Photoshop CS5 in Parallels?

[7enderbender]

Hello Everyone,
I'm still tossing around going Mac in my next round of hardware updates. To try it out I'm thinking about getting a Mac Mini and see how I like the differences in OS X - especially now that Win 8 looks like another one of those WT...? moments.
As always there are issues. I have the PC version of CS5. Lightroom 3 should work on both, PC and Mac if I'm not mistaken. For the test phase and until I upgrade to a little more serious hardware I'm not willing to buy more Adobe licenses or upgrades. So my goal would be to run LR3 natively in OS X and then from there launch into PS CS5 under Parallels (running XP 32 bit?) to do one by one edits. I'd also need to run XP (or Win 7 if absolutely necessary) in Parallels to have access to Office 2003 which I need for work.
Does this work? What are the pit falls? Will Parallels eat resources even if I don't use any Win programs? If so is there a way to turn it off if I go on to work on something different, such as launch Cubase natively which will need all available resources?
What are the minimum requirements in a Mac Mini to mac this work for now? I'm thinking about getting the base model and add more memory (8GB?) and a SSD myself.

 

[chibiterasu]

Windows 8 does look a mess and so does this. In my opinion Your options are get cs5 for mac and same with office, 2011 is fab on the mac. Parallels will eat resources and cs5 is already resource hungry another option is to upgrade to cs6 and adobe's creative cloud or go and buy cs6 for mac. I hate running software non Nativity especially on mobile based computer such as the mac mini. You could install windows under boot camp and run all your adobe stuff in there as that would run faster than a vm the standard base mac mini will do fine I run cs5 on my MacBook Spec below and it does well. More ram always helps though with adobe's stuff. Hope this helps

 

[7enderbender]

Windows 8 does look a mess and so does this. In my opinion Your options are get cs5 for mac and same with office, 2011 is fab on the mac. Parallels will eat resources and cs5 is already resource hungry another option is to upgrade to cs6 and adobe's creative cloud or go and buy cs6 for mac. I hate running software non Nativity especially on mobile based computer such as the mac mini. You could install windows under boot camp and run all your adobe stuff in there as that would run faster than a vm the standard base mac mini will do fine I run cs5 on my MacBook Spec below and it does well. More ram always helps though with adobe's stuff. Hope this helps

Thanks a lot for the feedback and input. The problem is that I'm not fully sold on the Mac idea and that I want to try certain things out first. Hence the idea of getting a slightly upgraded Mac Mini first and then decide before I go out and buy expensive hardware and software updates/Mac versions. Testing this under a Creative Cloud license for the time being is a great suggestion. I have to look into that.

Office for Mac worries me a bit. It sure looks as if they improved it quite a bit but there are still some issues and conflicts it seems. Even more so since I have to have Office 2003 available. Boot Camp or flat-out doing my office stuff on my current PC laptop for now may be the solution here. Isn't there always something? Oh well.

 

[chibiterasu]

Oh right then Yes creative cloud would be the best way of running cs6 almost natively and the probably cheapest if you did it for a month or two but then you could also use it wherever you are e.g on mac or pc so that something to keep in mind. I made the leap to mac in 2010 and waited for office 2011 to come out I really think its great, its more similar to office 2007 on the pc than 2010 which is great because I'm not too keen on 2010 on the pc. But what are your concerns with 2011?? I go from home to college which has 2010 all on pc's and I haven't run into any compatibility issue and thats also true to my home desktop pc running 2007. I know the interface is quite different between 2003 and more modern versions of office on both platforms and it does take some time to get used to but after that it works well.

 

[7enderbender]

Oh right then Yes creative cloud would be the best way of running cs6 almost natively and the probably cheapest if you did it for a month or two but then you could also use it wherever you are e.g on mac or pc so that something to keep in mind. I made the leap to mac in 2010 and waited for office 2011 to come out I really think its great, its more similar to office 2007 on the pc than 2010 which is great because I'm not too keen on 2010 on the pc. But what are your concerns with 2011?? I go from home to college which has 2010 all on pc's and I haven't run into any compatibility issue and thats also true to my home desktop pc running 2007. I know the interface is quite different between 2003 and more modern versions of office on both platforms and it does take some time to get used to but after that it works well.

There are several issues with Office really. One is that my workplace still uses 2003. Concerns are with Excel and PPT. I need them to be 100% compatible. Mostly, when working from home I'd go into my office workstation through a GoToMyPC. But sometimes I want to tinker with something more comfortably and work on an actual file on my own computer. The second issue is my wife. She hates the "new" interface even more than I do and therefor still uses 2003 on her PC. For her it's mostly a Word issue and she is using pretty complicated formating functions and has no interest in relearning that all just because MS through everything out and had a do over. Biggest concern in the Mac version would be the lack of full support for pivot functions and whacky things that happen in Powerpoint formating. Seen that way to many times from hardcore Mac users within the education community who don't seem to care that their stuff only works on a Mac and gets funky during the presentation in a lecture hall furnished with a standard PC. Last reason: same as before - don't want to buy replacements before I know that Mac is the future for me.

 

[rpmor]

you are aware that you can ask Adobe to scrap your windows license and offer you a mac one for your software? for free...

unless you getting a MacPro with a hexacore or more the performance drop you'll experience attempting to do full on CS5 duties in parallels won't be satisfactory to say the least..

i use parallels for office, visio and microsoft project atm. those are fine with 1 core (of a dual core i5 2011 model) being dedicated to the VM and 3GB RAM (32bit OS and 16GB total in my laptop). it runs smooth but neither of those are demanding at least I havent pushed them to be yet....if i attempt to run a P2P client ontop of it. it starts to get a a little wonky (i.e. the P2P client will go in and out of 'not responding' but not actually crash)

 

[pdjudd]

unless you getting a MacPro with a hexacore or more the performance drop you'll experience attempting to do full on CS5 duties in parallels won't be satisfactory to say the least..

While I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, I don’t think that advice is very far off - photoshop isn’t a program that you are going to want to run in a virtualized environment. Boot Camp? Sure maybe, but in a virtual environment, you are not going to get good performance at all - you already have to sacrifice a bunch of resources to run windows virtually, and photoshop in of itself is a really demanding program. You are going to need a ton of a resources and if you have that kind of money you would be better off upgrading/crossgrading Photoshop.

 

[velocityg4]

you are aware that you can ask Adobe to scrap your windows license and offer you a mac one for your software? for free...

unless you getting a MacPro with a hexacore or more the performance drop you'll experience attempting to do full on CS5 duties in parallels won't be satisfactory to say the least..

i use parallels for office, visio and microsoft project atm. those are fine with 1 core (of a dual core i5 2011 model) being dedicated to the VM and 3GB RAM (32bit OS and 16GB total in my laptop). it runs smooth but neither of those are demanding at least I havent pushed them to be yet....if i attempt to run a P2P client ontop of it. it starts to get a a little wonky (i.e. the P2P client will go in and out of 'not responding' but not actually crash)

From what I have read they require you to upgrade to whatever the latest version is. So if they were still at CS5 they would simply allow the transfer. Now that CS6 is out they will require paying the CS6 upgrade fee.

 

[rpmor]

While I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, I don’t think that advice is very far off - photoshop isn’t a program that you are going to want to run in a virtualized environment. Boot Camp? Sure maybe, but in a virtual environment, you are not going to get good performance at all - you already have to sacrifice a bunch of resources to run windows virtually, and photoshop in of itself is a really demanding program. You are going to need a ton of a resources and if you have that kind of money you would be better off upgrading/crossgrading Photoshop.

i understand why you think its an exaggeration but what i meant by it was that you wouldnt be able to allocate enough resources to run it smoothly with good performance. otherwise bootcamp is the way to go...however a quad core setup dedicating 2 cores to the VM could potentially do the trick as well (so maybe a exaggerated a little but the performance wouldn't be that great either).

From what I have read they require you to upgrade to whatever the latest version is. So if they were still at CS5 they would simply allow the transfer. Now that CS6 is out they will require paying the CS6 upgrade fee.

well i never heard of them denying you jumping between the two if you needed to. so if you're going to get CS6 anyway just upgrade it. get the new license if it pans out you want to go back to windows ask them to change it again...

personally i changed to Mac never having owned one before after solidly suggesting people to get more for less with Windows based machines (spec wise) and i understand now why people advocate for Macs and to sum it up really I am more than happy and prob will be buying a Mac in the next 2-3 years again...

 

[chibiterasu]

however a quad core setup dedicating 2 cores to the VM could potentially do the trick as well (so maybe a exaggerated a little but the performance wouldn't be that great either).

Did you not read the first post???? He doesn't want to spend a ton of money and the mac mini isn't even quad core. Read before you post.

If your worried about compatibility then save it in the old .doc format instead of .docx and it will be fully compatible thats the whole point of word and other office program to be compatible with each other. Powerpoint works fine I haver done ones at home that I've then had to show in front of my class nothing was broken or went wrong when used on on a box standard core 2 duo windows 7 pc. As for you wife I know its hard to learn whole new interface but she probably will have to at some point unfortunately because Microsoft wont support .doc forever so when other people and companies upgrade their office they won't be able to open a .doc.

Look I know its hard to commit money in software on a new platform but if your not going to buy it then your never know how it will work for you. You might as well at the moment get a mac and just install windows on it (which does work really well under boot camp) because if windows is what works best for you then stay on that platform. I moved away from windows because I was fed up with driver issues and machines that slow down over time and poor battery life on laptops. For instance I went and brought a logitech mx revolution mouse on windows 7 I put in the driver disc it came up and said the driver won't work go and download new ones from logitech and then install them on mac plugged it in an in about 30 seconds it was working no cd, no going on the web or downloading then installing my mac did it all for me and that's what I like. If your going to get a mac then go mac if your too worried about compatibility between software then stay with windows because that sounds like its working for you and thats what matters.

The slightly blurry pic below also shows how to trouble shoot getting online in my local Nero coffee shop and is quite self explanatory I think.

 

[rpmor]

Did you not read the first post???? He doesn't want to spend a ton of money and the mac mini isn't even quad core. Read before you post.

did you read my post at all? i was talking to the individual who said i exaggerated in my previous post not to the OP. so i wouldn't jump in and act as if you're the only one who read the OP

and he could get the Mac Mini with Lion server and have the quad core chip in it btw

edit: i dont know about that coffee place but it never has been that many steps for me to get onto any wireless network on either Windows Vist or 7 (can't state anything about XP as i never had it with a laptop or a desktop with a wireless card)

 

[thekev]

you are aware that you can ask Adobe to scrap your windows license and offer you a mac one for your software? for free...

unless you getting a MacPro with a hexacore or more the performance drop you'll experience attempting to do full on CS5 duties in parallels won't be satisfactory to say the least..

Photoshop has some of the worst core count scaling on most of its functions. The big thing right now seems to be OpenCL integration. I truly hope that Apple improves their OpenGL implementation with Mountain Lion. It used to be great, but the problem seems to be that they made it difficult to implement so developers stayed with an older version. I am hoping this changes as right now it's pretty laggy.

well i never heard of them denying you jumping between the two if you needed to. so if you're going to get CS6 anyway just upgrade it. get the new license if it pans out you want to go back to windows ask them to change it again...

personally i changed to Mac never having owned one before after solidly suggesting people to get more for less with Windows based machines (spec wise) and i understand now why people advocate for Macs and to sum it up really I am more than happy and prob will be buying a Mac in the next 2-3 years again...

You can install on up to two computers for non concurrent use anyway. If it's only on one, I'd try activating under OSX.

Adobe went platform agnostic with licensing as of CS6. I'd just suggest he test the configuration. It's one of those programs where it depends how you want to use it. The OpenCL functions with CS6 look exceptional.

I kind of wonder if they did this with the brush engine too or if that was practical. I like instant feedback when painting. By the way on specs, 15" macbook pros come out okay if you find a good deal, even compared to others. I just wish they'd run cooler. I also like keyboard covers due to the number of spill threads I've seen on here by people who probably never expected it to happen to them. In some cases other people spilled liquid on their keyboard, one person got a nosebleed, really random things and it seems like the electronics are way too exposed there. In terms of lighter laptops or if you want a less expensive 15" laptop, there are other good ones. I just suggest they read reviews. Every computer has complaints. It's more important to know the common complaints rather than worry that they exist.

 

[chibiterasu]

and he could get the Mac Mini with Lion server and have the quad core chip in it btw

And how is spending $999 usd not a ton of money compared to a base $599 that he said in his first post.

The big thing right now seems to be OpenCL integration. I truly hope that Apple improves their OpenGL implementation with Mountain Lion. It used to be great, but the problem seems to be that they made it difficult to implement so developers stayed with an older version. I am hoping this changes as right now it's pretty laggy.

Yep Apple used to be pushing everyone to OpenGL but they haven't moved it forward which is a shame.

 

[rpmor]

And how is spending $999 usd not a ton of money compared to a base $599 that he said in his first post.

you know you're overly confrontational for no reason. in your post you said 'mac mini isn't even quad core' - that was a blanket statement that i was simply correcting.

edit: he also never mentioned a budget. he said he's considering the base model on the basis of a trial run for the Mac hardware before committing. honestly stop being confrontational all i have mentioned are things for him to consider.

For the test phase and until I upgrade to a little more serious hardware I'm not willing to buy more Adobe licenses or upgrades.

to the OP i understand you want to give the Mac a trial run but wanted to suggest that i have seen many people buy Macs and use it as Windows machines. i dont know what the period is for your test phase before you move into more serious hardware but i would suggest to buy the hardware you'd be happy with and Windows-it or keep it as a Mac depending on how it goes for you. Obviously if you're in need of gaming-grade GPUs (if you stick to PC-builds) than maybe your test phase is necessary but if not. go with what will make you happy hardware wise. either way Windows will run perfectly on it and you'll never have to use the Mac OS if it comes down to that.