Home graphics can be delineated into a few categories. One can use it to create newsletters and bulletins. For this clip art or photo CD's are usually sufficient. This can be accomplished with the use of most word processing applications and no external peripherals but a normal CD rom player, and a color inkjet printer which is optional.

The next category involves those people who only want to manipulate objects and are satisfied with using the collections found on CD's and floppy disks. For those people I highly recommend a digitizing tablet which will be discussed in future articles. Also, those people need to purchase programs that are capable of doing image editing.

The third category involves those people who want to use their own photographs, their own drawings, or images found in magazines, etc. I am not discussing art work that is to be sold since I have no intention of discussing copyright laws and the use of royalty free images. The third category is the one that will be addressed in this series of articles

This first article will address the basic requirements for the computer and monitor. Those that I feel are useful but not absolutely necessary, I will discuss as well.

The computer needs to be a 486 DX66 or Pentium. If you are purchasing a new computer, I advise a Pentium. If you have a 486 with the proper amount of memory, etc. it will work very well.

The parts of the computer that I will be discussing are:

* operating system
* amount of memory
* hard drive size
* video card

At present most people use either windows 3.1, 3.11, or win 95. All of the above can handle graphics. Personally I have not used 3.1 for years; I opted early on to use 3.11. Most programs can be used on either 3.1 systems or win 95. However, the trend is for software companies to start using the win 95 operating system and NT system only. This trend is not industry wide yet. If you do not have win 95, there is no need to purchase it. I have chosen to do all my personal work using a win 3.11 operating system although at my office I have access to a win 95 system also. I do find that recently I have begun to spend more time on my win 95 system because I have started to use some programs that are not made for win 3.1x.

Graphics programs are memory hogs. The minimum amount of memory I suggest is 16 megs; however, I highly recommend 32 megs or more. Some programs like Adobe Photoshop suggest 32 megs of memory. Up to a point, the more memory the better.

One cannot have too much hard drive space. Many programs (of all sorts) are in suite form and for full installs require a lot of space. Also many graphic programs require what is called scratch disk space (free temporary space to use as if it were ram). In addition, graphic files can tend to be large. Thus I suggest the purchase of a minimum of a 1 gigabyte drive (a larger one is highly recommended). If one is using win 3.1 or 3.11, I suggest partitioning it in to 255 meg partitions and then one or more partitions over 300 meg. If one is using win 95, I recommend the same, however, there are some who feel that the 255 meg size hinders the running of win 95 and Microsoft has come out with a program that configures cluster size in non-partitioned drives. I have not had any personal experience with this software addition.

There are many good video cards on the market. Make sure that if you are purchasing one, that correct drivers are available for win 95. Windows 95 had a peculiarity in how it interpreted the dimensions of the monitor screen. On a 17" screen, it only made use of a diagonal of 15"; thus, shrinking the screen. I know this was the case in early releases of windows 95 and in early releases of video card drivers. This would be something to ask one's dealer. One needs a relatively high quality card that utilizes super VGA (SVGA). I, also, recommend that the card have 2 megs of ram. I, personally, use 2, not 4 megs, and have found this to be satisfactory.

The last item to be discussed in this article is the monitor. One should use a good quality 17" monitor. A 15" is just too small for eye comfort since most graphic software has many floating palettes that clutter up the screen but need to remain open.

The next article in the series will discuss input hardware such as scanners and digitizing tablets.

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