Snow Leopard - What's New for Photographers?

The latest release of the Apple operating system - Snow Leopard - was Friday, August 28, 2009 and features a range of updates and innovations that are practical and useful for the modern photographer. There are more features in 10.6, but let's focus on the ones related to the day-to-day for the photographer - Let's drill down and get to business!

64-bit

Keep hearing about 64-bit but unsure how that translates into something meaningful? First, 64-bit applications are significantly faster than the current 32-bit versions as they process twice the amount of software instructions on each command - this means zooms and pans are instantaneous and image adjustments occur near real time. Rendering RAW files to TIFF or JPEG is faster, turning 4 minutes into under 2 minutes for processing 10 files. Multiply that times your last shoot and you get extra sleep instead of staying up all night.

Security of your computer and files is significantly improved as it is substantially harder to crack into 64-bit protection than 32-bit - reducing the amount of hair-pulling time dealing with the hazards of virus or hacker damage.

Hasselblad's RAW developer, Phocus has been a native 64-bit application since November 2007 on the Mac OS X platform and since July 2008 on the Windows platform, so you are ready to take advantage of 64-bit in the Hasselblad workflow right now, today. Updates are no-charge and can be installed on multiple computers. Download Phocus here.

Thanks for the memory

So far we have discussed 64-bit applications, but the advantages for the photographer extend to the 64-bit operating system of Mac OS X as well. 32-bit applications can address 4GB of RAM at once; that was fantastic until we needed more - by using 64-bit, applications can address up to 16 BILLION gigabytes (that is 16 Exabytes) of memory. That ought to hold us for a while.

Many hands make light work

Ever needed to do more than one thing at a time? By using multiple processors (Intel multicore) tasks can be divided up and simultaneously completed - resulting in more work done in the same amount of time. Phocus is designed to take advantage of this feature in Mac OS X, so this means you can export images while shooting tethered, or create thumbnails in a folder of 1000's of RAW images within seconds.

Snow me the money

The image is the final product for many photographers so the production path to the final image is regarded with respect (or disdain!) Phocus uses the OpenGL commands that off-load graphics-processing commands from the central processor unit to the graphics processor unit for higher efficiency and speed. Checking focus - instant zoom; what about that corner over there - instant pan. Advances in GPU's mean you can easily and affordably update your graphics processing power at any time to improve your workflow - ask any high-end processing lab, they will confirm it.

At a price of $29 for the upgrade from Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.8) it is a no-brainer.

Editor's Note: the FlexColor application installer (used for Hasselblad and Imacon Flextight scanners) is not natively supported by Snow Leopard and requires installation of Rosetta components manually.

Carefully review the system requirements for Snow Leopard, perform a full-backup prior to the upgrade and be prepared for some third-party applications that are not-yet ready for Snow Leopard. A "clean" install yields the best results, and your Time Machine backup can be migrated after the installation.