Photo editing laptop

[Honeydiddle]

Hi all,

 

So i'm pretty much in the know with hardware etc but my girlfriend wants a laptop for photoshop. Now i know it doesnt take much but im trying to make sure she gets something that handles it better than average. I was thinking 8gb ram, 500gb or 1tb HDD and a dual core i5 or maybe those quad core amd cpus

 

Any ideas are appreciated or let me know what you are using.

 

Thanks!

[whatthe_fuzz]

The Asus G750 would be sweet.

 

Although that depends how intensive she's working

[JAKEBAB]

budget? macbook retina would probs be ideal because of the res maybe samsung ativ book 9 plus it has a high res screen too also its cheaper than a macbook alot

[Lil Chillbil]

Macbook pro, yes its justified and I mean come on. Watch people below me recomend a msi laptop that overheats. I give it to apple for this one because I have used both msi and apple notebooks to edit video in the car. And the macbook at least when I threw windows on it didn't fry my pants off

 

[Honeydiddle]

Not looking at anything too expensive, Macbooks are out of the price range unfortunately, im just looking at specs instead of specific laptops too. Thanks to you all so far though

[mcmxcii]

Macbook Pro Ret. Might lack on HDD as the ship is SSD but get a USB-3 external, if your budget is enough.

[Tomislav Matic]

you want best processor money can buy (i7 quad core not dual core ), s***load of RAM, nVidia GPU for CUDA ( important for Photoshop)...and then you hit a problem, there is not a single laptop with a screen big, and good enough for real photo editing, so you just get a decent 1080p one...Also a large HDD or even a hybrid (ssd only is not enough but it would be nice if you have dual slots for storage in your laptop or an mSATA ssd and a HDD for your media/content). I would recommend ASUS G75 vx(I have one-kick's ass),or vw (older version) or the new G750 series. And remember you are going to need an external display sooner or later..

[Streamline]

The first thing you should look for is a good screen with good color reproduction.

Then you can look at specs. 

 

And yes, unfortunately the only laptop I can recommend for this is a macbook

[KOtech]

Ram and fast SSD/PCIE is important for IO operations/cache during editing. 

[Tomislav Matic]

I would never call MB's display a good color reproduction display. Shure it has a higher res, and that is great. But editing photos on a 13 or even 15" screen?  Ain't gonna cut it.  I wouldn't spend my money on a MB just for the screen. You will have to buy an external display.

[Fadewood]

I am in the same boat, however I have the disease to want the best, and by that I mean some of the work I do on the daily in Photoshop requires intense ram/cpu/gpu power that most Apple laptops don't offer for a reasonable price or at all. So I want a top of the line gaming PC notebook that has all that power for around $1800 - $2.3k that will run and render things with ease. 

[Tomislav Matic]

I am in the same boat, however I have the disease to want the best, and by that I mean some of the work I do on the daily in Photoshop requires intense ram/cpu/gpu power that most Apple laptops don't offer for a reasonable price or at all. So I want a top of the line gaming PC notebook that has all that power for around $1800 - $2.3k that will run and render things with ease. 

exactly. But be smart, spend your money where it counts, don't get fooled by marketing. 

[Gofer01]

Any Laptop that has i5 or AMD current APU's and above with 4GB RAM and a 500GB data drive will do the job. Try for a 240GB SSD as the boot drive. For video editing you will need something way more powerful

 

I opt in for the Adobe CC subscription student discount :-)

[pit5000]

Above average? get something with a quad core i7, at least 8GB of fast RAM. If possible get something with discrete graphics.

 

15in Macbook Pro Retina with discrete GPU is nice but way too expensive, even the one without a GPU cost $2000. Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus is $1800 and no Discrete GPU.

 

this stuff ain't cheap.

[Gofer01]

Above average? get something with a quad core i7, at least 8GB of fast RAM. If possible get something with discrete graphics.

 

15in Macbook Pro Retina with discrete GPU is nice but way too expensive, even the one without a GPU cost $2000. Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus is $1800 and no Discrete GPU.

 

this stuff ain't cheap.

Are you talking about Photoshop CS 6? If so this is over kill. This guy don't have much money to spend. Talking him into a Macbook Pro is kind of bad. One of Samsung or Microsoft Surface products is way much better and cheaper than the Macbook Pro. If his wife never use a apple product she will have a learning curve on the OS and Photoshop CS6 or one of the lower versions of Photoshop

 

On my wife Toshiba Intel 2.3Ghz  Quad-core CPU with 8GB RAM. She has no issues with Photoshop CC. Run a little bit slower than my laptop

[Tomislav Matic]

Well I think you could get away with i5 but less than 8 gb of RAM ? I wouldn't say so. If you are on a budget, find a nice ASUS laptop (maybe N series) 

with an i5 processor, and at least 8 gb of RAM (or buy some additional RAM). It will work. Few years back I was working on an old AMD x2 machine with 512 Mb of RAM ( CS 3 or 2 if I remember correctly ) It would take ages to render a 50x70 cm poster in 300 dpi- but I would do it, so a bit underpowered machine won't set you back so much, and a Mac will set you back significantly budget wise. 

[Gofer01]

Well I take back some of what I said back. I never do 3D rendering in photoshop. Last night  I had to do a 3D rendering on my laptop. It took my laptop about 40 minutes to render the 3D 1920x1080 300p layer. I have a 3rd gen Intel i7-3610QM CPU with 16GB RAM. So if you have allot of 3D projects, you will need a more powerful laptop than I mention.

 

I think all of last year I might have done maybe two 3D projects. By luck of the draw after just making a point in this forum you don't need high performance laptop I did a 3D project. I still stick to my guns you don't need a high performance laptop if you never create 3D pdf files. I have no clue about video editing and photoshop. I use another Adobe product for video editing and creation.

[Tomislav Matic]

Well I take back some of what I said back. I never do 3D rendering in photoshop. Last night  I had to do a 3D rendering on my laptop. It took my laptop about 40 minutes to render the 3D 1920x1080 300p layer. I have a 3rd gen Intel i7-3610QM CPU with 16GB RAM. So if you have allot of 3D projects, you will need a more powerful laptop than I mention.

 

I think all of last year I might have done maybe two 3D projects. By luck of the draw after just making a point in this forum you don't need high performance laptop I did a 3D project. I still stick to my guns you don't need a high performance laptop if you never create 3D pdf files. I have no clue about video editing and photoshop. I use another Adobe product for video editing and creation.

mine has i7 3630 qm and 3D rendering takes the same amount of time...this is actually pretty decent for a mobile processor-3D rendering will make your processor cry...I've used 3D Max quite a bit also, but it depends actually on the number of vertex you have and a bunch of other stuff. I wouldn't worry about that to much,no consumer laptop can handle 3D rendering too fast. For design projects it will do fine. 

[Gofer01]

mine has i7 3630 qm and 3D rendering takes the same amount of time...this is actually pretty decent for a mobile processor-3D rendering will make your processor cry...I've used 3D Max quite a bit also, but it depends actually on the number of vertex you have and a bunch of other stuff. I wouldn't worry about that to much,no consumer laptop can handle 3D rendering too fast. For design projects it will do fine. 

I think I read a article about 3 weeks ago saying 9 out of 10 people doesn't create 3D art work in Photoshop. I have no clue where I read the article so I can't post the URL

[the pokemon kid]

If you are looking for a decent laptop on a budget that has an I5 processor, 8gb of RAM and a nvidia graphics chip then look at the acer V5-571G. I bought mine and slapped an SSD in mine and it's been alright for photo editing. Bought mine for £500 about 6 months ago

[Marolt]

If she is serius about getting into Photoshop then she would have to get a desktop for the real "bang for the buck". Depends on how serius she is about it. I am using dell inspiron 3537 i5/4/500/u for quite some work now and it handles photoshop and illustrator quite nice. It is pretty cheap (around $500) and has a 3 year warranty. However im not sure about how it handles really large images..

 

Good luck hope it helps, and remember to get her a computer that will last.