Digital Prints

252
Mastering Digital Printing
Connections
One of the real limitations with older computers is the printer interface or connection.
Most contemporary desktop printers, whether inkjet, dye sub, or laser, require a USB or
parallel (IEEE-1284) connection. Even better, upgading to a system offering USB2 or
FireWire can be important for downloading large numbers of digital photos, or gaining
high-speed access to scanners, drives, and printers. Older computers don’t have these
options, although special cards can be installed for this purpose. When nothing can connect
to your computer anymore, that’s usually the time to buy a new one.
Hard Drives and Other Storage and Transport
As with RAM and processing speed, large art files require a lot of storage space. It’s hard
to imagine that I used to work with a 10MB hard disk, but I did. Now, single file sizes in
the 200–500MB range are not unusual. Since you have to store all those gigantic files
somewhere, you should get the largest hard-disk storage capacity you can, 120, 250, even
500 gigabytes. And you might think about getting multiple hard drives configured in a
RAID (“Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks”) array for spreading the data across multiple
disks. Again, as with RAM, per megabyte storage costs have dropped significantly,
so be generous to yourself.
For small-scale or temporary storage (or for file transport), you’ll definitely want some
kind of removable media system. Most file transport these days is done either with microstorage
drives or on CDs (650MB) and DVDs (4–9GB). You’ll either need a built-in
CD/DVD writer/reader on the computer or use an external, stand-alone unit.
Displays
Again, bigger is definitely better when it comes to monitors. With the menus and palettes
multiplying on the latest image-editing software, screen real estate has become a priceless
commodity. Most photographer-artists work on 19"–21" or even larger screens, and some
use dual monitors, one for the main image, the other for all the tools. Mitsubishi, NEC,
LaCie, Apple, and Sony make models popular with photographer-artists.
Another trend is to flat-screen, liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and away from the traditional
cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors, although some users still maintain that CRTs are better.
(Apple has abandoned CRTs almost entirely with its current product line of displays.)
Prior concerns about poor color fidelity on LCDs are fading as the quality improves and as
more color profiling devices come online to deal with the new flat-screen monitors.
Video Display Cards
Powerful graphics cards are frequently needed to avoid the speed bottlenecks that intense
image-processing can cause. They are also needed to run sophisticated dual-monitor setups.
Matrox, NVIDIA, and AGP make good ones.
Input Devices
Most photographer-artists work with source material in one form or another that needs to
end up in the computer. We’ve already covered digital cameras and scanners in Chapter 3;
however, one tool that needs more description is the digital graphics tablet, which combines
a pen or stylus and an electronic tablet that records the pen’s position and action.