Laptop for editing?

[stapo49]

As a minimum do people who use lightroom/photoshop suggest i7 (or AMD equivalent) 12gig ram. Also how important is video card and SSD?

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[BrentC]

I use a couple of USB-C Samsung T5 SSD

I assume these are the 1TB?? I read the PS will daisy chain them together, is this what you're doing??? Lastly are they partitioned or are you letting PS hog it all.

I don't daisy chain them and they are not partitioned. One of the T5's is my stay at home. I have all my LR catalogues and images on it. Every couple of weeks, when I remember, I backup it up to my NAS. If/when it fills up it will be another backup storage that I can store separately from my NAS (probably offsite like a deposit box) and I will purchase another one for daily use.
My second T5 is my travel SSD. For example, when I went to Portugal for vacation, every night I would copy my photos from the SD card to both my laptop and SSD. Laptop travels with me on carry-on and SSD with another baggage, so If something happens to one I won't lose anything. If I have time when I am away to edit I will create a catalogue on the T5 and when I get home will transfer catalogue and images to my at home T5.
They are small and hardly take up any space.

 

[smoke665]

@stapo49 Most of what I've read seems to favor the i7 for photoshop. Here's an interesting comparison Photoshop CC 2018 CPU Performance: AMD Ryzen 2 vs Intel 8th Gen

As to video card and SSD Adobe has me so confused I don't know if I need to scratch my watch or wind my butt. In one place Adobe says the video card isn't that important, but then you get into some of the specialized brushes and 3D rendering, and you find that it isn't available unless you have a compatible card and use graphics acceleration. Then you have the issue of determining what exactly will work because many of the cards Adobe "says" they've tested and work, in reality won't work. Same thing on SSD, in one place Adobe says, to keep your scratch disk on a separate drive, but in another it says to keep it on an SSD drive. Throughout it seems like they are saying the SSD is more important then Ram in performance.

 

[BrentC]

As a minimum do people who use lightroom/photoshop suggest i7 (or AMD equivalent) 12gig ram. Also how important is video card and SSD?

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

I highly recommend an i7 as minimum especially on a laptop. You can use an i5 but i7 is preferable. i5 on a desktop is much better than i5 on laptop. You can get away with less than 12GB Ram but I recommend as minimum, 16GB is ideal. SSD is huge performance over regular HD. All your paging, caching and editing is written to HD so that is a huge bottleneck especially if your dealing with huge Raw files. That would be the first upgrade I would suggest to anybody.

Can't comment between AMD and Intel, I'm an Intel guy and don't know too much about AMD specs and performance.

 

[stapo49]

@stapo49 Most of what I've read seems to favor the i7 for photoshop. Here's an interesting comparison Photoshop CC 2018 CPU Performance: AMD Ryzen 2 vs Intel 8th Gen

As to video card and SSD Adobe has me so confused I don't know if I need to scratch my watch or wind my butt. In one place Adobe says the video card isn't that important, but then you get into some of the specialized brushes and 3D rendering, and you find that it isn't available unless you have a compatible card and use graphics acceleration. Then you have the issue of determining what exactly will work because many of the cards Adobe "says" they've tested and work, in reality won't work. Same thing on SSD, in one place Adobe says, to keep your scratch disk on a separate drive, but in another it says to keep it on an SSD drive. Throughout it seems like they are saying the SSD is more important then Ram in performance.

"scratch my watch or wind my butt" lol. Love that expression. I guess if you buy a PC with i7, 12 gig ram you could always upgrade the video card and add more RAM later if necessary. Also I am assuming you can have SSD and "normal" hard drive together?

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[stapo49]

As a minimum do people who use lightroom/photoshop suggest i7 (or AMD equivalent) 12gig ram. Also how important is video card and SSD?

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

I highly recommend an i7 as minimum especially on a laptop. You can use an i5 but i7 is preferable. i5 on a desktop is much better than i5 on laptop. You can get away with less than 12GB Ram but I recommend as minimum, 16GB is ideal. SSD is huge performance over regular HD. All your paging, caching and editing is written to HD so that is a huge bottleneck especially if your dealing with huge Raw files. That would be the first upgrade I would suggest to anybody.

Can't comment between AMD and Intel, I'm an Intel guy and don't know too much about AMD specs and performance.

Thanks BrentC.

As I already have a monitor I will probably go for a desktop. More options to upgrade and obviously don't then need a laptop screen.

 

[smoke665]

buy a PC with i7, 12 gig ram you could always upgrade the video card

Because of my lifestyle a laptop is almost essential. I'm looking at 16gb of ram, and going with better video card with 4gb graphics memory, but Dell limits you on some models to the NVIDIA® GeForce® MX150 with 2GB GDDR5 graphics memory. So, again the confusion I'm facing.

Also I am assuming you can have SSD and "normal" hard drive together?

That's the other problem, on most laptop models, (dell) if you get the SSD you don't get another hard drive, so you're pretty much stuck with an external.

 

[BrentC]

]

That's the other problem, on most laptop models, (dell) if you get the SSD you don't get another hard drive, so you're pretty much stuck with an external.

This is where the T5 comes in handy. Dell laptops have USB-C and it's incredibly fast.

 

[stapo49]

Because of my lifestyle a laptop is almost essential. I'm looking at 16gb of ram, and going with better video card with 4gb graphics memory, but Dell limits you on some models to the NVIDIA® GeForce® MX150 with 2GB GDDR5 graphics memory. So, again the confusion I'm facing.

My laptop is basically glued to my desk so moving to desktop for me is no issue. Are there other options for laptops other than Dell you can look at?

 

[snowbear]

buy a PC with i7, 12 gig ram you could always upgrade the video card

Because of my lifestyle a laptop is almost essential. I'm looking at 16gb of ram, and going with better video card with 4gb graphics memory, but Dell limits you on some models to the NVIDIA® GeForce® MX150 with 2GB GDDR5 graphics memory. So, again the confusion I'm facing.

Also I am assuming you can have SSD and "normal" hard drive together?

That's the other problem, on most laptop models, (dell) if you get the SSD you don't get another hard drive, so you're pretty much stuck with an external.

The Inspiron 15” has the slots for both, or at least the 7000 series does. I’m sure the 17” does, as well. They may only ship with one, or the other but IIRC it supports 512GB SSDD and 2TB HDD

 

[smoke665]

The Inspiron 15” has the slots for both, or at least the 7000 series does. I’m sure the 17” does, as well. They may only ship with one, or the other but IIRC it supports 512GB SSDD and 2TB HDD

Could it be a space issue??? Not enough room for both????

 

[BrentC]

The Inspiron 15” has the slots for both, or at least the 7000 series does. I’m sure the 17” does, as well. They may only ship with one, or the other but IIRC it supports 512GB SSDD and 2TB HDD

Could it be a space issue??? Not enough room for both????

The days of thick and heavy laptops are long gone. No room for two. I am not sure if money is an issue for you but the Dell XPS 15" is a beast. Extremely powerful, amazing display, thin and the footprint of a 13" laptop.

 

[DanOstergren]

I've been looking for an affordable laptop for editing as well. This is after buying a 21.5 inch iMac; I thought having a desktop computer, even one as "portable" as an iMac wouldn't be an issue for me, but I quickly learned that I prefer the portability of a laptop. I would never ever ever recommend an Apple computer device after owning this iMac though. Stick with Windows for sure.

 

[smoke665]

I've been looking for an affordable laptop for editing as well

So have you looked at anything specific????

 

[drdroad]

Just ordered the latest MacBook Pro. 32 GB memory, 4TB HD.