
Not only are we always very competitive on pricing, but we have literally decades of experience with these parts of your system - literally no other company in Australia has quite the level of intimate understanding of small studio needs as we do here at Image Science.
High Performance Imaging PCs
Modes of Work
Motivation & Goals
From my perspective, the thing I desire most from my PC is responsiveness - even under stress. I want it to feel snappy and my most common tasks to execute quickly, without annoying lags.
To significantly improve responsiveness we need to look at the most serious bottleneck points - those things that tie up a computer for a significant amount of time to the exclusion of other activities. More often than not, this involves disk operations. When computers are dealing with disks, even the absolute fastest disks, they are operating at least an order of magnitude slower than when they are dealing with RAM. So what takes 1 second in RAM takes 10 to 20 or more seconds with disks.
The answer therefore seems to be to load the machine with more and more RAM so that as much as possible is done in RAM, and not with the disk. And certainly a good amount of RAM is essential, but there's a flaw in this theory - for one, Imaging applications like Photoshop will always write a scratch file to disk no matter how much RAM you have, meaning Photoshop will always be significantly disk bound no matter how much RAM you have. Lightroom is also constantly accessing the on disk catalogue (as is Capture One).
The other flaw in this theory is that RAM is volatile - when we turn off the computer, we lose what was in the RAM. Since the goal of any Photoshop session is to be productive, we're going to want to save what we produce, so the reality is that loading and saving files is a huge part of the work of a an Imaging PC. When you're browsing your library in Lightroom and, for example, checking alternate versions of files to decide which is the best, your machine is constantly accessing the database, which is stored on disk.
The second bottleneck comes when a system is CPU or GPU bound - i.e. doing some large, computationally intensive task (like AI based noise reduction). This will of course inevitably tie up the system, so we want to minimise this time without going over the top and spending far too much money (and hopefully the computer has enough spare capacity to at least handle some light browsing and emails while theses sort of tasks are happening!).
Working With Many Files
Probably the most common significant workload an imaging PC has to deal with is the mass processing of a large number of moderately sized files. This occurs very frequently in modern imaging work - e.g. when importing, culling, sorting, changing metadata (keywording etc), and so on. Usually, there is the access to the files themselves to consider, but also often the simultaneous access to accompanying metadata files, as well as a master database/catalogue.
Digital capture means the sheer volume of images modern systems are dealing with is massively higher than in times past.
High performance when dealing with many files is all about throughput and separation of concerns.
Throughput
Throughput performance (i.e. reading and writing files) - requires extremely fast storage. This really comes down to types of storage and the 'bus' that storage lives on (i.e. how that storage is connected to the computer).
The first thing to eliminate, for your day to day work, is any thoughts of using external storage - be that USB connected or network connected. These external interfaces are vastly slower than internal interfaces - usually NAS systems top out around the 100 mb/s mark, and even USB3 connected SSDs won't often exceed about 450 mb/s at best.
Traditional hard disks (AKA spinning drives), even internally connected, are fine for storing large amounts of data longer term, but are also far too slow for day to day work, again topping out at around 150 mb/s. You can use fancy RAID techniques to improve this, but those come with a lot of cost, complexity, and very significantly increased risk of data loss.
Internal SATA based solid state drives were a revolution then they first arrived - generally smaller in capacity, but about 500-600 mb/s - so about 5 times faster than traditional hard drives.
But even those have now been eclipsed - the obvious choice for high performance storage at this point in time is internal NVMe solid state drives. These routinely hit 3000 mb/s, or more!
The more of these you have and use, the faster your system will generally feel.
Separation of Concerns
Separation of concerns means allowing your machine to use separate hardware whenever possible - i.e. the goal is to try and avoid scenarios where your machine needs to queue up tasks to one particular storage device - which can then only be done sequentially - say reading from some files and and also writing some metadata to your catalogue.
If these things all live on the one drive, the system wastes time sequentially dealing with this input/output, when it could instead be handling these things simultaneously.
Modern PCs can essentially connect working memory directly to storage devices (in a conceptual sense) - meaning data can simultaneously stream between the separate storage devices and different areas of the computer's RAM (i.e. working memory), using Direct Memory Access.
Put simply, for best performance, you want multiple very fast drives, so that such separate operations can happen simultaneously.
A Multi-Disk Approach
A classic approach we've long advocated is to have at least 3 very fast drives, and ideally even 4:
- Drive 1 ('System')
System and Programs (only - usually a 1 TB drive is enough here) - Drive 2 ('Catalogue/Scratch')
Catalogues/Database and Scratch area (this also need not be a large drive - again 1TB, or even less, is fine) - Drive 3 ('Working')
Working Files / Current Project Files (typically 2TB to 4TB makes a good working area drive)
(More optional, need not necessarily be as fast as it's used for less frequently accessed things).
- Drive 4 ('Storage')
Longer Term Storage (ideally also NVMe, but otherwise an SSD, or failing that even an old style traditional hard-drive if you want to store a lot of files, longer term).
Working With Large Files
Working with large files obviously also benefits from fast storage - very large files can take a while to both read and write, of course.
But once these files are in memory, dealing with larger files is all about two key components - and this has changed quite significantly in the last couple of years.
Three important terms you need to know -
- CPU = Central Processing Unit - the main chip 'brain' at the core of a computer.
- GPU = Graphics Processing Unit - the dedicated 'brain' for graphics (and, lately, Artificial Intelligence) processing.
- RAM = Random Access Memory - the working area memory, i.e. where your currently open files etc are, when you're actually working on them.
RAM
One part of this is easy - you can't have too much memory, and these days memory is just not that expensive. So, 32GB at least, and we don't build anything around here with less than 64GB now (and ideally even that with slots left available for future expansion to 128GB).
GPU
Up until around 2020 or so, most imaging applications simply did not leverage the GPU to any great effect - so the CPU was the main determiner of computing power. So, rather counter-intuitively, it was common practise to put relatively low cost GPUs into imaging computers - with the focus for those being on colour performance (i.e. 10 bit support), and stability. The NVIDIA Quadro line of cards was always very popular and reliable.
This has now completely changed - with the advent, in particular, of AI based image processing techniques - the GPU has now become critical. Importantly, we're not talking about esoteric and exotic things like image generation from textual descriptions or similar - but just your everyday image processing tasks like noise reduction, enlargement, subject selection etc.
Two approaches to speeding things up have emerged - cloud based processing (to offload these operations to machines out in the cloud), and local GPU accelerated local processing. Australia's internet, even in this NBN area, remains pathetic by world standards, so at least in the short term, we're likely to see local, GPU based processing become more and more important.
To put this into a practical context - if you e.g. take a noise reduction task and run it on a typical PC from around 2020 with, say, in built graphics or a basic GPU - it might take 5 to ten minutes to run noise reduction on a typical 40mb raw file. The same thing, done on the same machine, but with a modern GPU, takes only 10 to 20 or so seconds. Let's consider an example scenario - you shoot and then cull a wedding down to 300 hero images - but most of these are indoors, and it was gloomy Melbourne kind of day, so you're ISO was higher than you like it to be. On the non GPU accelerated machine, noise processing that lot will be (at least!) an overnight job. With the GPU, the whole lot can be done in less than an hour...this is a transformational difference in terms of how and when you can do your work.
Not only is the speed with a GPU just a night and day difference, but the quality of results of the AI driven, GPU accelerated noise reduction is spectacularly better than the basic, traditional, CPU driven noise reduction Lightroom has previously offered.
Adobe and similar vendors have made clear that many such developments that are here or soon to be here will require GPU acceleration - these features simply won't even be enabled for use on computers without a sufficiently powerful GPU. So a relatively high end GPU is now essential from both a speed AND quality of results point of view, with an imaging PC.
All modern GPUs reliably support 10 bit colour output, so the best bang for buck at the top end will now typically come from 'gaming' cards.
There are many resources over the web ranking performance versus cost for specific video cards. We're not advocating that you go out and buy the absolute top of the line cards - where you will pay a disproportionately high amount for only a few percentage points of speed gain. We tend to favour the more cost effective TI versions of NVIDIA cards - e.g. in our latest service PC we have put a 4070Ti card. But this was (at time of writing) a $1500 part all on its own. Thus we continue to offer good options from the Quadro series for lower budgets.
Historically, we have found NVIDIA cards a lot more stable than AMD based cards. And we'd also, for this type of PC, argue against any 'APU' approach (where, basically, a CPU and GPU are combined into one 'All Processing Unit') - as combining these can limit your ability to later upgrade. Your GPU is probably the most likely to be upgraded part, over the forthcoming years, as development in this area continues to proceed very quickly.
CPU
In general, Intel i7 is usually the right thing to be looking at (or the equivalent AMD Ryzen, if you prefer), or, if budget is tight, at least an i5. i3s have their place, but high performance imaging machines is most definitely not that place.
If money is not a major concern, then for sure consider a top end i9 (= Core Ultra 9), but you do begin to see a noticeable price bump for this, and the real benefits are not huge. (If you do go for an i9, make sure you invest in a high quality cooling system for your PC as well, as these can run quite hot!).
(Intel is apparently re-branding their CPUs from i7 to e.g. Core 7, or higher specced versions from i7-K to Core Ultra 7 etc).
Faster is better, but we strongly suggest you avoid things like over-clocking - which (even with fancy modern systems) can end up having a distinctly negative effect on system stability. Better just to spend a little bit more money now and save your sanity - who really needs more computer issues in their life, eh?
If it's a choice between spending your money on more CPU or GPU, you will likely see more profound impact from the GPU side of things, at this current moment. AI and GPU acceleration are genuinely radical points of change for imaging work - and again, not just for speed, but for the quality of results achievable as well.
High Performance Imaging PCs
Other Considerations
Case, PSU and Motherboard
Two parts of desktop systems usually don't change or get upgraded, and so should be bought for the long term.
Motherboards are the first - and here, you want as reliable as possible, as it's the glue that holds everything together. Many motherboards specifically mention things like high quality capacitors (one of the main points of failure).
The other thing is the case. A desktop should ideally be quiet (i.e. thick materials, with high quality large fans), and leave ample room for easy later upgrades (including e.g. large GPUs - those things are not getting any smaller lately!).
A good quality case (and power supply), on the larger side, is a good way to go, to give yourself the best options in the future. If you're living with a black box under your desk, then a few more square centimetres of black box won't make any real practical difference, and it's better than a cramped, pokey, hot-running little thing, when it does come time to upgrade. (Note that when that time comes, you can just take your box to your local PC vendor and they will usually be quite happy to pop in the new parts for you).
Keyboard and Mouse, etc.
We favour corded over cordless, as there's never any connection or battery hassle, but modern cordless systems are very good and there's no appreciable lag or anything to worry about anymore, so it's really down to personal preference here.
We favour Razer DeathAdder Elite 2 mice - highly comfortably, precise and reliable. But most modern gaming mice will make for good retouching mice, as well.
If you're doing a LOT of processing, then dedicated panels like Loupedeck / Stream Deck can really speed the basics up. But they take some time to get just right for your own workflow, in our experience. (Note that Loupedeck has recently been bought by Logitech so we may start to see some more affordable options as a result of that).
Operating System
Windows 11 Pro is, at this time, the obvious choice. There are some annoyances over Windows 10, but we're at the point now that it is really time to move on, and Windows 11 on modern hardware is by far the most stable and reliable Windows to date.
Yes, there are some irritants. Most, like the pervasive advertising/product pushing, are quite easily solved (Google will return many easy answers to 'how to turn off advertising in Windows 11 - it only takes a couple of minutes).
The Windows 11 Taskbar is flat out not as good as the old one, but has improved enough to be quite useful again.
Especially Useful Software
Adobe remains the de facto standard (if not perhaps beloved) for image editing software. If the Creative Cloud Photographer's Plan is too much for you (~ AU $15 a month is actually great value, and you get both Photoshop and Lightroom), then the most popular 'buy once buy forever' alternative is Affinity Photo.
Capture One is also an option, of course, and many swear by it, but personally I have always found it to have a hard to repress tendency to overcook things in raw processing.
Until the sun sets on the last day of the universe, we'll keep saying it - every Windows machine in the world should have Directory Opus on it. Absolutely essential software.
If you're doing just about any type of film, document, or artwork scanning, we've also got an entire article on why Vuescan is useful to have as well.
For screenshots (so useful in technical support!) - the in-built Windows snipping tools is fine for most people. We use ShareX - this is very powerful, albeit not very beginner friendly.
If you do a lot of printing, then Mirage Print is a fabulous tool to help streamline and control your printing.
High Performance Imaging PCs
The Bigger Questions
PC vs. Mac
PC vs. Mac is, for many, basically a Holy war.
If you're a devoted Apple User, and can afford the Apple premium pricing, then likely you will want to stay an Apple user. Of course, it's worth keeping in mind this is committing yourself to the Apple premium pricing on an on-going basis - the substantial sting in the tail comes with each update & upgrade - it's not just a once-off price difference - you will always be paying noticeably more if you use Apple. Swapping platforms later can be quite a hassle, although it's easier these days than it once was.
The one big exception to choosing or staying with Apple is if you're interest is in fine art print work specifically. Recent history in this area shows that Apple is frankly a disaster for being able to reliably produce high end print work. In this area, MacOS is quite simply a complete and utter mess.
If you don't do print work, then of course this is not really an issue. But if you do, there is no question at all, you'll have a far easier life with PCs than with Macs. Over the last decade, swathes of otherwise happy Apple users - including many entire university departments - have abandoned the Apple platform, as the issues with printing are so frequent and fundamental, it makes the Mac quite simply an untenable platform for reliable, high quality print work. The only good and consistent solution for this issue is to consider relatively expensive after-market software (Mirage) - that at least completely solves this problem, but just shouldn't be necessary.
If you do go with, or persist with, Apple machines, then we have one other strong recommendation for you - avoid Apple screens (and therefore Apple systems with in-built screens, like the iMacs). Apple screens simply do not enter the conversation when talking about colour accurate monitors. With their fused glass design (fundamentally awful for accurate deep tone reproduction as they reflect the surrounding environment in those areas), and tendency to re-package really quite old technology in a shiny new box - they are simply not a good or competitive option for high end imaging work.
The best Apple set-ups are thus based on the excellent Mac Studio (for higher end) or Mac Mini (specced up these are quite powerful machines) - using external monitors from Eizo or BenQ to solve the Mac screen quality issue. Of course, if you need portability, you can also put a Macbook Pro at the centre of your system (the Airs are very nice in their own way, but not really quite powerful enough for the sort of serious imaging work we're talking about here).
The relatively new M series chips from Apple are, without question, excellent - and have frankly saved Apple from the brink of irrelevance. In the serious creative market, Apply have been bleeding users for many years now, and this now seems to have stopped and reversed. But Apple will need to address their major issues with printing and colour to be taken seriously in the print market, and we've seen no sign at all that they are serious about dealing with those issues.
For general imaging work (i.e. not printing) - Mac vs. PC is barely relevant - all the main applications are basically identical across platforms, so it comes down to your personal likes/dislikes of the various systems in other areas.
We favour PCs here, as the value and flexibility over the years has been far higher with PCs, but of course many of our customers use Macs (as do some of our staff at home). You do pay quite a significant premium for Apple, and have considerably less options to choose from in terms of form factors, so if you're considering which way to go, our vote is PC.
(In terms of support, we get vastly more support queries from Apple users, despite them being a small percentage of the total user base - this is for two reasons, I think - Apple users are often less computer comfortable and choose the platform based on its perceived simplicity and reliability, and secondly Apple takes so many steps to hide complexity, this often in practise ends up actually hindering more advanced work).
Desktop vs. Laptop
This article is about powerful machines, specifically.
Even with very high end, large, 'workstation' style laptops, there are very significant performance penalties at play. To keep size, weight, and heat under control, they have no choice but to use lower power/lower heat processors, and the same goes for the graphics accelerator. These laptop parts simply don't have anything like the raw grunt and throughput that desktop class hardware offers.
Laptops are great, if you really do need portability. But you will get vastly better value and performance, and long term flexibility, out of a desktop system - so for us there's no argument - supplement with a laptop for on location work, sure, but your primary studio machine should definitely be a desktop, if you're serious about your imaging work.
Over the years the decision to choose a desktop will likely pay dividends - along the way you will be able to substantially update and improve your desktop by replacing certain key parts rather than the whole machine. Laptops in this context tend to have lifetimes in the 3 to 5 year ranges, whilst we find (and receive many reports) that our imaging PCs are very often used for more like a full decade, or even more.
(Case in point - we just recently replaced our main services machine here - the previous machine ran all our own intensive printing, scanning and retouching services all the way from 2011 to 2023 - 12 years!! - with only a few key upgrades along the way).
If a Laptop, Which Laptop?
We don't tend to use a lop of laptops here at Image Science, so we're not really the best people to as on the best current options.
We favour the thorough reviews at Notebookcheck to help make a selection - in particular, they offer more detail on the screen side of things than other review sites, which is of course useful for this context.
Thanks again to all of you for the hard work on the show, loved working with you all and the images looked fantastic - people loved them.
- Tom B -