# Good laptop for Photoshop and Lightroom



## tecboy (Sep 24, 2015)

I will be traveling, and I'm looking for a laptop that is small, lightweight, slim, and about 16 inch screen.  A laptop that can handle photoshop and Lightroom, and has a USB port to connect a portable hard drive and a slot to read sd card.  Would i3 or similar to AMD processor is powerful enough to run photoshop and Lightroom?  I have no interest in getting the latest i7 and Nvidia graphic card.  Any recommendation?


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## nat3wall (Sep 24, 2015)

Whats your price range? Do you prefer windows or mac? My personal preference is that anything bigger then 15 inches starts being a little heavier just because of size.


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## tecboy (Sep 24, 2015)

I prefer Windows.  The reason I want small, because I want fit in my backpack.  I looked into the adobe's website, and they are clear about the system requirements for Lightroom and photoshop.


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## tecboy (Sep 24, 2015)

The range would be about 300-400 dollars.


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## bratkinson (Sep 24, 2015)

For any 'decent' response-time while editing photos, perhaps the biggest requirement is lots of RAM...as big as the laptop will handle.  I'd try to get one that can handle 8GB of RAM.  Why?  Because all those megapixels translated to bits and bytes takes up a lot of memory.  Once you run out of memory, the computer is forced to swap sections of memory in and out of RAM to the hard drive.  Throw in 'work areas' needed by LR & PS, and the RAM gets eaten up very quickly.

You'll also need to get the fastest processor you can afford, preferably a quad processor.  Also, note that an external HD will be considerably slower than an internal one.

I don't think $300-400 will get a laptop that won't have you waiting and waiting for every operation to complete.  I'd be thinking more in the higher-end laptops.  You can also get a better bang for your buck by staying away from the 'premium name brand' vendors like Toshiba and HP.  Also, buying a new laptop will immediately plunge you into Windows 10.  If you're comfortable with Windows 8/8.1, it shouldn't be a problem.  Coming from Windows 7, you are in for a BIG learning curve!

If you have the time, keep 'watch' on specific laptop prices at, say, Walmart and/or Amazon.  A couple of months ago, I found a Windows 8.1, 2.2ghz dual processor ASUS laptop with 4GB RAM and 500GB HD for $199 at Walmart for a friend!  Online, their computer said they had 5 at my local store.  They were prior model closeouts, marked down from $299 or maybe higher when first launched.  Online, they offered less capable refurbished older model laptops for higher than the $199 for the new one.  Get to know your prices based on processor, RAM, HD, and screen size.  Then you'll know what's a good bargain or not.

Edit:  ALL laptops come with multiple USB ports.  Look for one that has at least 1 USB3 port.


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## nat3wall (Sep 24, 2015)

tecboy said:


> I prefer Windows.  The reason I want small, because I want fit in my backpack.  I looked into the adobe's website, and they are clear about the system requirements for Lightroom and photoshop.



The Acer Aspire E1-572-34014G50Mnkk looks like a good laptop, but I don't think it has a SD card slot, you could always get a USB connector for that.


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## jcdeboever (Sep 24, 2015)

tecboy said:


> The range would be about 300-400 dollars.


You are not going to get anything new, quality wise, at that price point. It will last you a year and a half if your lucky. You would be better served to go to arrow direct online and search their used "A grade" Lenovo Thinkpads. The T520 is a great laptop but it is on the big (15.6 display) and heavy side. They also have an X220 that is light, powerful but has 12.5" screen. Their A grades are wonderful. Both have second Generation i7 CPU. 8 gigs of ram. X220 has 160gb ssd drive for fast read and write speeds but you would need an external to store pics on. 

New, thin and light Lenovo X1 Carbon but your looking +1000

You want Intel all the way for performance. 

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk


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## tecboy (Sep 24, 2015)

I already have a laptop with i7 processer, it is powerful, but it is bulky.  I don't feel like to carry around Starbucks and pp photos.


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## KmH (Sep 24, 2015)

For $300 - $400 the laptop will have a TN display not an IPS display.
You will be hard pressed to meet Ps/LR *minimum* system requirements with a $300 - $400 laptop.


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## Dave442 (Sep 24, 2015)

I had a Dell with an i5 chip and 8gb ram that worked pretty good, but it was stolen. As I travel a lot I finally broke down and went with the MacBook Pro with the i5 chip and 8gb ram and the 250gb SSD.  So far that has worked perfect for a travel computer, though the 13" screen is small compared to the 17" I had on the Dell. 

While the Mac unit is above the budget mentioned, I think the i5 chip and 8gb are a minimum requirement, and the SSD is a big help.


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## EIngerson (Sep 24, 2015)

A "good" laptop for editing is not going to be in the 3-400 dollar range. I know it's not what you want to hear, but the MacBook Air has been my travel companion. Love it for editing and the Wacom tablet fits in the slot with it.


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## matt_m (Sep 25, 2015)

The HP Spectre X360 is a great ultrabook that can be used as a heavy tablet.   i7, 8GB, 256GB SSD and very thin.   But add $1000 to you budget.   I went back and forth between the HP and a Macbook Air and finally chose the HP because I'm a windows guy.


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## Jim Walczak (Oct 8, 2015)

I'm not really going to recommend any specific brands or models as personally I do NOT like to try and edit on a laptop...I'm rather spoiled to my 24" monitor and personally find laptops to only be useful for storage and previews.  -If- I had to pick a brand, I'd probably go with Dell as they seem to be a bit more reliable than some of the other brands like HP and Toshiba...I've seen A LOT of comments regarding problems with Toshiba laptops and early failure and HP has a bad tendancy to pre-load their computers with a ton of otherwise useless crap.

That said, for the price range we're talking, my suggestion would be to worry less about "brand" and simply consider features...and for the money, I'd look at refurbished.  If you watch companies like MicroCenter, occasionally they have reburbs and "off lease" computers for a substantial discount compared with new...and while it's not usually as good as with new, you usually get some warranty as well (typically 90 days as I recall).  I've also gotten used computers off Craigslist.  For example I have a Dell Optiplex sitting next to me with 16 gigs of RAM and a 4 gig video card that I use as a secondary rendering system for my animation work.  I got the system for a whole $140...for the money, it's really very decent system for how I use it.  Used has the disadvantage that you don't get any kind of warranty, however if you know a bit about computers and know what to look for (such as knowing how to scan the drive for bad clusters and such), you can often find some really smokin' deals if you look around a bit.

As far as running Photoshop, my experience is that it does depend a great deal on your camera and how you process your images.  For example, my old Intel quad Q6600 system w/4 gigs RAM (which my wife now uses for her programming stuff) worked fine when I was still using my old 5 mp Sony H1 and my 8 mp Rebel XT.  When I stepped up to a Canon 40D and later my Nikon D90 however, because I often do some rather extensive work with layers and comps and such and because I shoot exclusively in RAW, the Q6600 no longer had enough horsepower...I'm now using a home built i5 system with 16 gigs of RAM, around 4 and a half terabytes across 5 hard drives, running Windows XP64 (I -HATE- the newer versions of Windows...too much like a freakin' Mac) .  For most of my still, video and animation work, it does the job very well (although it does bog down a bit for heavy video/animation rendering).  On the other hand, if I were using one of these newer generation Nikon's in the 20+ mp range...yea, I suspect that I'd probably need to upgrade my motherboard again.

Likewise, I would point out that it also depends a good deal on _HOW_ you use your computer.  As a person who went back to college in his late 40's for art and graphics design, I was truly amazed at just how stupid some people can be with computers.  I'd sit there up at the college and watch some of these kids "working"...they'd have several browser windows open, be yackin' back and forth on Facebook and Twitter, watching Youtube vids, had programs like Skype (or other IM's) going, had their desktops and backgrounds just loaded with all kinds of crap...ALL AT THE SAME TIME...and then wondered why their computers ran so damn slow!  OYE!  In other words, the more garbage you choose to keep running on your computer, the more your performance will suffer.  I won't speak for others, but personally I use a computer as a "tool".  I do NOT use anything like "desktop themes" (my background is just plain ol' blue), no screen savers and I keep as little as I possibly can running in memory while I'm working....mostly just my AV software, monitor calibration and print drivers.  If I'm working in Photoshop (or Premiere or Sonar or Maya), then I'm _working_...I'm NOT sitting here trying to IM or Tweet my buds to see what they had for lunch!  I do enjoy the occasional Youtube video...as a musician, I do certainly enjoy the number of tutorials and such that are available, however NOT while I'm working.  Also, as I do a fair amount of video, audio and animation work, I do very much try to keep my system running at peak performance too...I'm not as vigilant as I probably should be, but I try to defrag my hard drives on a fairly regular basis, I run CCleaner occasionally to clean out unnecessary temp files and clean up my registry...you get the idea. 

Now I will say that if you're used to an i7, I strongly suspect you'd be disappointed with the performance of an i3, but again it really depends on what you shoot with and how you process.....if you just take a bunch of jpg snapshots with an older compact digital, you might be fine with an i3.  On the other hand, f you're doing more extensive/heavy duty processing work with a better/newer camera, you'll need something with more "oomph".  I would however strongly recommend that you get something with a decent sized, fast hard drive.  USB drives are fine for storage, however with the exception of the newer USB 3 SSD drives, they can be rather tedious to try and process your images with.  As others have already said, I'd also get as much RAM is you can jam in the sucker...these days I wouldn't go with anything less than 8 gigs.

Just some things to consider...good luck!


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## matt_m (Oct 8, 2015)

Dell's quality has dropped off, but their service has fallen off a cliff.


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## AlanKlein (Oct 8, 2015)

How do you adjust colors on laptop so they are accurate?  Do different type screens do better than others?   recommendations?


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## Jim Walczak (Oct 8, 2015)

AlanKlein said:


> How do you adjust colors on laptop so they are accurate?  Do different type screens do better than others?   recommendations?




I haven't tried this as again I don't do my own editing on a laptop, however I suspect it would essentially be the same as calibrating any other monitor...use a colorimeter.  I use a Spider 3 myself...it's a bit older at this point (I think the Spider 4's have been out for a while now) and I suspect there are probably better/more expensive brands out there, but for me, it does a pretty decent job.  If you haven't used one of these, essentially it's a piece of hardware that you plug into your computer and place against your screen...it "reads" the colors as they're displayed, makes appropriate adjustments for accurate color and sets those adjustments to a color profile for your system.  Pretty straight forward to use.

As far as to whether different screen types "do better" than others, the best answer I can give you is yes, no and sort of, LOL!  Personally I find computer monitors to be just a tad subjective when it comes to editing images (not to mention my video and animation work).  Personally I was rather stubborn about upgrading to an LCD monitor...I had used a Philips 19" CRT for the longest time (still have it hooked up as a secondary...which I'll explain in just a minute) and I was quite happy with it.  A number of years back I had gotten my wife a 21" LCD flat screen for her computer...as a programmer and applications developer, she had used them at work for quite a while, however here at home she was still using a 15" CRT, so I finally broke down and get her the LCD.  She LOVED it, but for the longest time I really just wasn't crazy about it at all.  I main reason I finally broke down and got the 24" that I'm still using now is because when I went back to college in 2009 for art and graphics design, all the Mac labs were of course using flat screens, so I wanted something fairly comparable for my PC so that my "homework" would be relatively consistent....i.e. so the work I was doing here at home looked more or less the same at school (and vice-versa).  Here some 6 odd years later, I do like my 24" LCD, but the truth is that it took me a LOOOOOONG time to get used to it.  Even now LCD and plasma displays tend to drive my eyes a little buggy after a while.

Now in terms of "accurate color", there's a couple of other things I do feel compelled to mention.  The simple fact of the matter is that with computers, there's a lot more to color than meets the eye (literally).  For example, you can have a monitor that's absolutely perfectly calibrated, however your browser for example may use a slightly different color profile so that what you see in Photoshop may NOT look absolutely identical to what you see in Firefox (or IE, Safari, Opera, etc).  There's also the issue of color profiles in Photoshop...RGB and "Adobe RGB" are two different things and it CAN affect how your images look.  Further, if you do any physical prints of any kind, the color profile of the printing device must also be considered.  Epson inkjets for example...while Epson uses an RGB color profile, their idea of "RGB" is vastly different from the rest of the world, LOL!  For example, if you compare a print that was done on certain Epsons for example with the same print done on an HP, you'll likely find that the Epson prints tend to lean much more towards the reds and browns.  I use an Epson Workforce 1100 here at home and I have access to a 24" Epson up at the college...because of this inconsistency with the Epson color profiles, I have that old Philips 19" CRT setup specifically to work with the Epson printers.  The same goes for a lot of places that do photo prints as well...I don't know about other parts of the world, however here in Northern Ohio, I have to tell the lab folks to turn OFF the auto adjustments on their equipment, otherwise my colors can get all screwy!  

Then of course, there's also the issue of "ambient light".  For example, take an average laptop outside and try to look at a few images on a bright sunny day, then look at the same images in a darkened room.  The laptops monitor is obviously displaying them the same way, but they tend to look vastly different to the human eye...on a bright sunny day, the images will most likely look washed out, assuming you can even see them at all.  Needless to say, this will affect how your images look while you're editing.

In short, an accurately calibrated monitor, laptop or otherwise, is only _part_ of the equation.

Now that all said, there is one last thing I have to add here...this is just my own personal opinion, so please use it as you will, however I think that a lot of people tend to get WAY to hung up on this concept of "accurate colors".  Color in and of itself is a rather subjective thing as it's based on "perception"...no 2 people really see this thing we call color exactly the same way.  Just to make this easy, consider a young person in their mid teens vs. an older person in their late 60's/early 70's.  Show a random image to the young person and they may say the colors look a little flat and dull, where as the older person may say that same image is actually OVER saturated or simply too bright.  You could of course consider the old analogy of how you would explain "red" to a person who's been blind their entire life...you get my point.  Very simply, I've seen people who drive themselves absolutely bonkers trying to get "perfect" color...from the camera, to their editing monitor to their prints, they want everything to look EXACTLY the way they remember the scene.  But here's the rub...human memory is faulty as best with such things and light can certainly change from one moment to the next...consider a sunrise/sunset vs. mid afternoon light...just NOT the same thing.  Personally my goal is to never try and reproduce light and color "exactly" the way I saw it, as much as what simply looks *natural*.  For example, let's say that I have an image in Photoshop and I bump the saturation up or down by +/- 5...what happens?  Does the sky come crashing down?  Do the world stock markets fly into a tail spin?  Do penguins in the arctic start walking backwards??  Again...you get my point.  Personally my goal is always the final print...whether it's physical or simply something I post on Facebook.  If THAT looks natural, it really doesn't matter what I captured with the camera.  In other words, yes, accurate color IS important, but don't get your shorts in a knot over it .

Okies...just my own opinions as always, but I hope that helped!


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