Amateur photographer looking to buy a comp and printer for processing and printing. What should I buy? -

I am giving my little brother a bundle of products to help him pursue his hobby as a photographer. I am looking to buy a computer and a printer for him as well as software and any other peripherals that will help him maybe turn this into a career. Can you guys help me think of any peripherals that might help him as well as help in choosing a comp, printer and photo processing software. Thanks,

SOFTWARE ========= For photo-processing software you will want Adobe Photoshop. It is what 99% of professionals use. You could buy it with a student discount of up to 80% if your brother s (or your s or anyone you know s ;) ) school is part of the discount program - these are professional software at pro prices otherwise. You could buy him the entire Adobe CS4 (creative suite) for $299 under the student licence program or just buy Photoshop for $179. I d go for the package as there are aditional programs he will likely want to use and if you bought them all you would top the $299 discount price. COMPUTER ========= When it comes to buying him a computer you do not need to buy him top of the line quad core processor or anything like that. Considerations for the computer would be: - Fast dual core processor Intel E8400 is perfect. - Good modern graphics card. - Lots of fast RAM for easy working with many pictures (4G minimum - 8G good) - Windows XP x64 or Vista x64 Home Premium to make the most of the computer (Usually recommend 32 bit operating systems however 64 bit is compatible with these high level software products and will work better.) - Two hard drives - Photoshop uses a large temporary file called the scratch file and this needs to be on a separate physical disk to the program and operating system for best results. Get a 160G HDD for operating system and programs and a 500G HDD for Photoshop scratch file and for storage of data and images. - A good quality monitor with good colour reproduction - for someone working with images this is essential. Do not save money buying a cheap monitor. - A CD/DVD rewriter with lightscribe for backing up and labelling his work. - Additional memory cards for his camera. Nothing worse than running out of film on a shoot - memory cards are modern equivalent of film. - Optional - a memory card reader (can just plug most camera s in to computer but if he has many images on multiple memory cards the reader would be helpful). PRINTER ======= I do not know up to date information on what is best at the moment - someone else will tell you or you can search the web for quot;photo printer (reviews OR comparison)quot; - with the brackets and capitalised OR but not the quotation marks. CAMERA ======= If he wishes to make a career in photography he will need to have quality camera equipment with a range of suitable high quality lenses and a professional flash set up. It depends where he is going with his photography as wildlife photographers, studio model photographers, scientific photographers, fashion photographers and landscape photographers are all clearly working under differing conditions looking for different results - and need different equipment. There is a link in the sources section to Adobe s page for the student offers. This link is for the US but check your local Adobe site for local student pricing. Best wishes to you and your brother in his hobby/career. You re a good guy for helping him out like this. Matthew