[frank]

I have been using Photoshop CS5 with ACR 6.7 to process RAW images from D700 and GF1 (while for D700 I mostly use NX2 but for post processing and BW conversion I sometimes use CS5--especially after I started to use Silver Efex for BW conversion). I have noticed that my current PC need upgrading for the following aspects: (1) a significantly better display; (2) larger memory; (3) larger hard disk. So, recently I put an order for an Apple iMac with (1) 27inch display; (2) 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor; (3) 8GB memory; (4) 2T hard drive; (5) 512M graphic card (AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR5 memory).



After putting the order, I found that a 512M graphic card just meets the minimum requirement for CS6--CS6 recommends to use a 1G graphic card. So, I guess that if I install the CS6 on the iMac its performance may be restricted somewhat (e.g., slower refreshing of images?), but I wonder if this is a problem if I do NOT process a lot of images at the same time.



On the other hand, I want to know if I need to upgrade from CS5 to CS6. For a photographer to process and post-process RAW images from cameras, what kind of improvements CS6 has provided compared to the CS5? I know that ACR 7 only works under CS6, so if I use CS5 as before then I will not be able to get benifits of the ACR 7 over the ACR 6.7 (again, I don't know what kind of improvements ACR 7 has compared to the ACR 6.7).



Any comments?



Thanks,

Frank

[soLong]

i tried the trial version and it worked fine on a 13" mbp with ram galore....it looks nicer.....but not much else for me really - so on principle i didn't upgrade from PS5 because the prices varied depending on your home location (although the download was from the US).....maybe some day.....still if you ever buy a new camera the dead end in acr might be a problem

[frank]

Perthaps I have overlooked the problem. I just checked the adobe photoshop page again. For CS6 a 512MB graphic card seems to be enough. CS6 extended needs a 1GB graphic card. For processing photograph images 512MB graphic card should be OK.