Proposal for a computer lab for students

[brobson]

Could anyone help me? I teach about 50 students AP art, etc. and we sorely need computers to use photoshop, etc. I would like to pitch to my tiny school a proposal for a lab. It would need to be roughly 4 - 6 computers with photoshop capabilities. What would you say for this?
$700 per computer and 10 per month for CC?

We are a non profit school of only 120 kids. Does anyone know of companies that donate macs to schools?
Thanks a bunch, I have to turn it in today.

 

[AlliFlowers]

Could anyone help me? I teach about 50 students AP art, etc. and we sorely need computers to use photoshop, etc. I would like to pitch to my tiny school a proposal for a lab. It would need to be roughly 4 - 6 computers with photoshop capabilities. What would you say for this?
$700 per computer and 10 per month for CC?

We are a non profit school of only 120 kids. Does anyone know of companies that donate macs to schools?
Thanks a bunch, I have to turn it in today.

Check the education price for a site license. We have that, and each user can install all the Adobe CS apps on two computers.

Do you have 50 in a single class? If so, you probably need ten computers. $700 may be thinking small, cause you need the processing power. This is one of the few cases where I would actually recommend looking at a Mac lab.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

You should really consider looking at other software than Photoshop, and whatever 'etc.' means. You'll save so much money in the long run.

 

[brobson]

What do you suggest?

 

[jahala]

What do you suggest?

For a school computer lab, I would suggest GIMP instead of Photoshop for a few of reasons:
1. It is free so it works with the budget
2. It is cross platform. If you learn GIMP, you can use it on Macs, Windows PCs, and Linux/BSD machines. Students can install on their home computers if they want to.
3. It is designed to be able to work on HUGE images.

Some people hate GIMP because of its interface. Others don't like it because it cannot process as many colors as Photoshop. I liked using GIMP when I was first getting into image editing because I had to do many of the intermediate steps manually which I believe gave me a greater understanding of what was actually happening to my images.

I personally use Pixelmator for my photo editing and it works well. Many others prefer Affinity Photo. Both are significantly cheaper that Photoshop and both have free trials available.

 

[960design]

What do you suggest?

GIMP ( 2D ) -> free
https://www.gimp.org/

Blender ( 3D / 2D / Game Engine ) -> free
https://www.blender.org/
*The students will build some of the most amazing things with this!

Krita ( 2D comic ) -> free
https://krita.org/en/

Alchemy ( concept art ) -> free
http://al.chemy.org/

Computer:
HP Stream 14 -> $199 to $230 ( at least one to try everything out )
Definitely not a power house, but will let you get more for your money and at least get everyone started.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Strea...-Processor-4GB-RAM-32GB-eMMC-Storage/54056480

If you find it too slow for daily work, I would recommend an iMac 27 or if Mobile Zenbook Asus Pro
https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ASUS-ZenBook-Pro-UX550VE/

Go big or be patient.

 

[ignatius345]

I personally use Pixelmator for my photo editing and it works well. Many others prefer Affinity Photo. Both are significantly cheaper that Photoshop and both have free trials available.

Since this is a teaching environment, an intuitive interface might be the order of the day here. If it was me, I'd get a trial version of several things, and bear in mind that anything that requires a ton of support for students to use is going to be draining of your human resources

Also, re all this about having the latest and greatest hardware to run Photoshop? That's not necessarily true. I used a pretty aged Mac Mini (with a decent allotment of RAM) quite recently in a production environment and it was quite usable for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and a few other things, all running concurrently. I even did a fair bit of video and audio editing on it, and again, it was fine. I've also run Photoshop quite nicely on a MacBook Air.

If you're doing 3D work or using enormous files, that could be another matter -- but for basic design stuff? A modest Mac will do the trick. But by all means, try before you buy.

 

[nosser]

I have been using Affinity Photo and Affinity Design for photoshop and illustrator and they both work really well.