Print art from Photoshop CS3

[noctemx]

Hi guys, so I got a shiny new Macbook Pro 15" with the 256 video card to try my hand out at attempting intro steps in the digital art world. My question is.... I want to create some artwork to put on my wall, but I want it to be about 3 ft x 4 ft. When I try to start with the settings on a canvas this size... it takes like 15 seconds for every brush stroke. Is it even possible to create something this size on my machine? I see artists, like Jeph over at Questionable Content, make large prints of their work and they look fine. How can I do this too?

Edit: Btw, I realize I would need to send this off to a print shop. I guess my question is more along the lines of what settings do I need to start with in order to have minimal loss in an image this large.

[aprendiz]

well to work with this on photoshop you need a very good machine, not that yours isn't it's just that you seem to need a better one (although i think yours should be enough)... i would recomend you to do it on illustrator that way you could do it small and once you want to print it you can just resize it and as they're vector you would have no fear of it becoming pixelated, that's just an idea of course it also depends on the type of artwork you want to make, if you don't want anything vectored then you could try redirecting some RAM memory to the video... i don't know if it is the same on the macs but on the PCs you can just go to the SETUP and set a new amount of memory for the video that could speed up the process, other than that i have no idea...

NOTE: It is very wired that you're having this problem, cuz i got a PC of 3GBs RAM and a regular video card (NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430) and Photoshop works perfectly on that and even bigger canvas... could you tell us the full properties of your mac??? like processor RAM video card?

hope this clears up something

[noctemx]

Yea I don't want to do vector... I was hoping to imitate an acrylic painting and then have it printed on canvas. I would think my laptop would suffice... I have the:

15-inch: 2.4GHz
Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB Memory    
250GB 7200rpm hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT with 256MB

You work on canvas bigger than 12 square feet and PS still runs fine?

[aprendiz]

well right now i am working on a photoshop project of 100 x 100 INCHES (more tan those feet obviously) and my PC works perfectly fine... i can't think of any reason for your mac to be that laggy... i don't think this could be the cause but have you tried reinstalling photoshop??? other than that i just don't know, your mac has the specs to work much better than my PC, better RAM and better video card... if you don't get and answer i would try to contact photoshop support team or something more specialized

Hope you the best luck!!!

[noctemx]

I think I figured it out. Thanks for the input though. I was watching a lesson from lynda and he explained it all fairly well. One other question though.... is Illustrator better to draw in initially and then transfer over to Photoshop?

[aprendiz]

To draw vector: yes it is, to draw with a brush: no