I'm borrowing a page from Abner's book and asking a question about my home computer situation. I just have this little laptop and the memory is maxed out. It has started to malfunction due to lack of capacity. I could delete a few things but it's not really going to solve the problem. It probably wasn't a great choice but I've struggled along with it until now. So I've decide to retire the mini and get another laptop with a larger capacity memory. Now here's the thing. I want to get/run Photoshop and this is going to result in a lot of graphics being stored. I'm concerned that I'll use up all the memory again and be right back where I started. I originally thought of getting a cheap, refurbished CPU and putting Photoshp and all the graphics files on the CPU and just using the laptop's screen and keyboard (you can hook up using and HDMI cable, right?) or should I just get a large capacity external hard drive for storage of the files. Or maybe (probably) there's an even better idea. Oh yeah, I know I could just buy a system with huge memory capacity but that's very expensive. I'm trying to be really, really cheap about it. All suggestions appreciated.
Memory usually refers to RAM but you must mean the hard drive is nearly full. If you can give the make and model of your lapdance computer then someone can post the specs and we'll know what we're dealing with. One terabyte hard drives are becoming the norm for mainstream computers and that's a lot of storage. You do back up your data, right? Oh, you're meaning to? Any day now? Well, inexpensive thumb drives are a good medium for that.
There's also... Google Drive: Free storage up to 15GB and then very reasonably priced after that: https://www.google.com/drive/pricing/ Dropbox: Only to 2GB, but still decently priced: https://www.dropbox.com/plans?trigger=homepagefoot Amazon Drive: Up to 5GB free if you have Amazon prime and $60 per year for unlimited: https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home I use a combination of both Google Drive and Amazon Drive and they fit my needs just right. I'm also not responsible or organized enough to walk around with flash drives not to mention they are inconvenient.
But what capacity hard drive you need will be indicated by what capacity hard drive you have. An external hard drive for your box will run slowly and especially with Photoshop. For Photoshop you should want a screen with good resolution and a reasonably fast microprocessor. Do you need Photoshop or will a free program like GIMP do? Here's a quick comparison of the two: https://blog.udemy.com/gimp-vs-photoshop/
I have been doing digital stuff with photos for about the last 12-15 years. All with cheap / free software and low-storage computers. Most people don't need expensive stuff. Copy the image you're working on to your internal drive and work on it with Photoshop or whatever. When you're done, store the new copy on your external drive - or wherever you want. You need those specs to do anything. There are few computers that still survive that don't have this. I'd hazard a guess that there are almost no new computers that don't - unless there's a teeny 800*600 leftover netbook somewhere. GIMP is great. There are other VERY useful free programs for certain purposes in photographic processing. I use the (French) PhotoFiltre and also Irfanview. I've even done lots of stuff at the pixel level with tired old MS Paint! It's also free -comes with Windows. They are? I have seven with me right now - and three more at home. From 1/2 gig to 128 gig. I'm not organized very well - but I've managed not to lose one in at least 12 years (since I started with them) and only one has fried - and that was in the early days. With pictures, I load them onto a flash drive until I have enough for either a CD (700 meg.) or a DVD (4.7 gig.) Then I burn the pics to a disk and re-use the flash drive. I know what's on each and simply put the required disk into the computer when I need it. If I want to select a bunch to put on the internal drive for a slideshow etc - fine. I have a 40 gig drive and guaranteed 27-28 gig. will be free, usually. That's thousands of pics. For years, I used a laptop with a paltry 5 gig. When it died, (9 years ago) I got an IBM desktop with a 40 gig drive ($58 used). I blew another $100+ on a new 1366x768 flat-screen and a new CD/DVD writer. That 40 gig. is minuscule by today's standards - but I don't use the machine to store that many pictures besides the ones I'm working on - Well, yeah, there are a few shots of Eva Longoria Baston, but they don't take up much drive space. :smile: J.
BTW - your pictures are likely bigger than 1366x768 (mine certainly are), but don't let that stop you. if you're working on them, you usually want to magnify images for detail work and it's perfectly OK to only have part of the pic. available on your screen. If you want to see what the whole thing looks like (and where you want to crop etc.) then most viewers and processing programs (including Irfanview and PhotoFiltre) will reduce the image to screen-size or smaller with one or two clicks - and back again, at will. No permanent size alteration - unless you say so. You can definitely get by (well) without huge monitors. J.
Thanks for the information. I think Johann best understands my situation. Johann, I might want to have a conversation with you at some point about the differences between these various software packages. As for flashdrives, I own three. Two of them are 16 gigs and one is 128 gigs. I like them because they're so portable. As for the other matter, I still don't see what my old system has to do with the new one. I've never tried to use the old one for this purpose. To me it's as if I said, "I need a new car that can carry six people. My old car can't do it." and then your answer is, "I can't tell you what new car to get until I know what you're driving now." I'm not interested in fixing/changing my current computer, I'm interested in replacing it. In any case, thanks for the advice.
Irfanview is at IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide. You can read what it does, see it and download a full copy for yourself from here. You can learn the basics by trying it out - in under a day, I'm sure. Fact is, I've never seen a book on it. It's ALWAYS free. It's my go-to for cropping, re-sizing, changing format, bmp to jpg etc. and a bunch of colour stuff. Many, many functionalities -most are very simple to work. You can download PhotoFiltre (free) from here Downloads - available many other places too. There's also a "portable" version that can work from a USB stick. I have a USB loaded with "portable" versions of my 15-20 favourite programs - so I can use them on any computer - like those in college labs. Photofiltre has many uses, too. Colour adjustment and changes, intensification and many many useful filters and effects - hence its name. Another one that is FREE, quickly learned and super-functional. Can cover (or highlight, if you want) a multitude of photographic sins - and I've committed them all! GIMP is great - FREE - does anything graphic, pretty much. Does even more, but has a bigger learning curve than the others. I think GIMP stands for Graphic Image Manipulation Program - rather than meaning it's lame, because it's not. :smile: Windows version can be downloaded here: https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ GIMP is also very big in the Linux world, where I like to hang out. J.
Sorry - but I was close. GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. What does GNU mean? It means "GNU's Not Unix" - that GNU code is independently developed and does not come from Unix. ...And what is GNU itself, besides an animal? GNU and the Free Software Foundation are discussed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU Man -- we're talking Übergeek here! J.
