What computers are you guys editing on and do you calibrate your monitors?

Question #5: What computers are you guys editing on and do you calibrate your monitors?

Taylor: I am using a lovely PC. I use Mac laptops, but whenever I’m editing at home, a PC is fine by me. I don’t need a Mac – it’s easier for me to use, but for PC it does a really good job, so I keep upgrading as I need to.

Dave: I edit on MacPro, but a PC does the same thing. It’s one of those things that we try to be a little too fussy about, but as long as the densities are in the right area and the skin tones are okay, it doesn’t really matter.

Taylor: I also have two monitors and both of them are different colour pallets, and I’ll drop images back and forth between them, because I know the mother of the bride isn’t going to have a calibrated computer. So maybe I sandbag it a little bit so it looks good on those kinds of computers as well as other ones.

Dave: At the end of the day, as long as you’re happy with the way your albums and prints are looking, I’m not particularly fussy on calibration. I keep my blinds shut when I’m editing and certainly don’t edit in direct sunlight so I can keep consistent when editing.

In terms of backing up systems, I use the dro-bow (?) and I’m loving it because it’s still one version of a file, but it’s based on four hard drives, so if one drops, it’s okay. If you fry a hard drive, you literally pull it out and put in a new one and it finds the data on the other drives.

Taylor: I have one copy of everything from the wedding on the web, and I have the working drive. All of my in-camera stuff is close to the final product, so I upload the jpegs to Smug Mug, so if I need to get to them, I have them. Otherwise, I have all of the photos on a terabyte drive and as soon as it gets to 800 gigs I’ll just buy a new one and archive the old one. And when I’m ready to ship my photos to my editor, I’ll drag the best files onto the second device and mail it to her – and when that gets full I’ll archive it somewhere too.