Is a laptop powerful enough for photo editing?

<p>Andrew Lynn is absolutely right in both of his posts. I still use a desk top Core 2 Duo desktop with 4 gigs of ram and Lightroom runs like the wind. My Core I5 laptop is plenty fast for PS and Lightroom. There is no reason you will not be thrilled with that fast laptop you are considering. </p>

<p>Just about any video card will work fine for photo editing including the on-board solutions</p>

<p>A quick trip to Adobe's site will give you the information you need. Lightroom 3 will run as a 64 bit operation which will address your ram. As a 32 bit operation it will only address 1.7GB IIR. Adobe says that ram and processor speed are the two main performance enhancers. The Core I7 you are considering has 4 physical cores, 8 cores with hyperthreading, operates in turbo-boost mode at 2.8 ghz and has 6 mb of level three cache. It is faster than the Core 2 quad mobile running at 2Ghz. Almost 30% faster.</p>

<p>In other words go for it. You are considering a laptop that is way more powerful than you need. And it is far easier to carry on the airplane than a full tower and 30" monitor.</p>

<p>Some GPU-accelerated features require graphics support for Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0. Trust me you want an Nvidia or ATI card for PS CS4 or CS5. Which is why I dont have my Macbook anymore it was a 2006 intel model with an intel GMA. CS4 or 5 runs better with a good GPU</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Just about any video card will work fine for photo editing including the on-board solutions</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Not in my experience. I was astonished how significant the video card became in regards to the performance of CS4. I upgraded from a 6600 gt to a 94oogt to a 4880 during CS4 and noticed a huge imporvement in over all performance with every upgrade.</p>

 

<p>Thanks to all. You convinced me that a laptop can and will do the job. Also, some of you a using a laptop as main computer (at least I think). Charles: I did think about running a remote on my desktop but it would be to much trouble when I on the road.</p>

<p>I'm using Lightroom 2.7 on an old Inspiron 1.6 ghz laptop, but I had it loaded with the best graphics at that time a GeForce4 440 go with 64MB. It runs hot, but it does the job. The graphic display is the best I've seen on any laptop, with no glare.</p>

<p>I use a MacBook Pro for 90% of my editing - when I'm at home, I just hook it up to a monitor. The ability to edit photographs on the go is much more important to me than the extra processing power of a desktop. My editing desktop mostly collects dust nowdays.</p>

<p>You can find a plenty fast laptop capable of editing from a processing stand point. On the road I use one. But the problem for me is that it is all but impossible to find the proper angle of viewing the screen to propertly gauge highlights and shadows. It drove me crazy and can't compare to a good desktop monitor. Both have their place. Ideally you have both so you can have a proper work environment at home but still have the ability to use a digital darkroom on the road.</p>

<p>I do all my editing on a laptop (an Asus that's a bit less powerful than the laptop you're looking at). It deals with pretty big raw files and large photoshop files no problem. I would definitely recommend a laptop - true, you can get a more powerful desktop for the same money as an equivalent laptop, but (for me, anyway) the freedom you get from not being always stuck at a desk is definitely a huge bonus. And anyway, anything in the $1500 realm is going to be plenty fast enough.</p>

<p>Remember, your computer is going to be a tool for many other purposes. So when someone says, "oh no you have a laptop, my desktop destroys it in the digital dark room" you can simply say, well, I can edit photos on an airplane, watch movies wherever i want, video chat with my wife wherever I want etc etc etc. <br>

There is nothing wrong with a laptop, for printing purposes, I intend to get an external monitor to make final tweaks with better color rendition, but thats about it.<br>

My MBP with a 1TB WD Scorpio Blue HD is very nice, I've even considered dropping out the optical drive and making it a 2TB laptop.</p>

<p>I've been considering replacing my desktop with a laptop and using my Dell ultrasharp monitor hooked up to the laptop. Will I be able to put all of the Photoshop "boxes" (history, navigator, tools, etc) on the laptop monitor and just the image on the dell monitor? If so, what kind of video card/software would I need to do that?</p>

You need the laptop to have video output (displayport, dvi etc) that's compatible with the monitor, and a video card

that uses "real" memory instead of "shared". Something with one of those Radeon 5870 cards would do the trick, or

one of the new-ish Geforce 330 or 360. Anything else, look for key words - at least 512mb, if you see the word

"discrete" that's good but "shared", "hypermemory" and "turbocache" are bad - those last two are euphemisms.

<p>It seems that a laptop is more used that I taught. I'll check for video card with real memory. Maybe trade for a I5 and get real mem for the video.</p>

<p>I have an i5 myself. They're not quite as fast as the i7's available but still quite good. For reference, in that multi-threaded CPU test, the quad-core i7-720QM got a 2.9. The new dual-core Macbook Pros got 2.2 (2.4GHz i5), 2.3 (2.53GHz i5) and 2.5 (2.66GHz i7). These numbers would have been the same with the same CPUs on 64-bit Windows systems. So the quad-core CPU helped, but I still think a real-memory video card is more important.</p>

<p>Sony VAIO 13.1" Intel Core i5 520M Processor 2.4GHz Laptop is one of the best. It has 250 solid state drive, 1600x900 resolution and up to 7 hours of battery life. It weighs just about three pounds.</p>

<p>I absolutely agree with those who think a dedicated graphics card (and GPU, yes) are important, not because of theoretical reasons, but because of direct experience. Onboard graphics chipsets may or may not be enough to handle Lightroom (which is known for its sprightliness), but I am talking about the more demanding CS4 or CS5 tools with large RAW and mutli-layered PSD files.<br /><br />Having said that, I don't think the poster will be buying a $1500 laptop without a decent graphics card.<br /><br />A more important thread here seems to be color calibration. It is easy to do hardware calibration twice, once to get a profile (.icm) file for the laptop, then again (having saved the original file elsewhere), for a larger external monitor. Then you take the original .icm file, put it back in the correct Windows directory with a distinct name.<br /><br />Then, you can easily set the profile to the desktop version when on the road or visiting clients, and set it back to the external monitor profile when you are in home base. If you do that right, your photos will look correct both ways.<br /><br />It is true that up until a few years ago, high powered dedicated laptop graphics cards ran hot- but not true today. ATI and Nvidia have made huge strides, and it's no longer an issue.<br /><br />Finally, the issue re: weight has become easier to deal with. I had a Sony Vaio with a 17" screen that worked great but was a real pain to carry around. Again up till fairly recently the image quality of smaller screens wasn't good enough to make smaller and lighter laptops feasible. No longer true; for example, the 14" and 13.3" models are very lightweight and can have excellent screens.<br /><br />Finally, I don't recall seeing any mention that it's even better to have it both ways. I have a home office with a desktop, and an office at the studio with a monitor and keyboard which attach to my laptop. Obviously it costs more for that kind of setup, but I would bet that is a scenario many are using.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>I absolutely agree with those who think a dedicated graphics card (and GPU, yes) are important, not because of theoretical reasons, but because of direct experience.</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br />Can you post some validated benchmarks on this? Every benchmark I've seen has ruled out the graphics card as a factor. </p>

<p>I like to hook up a projector to my laptop and watch movies on the big screen, no wife to bug me about all the action going on. Use it when traveling with lightroom.</p>

<p>The following site is good for benchmarks. Most computers without dedicated cards use Intel chipsets, which are included here (on the low end):<br /><br />http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/<br /><br />The most technically detailed specs will be found on sites usually by and for gamers. When you get into heavy duty Photoshop, and you want to use the (very nice) openGL enhancements, you wind up with some of the same needs as the gamers:<br /><br />http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-4500MHD-GMA-X4500MHD.9883.0.html<br /><br />For those not inclined to visit these sites, even though I have already posted Windows' own benchmarks (3.0 for 4500M, 4.0-4.2 for 4500HD, 5.0+ for dedicated cards, note these are exponential numbers), here is a meaningful excerpt using industry standard 3dMark numbers:<br /><br /></p>

<table border="0" cellspacing="5">

<tbody>

<tr>

<td colspan="3"><strong>3DMark 05 in comparison</strong></td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><a href="http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-500-GMA-500.12614.0.html">Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 500</a> (min)</td>

<td>

<strong>137</strong>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td></td>

<td></td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><a href="http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-X300.2172.0.html">ATI Mobility Radeon X300</a></td>

<td>

<strong>994</strong>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><a href="http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Radeon-Xpress-X1250.6946.0.html">ATI Radeon Xpress X1250</a></td>

<td>

<strong>1089</strong>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><a href="http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-9700.2169.0.html">ATI Mobility Radeon 9700</a></td>

<td>

<strong>1200</strong>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><strong><a href="http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-4500MHD-GMA-X4500MHD.9883.0.html">Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500MHD</a></strong></td>

<td>

<strong>1227</strong>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><a href="http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-FireGL-V3200.2346.0.html">ATI Mobility FireGL V3200</a></td>

<td>

<strong>1250</strong>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><a href="http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-X1300.2166.0.html">ATI Mobility Radeon X1300</a></td>

<td>

<strong>1333</strong>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><a href="http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-Go-7300.2145.0.html">NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300</a></td>

<td>

<strong>1448</strong>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>...</td>

<td><br /></td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td></td>

<td></td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table>

<p>As above the Intel 4500MHD is equivalent to one of the older, slower cards listed. Typical newer cards like the Radeon 4550 etc. now register about 7,000 3dMarks (also listed on the same site above), which is a 5-6 times multiple of the best Intel built in chipset.<br>

<br />In a more concrete vein, if you are using, for example, the healing brush tool scores or hundreds of times to carefully rework a complexion, there is a HUGE difference between instant response and waiting 1-2 seconds per instance...</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Those benchmarks have nothing to do with Photoshop performance, which pretty much proves my point. If this is what there is, then there's nothing at all that shows how Photoshop performance is affected by graphics chips. What's the point of posting a bunch of generalized benchmarks (one of which is almost all 3D, the other is a wide variety of tests lumped into one number) unless there is nothing relevant to show?</p>

<p>Well, it stands to reason that the faster the computer (that is benifiting from better gpu's) would also provide a faster photoshop machine. I, like Mac, have used three different cards with CS4 and although I didn't use a stop watch to quantify my conclusion, the better the vid card, the fast the entire system.</p>

<p>The latest gen of Intel chips are designed to pipe on all the video duties to the graphics card. I'm sure Andrew can fill us with the techno jargon on the subject and explain it in depth. But like Mac said, the weaker the card, the longer you wait for previews to refresh etc etc. That, to me, is a slower photoshop machine.</p>

<p>Ok guys, I'm looking at a Dell Studio XPS 16 I7 720QM, ATI HD5730 1Gig onboard, HD 500 Gigs(7200rpm). I didn't decide if I will put 4 or 6 Gigs of RAM. It doesn't look like but I'm on a budget. <br>

Bottom line, I'm not the only one using a laptop for photo editing.</p>

<p>Jeff-<br /><br />Adobe does a patient and useful analysis here:<br>

<br />http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404898.html<br>

<br />Per Adobe, "Photoshop CS5 and CS4 leverage the graphics display card's GPU, instead of the computer's main processor (the CPU) to speed its screen redraw". On the link above, they list functions which are directly accelerated by the GPU, many of which are fundamental operations. It's a good read.<br /><br />What would make another interesting thread is the fact that Photoshop hasn't always correctly implemented the instruction set of every GPU properly, which has led to some bugs along the way. Details would be off topic here.<br /><br />But then, what would Adobe know about Photoshop, anyway?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I'm using a Macbook Pro i7 with only 4 Gig of RAM and find that it's very capable of editing in CS5.<br>

The only additional accessory I use is the Wacom 4</p>

<p>Richard, more ram the better. Go with 6gig. If you`re on a budget and need to scrimp, drop down a notch on the vid card first then drop down to a 5400 rpm drive.</p>

<p>Playing the devils advocate here, you could build a screaming desktop for this $1500. RAID 0 with two WD 1TB Black Caviar drives and 12 gigs of ram :) Laptops generally don`t stand up to long term hard core use like desktops and their life expectancy is less than a desktop when used as such.</p>

<p>Garrison, we all know that we need to replace our computers after 3-4 years to follow software needs. So even if my laptop dies after 4 years, witch i doubt, I will change it for a better one. 4 years is like a eternity for computers.</p>