"louise" wrote in message
...
I've just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D40X) and I'm shooting in RAW. I
am using Capture NX to do intial adjustments to the raw image and then
saving it as a tiff. I then open the tiff in CS3 and continue editing.

So, Capture NX, CS3, Outlook and Firefox are usually open. And my computer
is moving between Capture NX and CS3 very very slowly, pictures are being
drawn slowly and changes are previewed....slowly. It is only slightly
better if I close Outlook and Firefox - it is still slow enough to be
frustrating for any quantity of work.

I want to emphasize that everything works, but it is slow and I am
constantly waiting for large files to open and to adjust to changes. I
find the transition from Capture NX to opening the tiff in CS3 to be
extremely slow.

I don't know whether I really need a new computer, or whether it is simply
that my graphics card isn't up to the tasks I am now presenting to it.
Here are the specs:

P4, 3.2 with 2 gig of ram and an Asus Motherboard. Large seagate hard
drive with plenty of space.

The video card is a Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantic with 128 meg of
memory in the AGP 8x slot of an Asus P4C800E Deluxe motherboard.

Do I need a new computer with a much faster processor, or is the the video
card the main bottleneck? If the video card is the bottleneck, do I get
another AGP 8X with 256 meg of ram or do I get a regular PCI card and not
use the AGP slot at all? I do have an open PCI slot. What specs should I
look for in a card?

I am hoping that a new video card will take care of the slowness for
another year when I will feel more ready to buy a new computer. But if
not....then it will have to be sooner.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc., all very welcome.

TIA

Louise

Try disabling your antivirus software. When I bought a new laptop it came
with what the store said was a super antivirus program, PC-cillin. It was
super alright, thought every photo file was a potential virus and had to
check them all before opening/processing them. I use a Canon 10D and use
RAW for everything. With the PC-cillin antivirus software running it took
28 seconds or more to convert, process and save a raw image to a tiff,
without the PC-cillen antivirus software runnung it usually takes 13-14
seconds to convert, process and save a raw image and I have McAfee antivirus
software running.. The PC-cillin antivirus is no longer on my laptop!

Ron