Desktop or Laptop

[OzzyDevil]

Sorry if this is in the wrong place so please mods move it if need be..

What kind of PC or laptop can you get away with for photo editing with out spending big bucks.. As much as I want a Mac pro its just to much at this stage.. I want to be able to learn post processing so I want a buy a PC or laptop..

Paul

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[bcys1961]

Hi Paul,

I run Adobe Lightroom5 on a laptop . I just upgraded to a new one as I found it was slow on the old one I had , which was about 4 years old. The old laptop had a 4Gb ram and 1 Gb Graphics driver and it could take 30 seconds to finalise a picture in full screen. The new laptop has 8 Gb Ram and 2Gb graphics card and it runs quickly with no problems.

I guess like everything else the more you pay the more you get but I would say what I have is a minimum requirement for it to run quickly.

[OzzyDevil]

Hi Paul,

I run Adobe Lightroom5 on a laptop . I just upgraded to a new one as I found it was slow on the old one I had , which was about 4 years old. The old laptop had a 4Gb ram and 1 Gb Graphics driver and it could take 30 seconds to finalise a picture in full screen. The new laptop has 8 Gb Ram and 2Gb graphics card and it runs quickly with no problems.

I guess like everything else the more you pay the more you get but I would say what I have is a minimum requirement for it to run quickly.

Yeah I know having 8GB of ram or better is better and a good graphics card is good.. I thought maybe a PC would be good coz u can get a good unit for under 1000 bucks..

Paul

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[MissionMan]

Sorry if this is in the wrong place so please mods move it if need be..

What kind of PC or laptop can you get away with for photo editing with out spending big bucks.. As much as I want a Mac pro its just to much at this stage.. I want to be able to learn post processing so I want a buy a PC or laptop..

Paul

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I'm running a Macbook Air without any problems. With solid state drives, it improves the performance quite drastically so the performance issues are not as bad as they use to be.

If you're enjoying the Mac side, you could go with an Air (with an external aftermarket screen) or a Macbook Pro 13 inch would be fine with performance. I'd go with 8GB Ram if you can, 16 if you go for the Macbook Pro. It's not that you will use more than 8, but because it's soldered to the motherboard, it's good to have it in case you need it because you can't upgrade later.

[bcys1961]

Yeah I know having 8GB of ram or better is better and a good graphics card is good.. I thought maybe a PC would be good coz u can get a good unit for under 1000 bucks..

Paul

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This laptop was $1500 . You could probably get a laptop for around the $1000 mark . It depends how important portability is for you. I use mine for work so it is going everywhere with me.

[OzzyDevil]

I just want to learn lightroom 5 My daughter has it on her 2GB laptop made by HP and my other daughter has an old toshiba with 2 GB it just needs s Hdd..

Paul

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[ricktas]

Depends!

The big things needed are RAM, reasonably good graphics card, decent screen (IPS screen if possible), a monitor calibration device and a copy of Scott Kelby's Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 for Digital Photographers. Along with an external hard drive, for photo storage. It is amazing how quickly you will fill up a laptop HDD with photos. Just buy a 2tb/3tb external drive for photos. Try and get a USB 3 port on the laptop and use a USB 3 external drive for speed. Down the track invest in a second drive as a backup unit, in case your main one fails (or is stolen). Nothing worse than losing all your photos cause you do not have a copy somewhere and you come home to find you have been burgled and it is all gone. Keep the second HDD away from the first. Preferably keep it at a friends, if something horrid happens like you house burns down, you still have your photos.

The calibration device can come later.

It also depends on how far you want to take your photography, you can get away with using any of the sub $1000 laptops from JB or HN etc (dont go down to the $400/$500 ones). There are good all-round laptops for the $799/$899 etc price range and will serve you reasonably well. But if you intend to push your photography towards offering a print for sale here and there etc, or eve printing some for yourself, a calibration device helps ensure colour accuracy.

I personally prefer a desktop computer for editing, but I know that is not practical for some.

[Morgo]

If getting a laptop get one with a decent screen and this is where they will jump up in price. You also want an SSD, 8gb of ram or more and a decent CPU. The video card doesn't play a huge role so just something semi decent will do.

For a lappy I'd expect to be paying atleast $1500 and up, like I said mostly for the quality display.

If you spend the extra dollars at the start you will have a better more suitable system that will last longer in terms of performance and hardware relevance.

For a desktop I would build my own and you could get something pretty decent for $1500-2000

[ameerat42]

I guess...

...I just want to learn lightroom 5 ...
Paul...

is becoming as puzzling as wanting milk that just tastes like milk

From the lack of any mention above, does it mean you do not have a computer at present? (Apart from the one your daughter has, ie.)

The thing is, wanting to learn LR5 (or anything like it) means practising on your camera images. Any computer you get would have to
have enough processing power to be able to reasonably manage these. And you'd want it to be of some use for a good few years into the future.

Your choice between laptop and desktop will depend on whether you want to be able to take the computer around with you, or whether you're happy just to
keep it in one place. (Note that a laptop will fulfil both desires.)

But laptops tend to be more expensive than desktops of the same general power simply because of the portability (and consequent miniaturisation) factors
in their construction. Another drawback of laptops is that they are relatively unchangeable units compared to desktops.

If you don't know much about computers it is a difficult choice and hard to figure it all out. Start with what you want it to do and what you would
like to be able to do with it later.

Well that's enough...
Am.

[dt86vyss]

if you go for a laptop, just let me say, go for as high a resolution possible. This helps ALOT with editing as it will allow more to fit on the screen

[Fruengalli]

For me I've got both but desk top for editing. More than anything consistent screen angle view. Looking at IPS screens for this reason. Monitor quality is where it's at IMHO.

[ameerat42]

if you go for a laptop, just let me say, go for as high a resolution possible. This helps ALOT with editing as it will allow more to fit on the screen

I agree Daniel. Look for full HD, ie 1920 x 1080 or better. It'll cost more but...
So many cheap and nasty little 1366 x out there AND they charge top $ for them. You spend all day scrolling over the screen.
Am.

[OzzyDevil]

Ok thx guys I have some ideas to work with now..

Paul

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[fillum]

What kind of PC or laptop can you get away with for photo editing with out spending big bucks.

The technical requirements for most PP software are fairly modest (eg around 2Gb of RAM I think) so what you can "get away with" depends to a large degree on your level of patience . [On my old PC I was running LR3 on a bit over 1 Gb of RAM - it worked ok, just meant when I moved a slider I had to wait for a second or two for the display to catch up - useable, but not ideal obviously.]

I don't know much about laptops but would suggest that if you don't need the portability then a desktop offers the best solution. This is mainly due to the ease of expansion - you can buy what you need now and add more RAM, disk space, etc later when needed. It also means that your next upgrade becomes cheaper as you can re-use components such as your monitor, keyboard, etc. With a desktop you can also determine the exact components you want and build it yourself (or have the shop build it for you which is usually not too expensive). If you are thinking of going this route, whirlpool is generally a good source of info.

If you go with an Intel CPU you don't need a separate graphics card as the integrated graphics is good enough for general photo editing. With a desktop you can always add a graphics card later if you find that you need one. (I don't know if AMD CPUs have integrated graphics).

You don't need a SSD. (I think you are better off putting the money into an extra HDD, maybe external, for backup).

You can probably get away with 4Gb of RAM if the budget is tight. I don't think I use more than 4Gb with both LR and PS loaded (although I rarely check usage), but my processing is fairly simple (no HDR, no panorama stitching, no complex filters, etc). Also my images are 12 Mp - I don't know if the 24 Mp images from your D5200 would require a significant increase in memory. With a desktop you can always add more RAM later if needed (up to the max supported).



Cheers.

[OzzyDevil]

The technical requirements for most PP software are fairly modest (eg around 2Gb of RAM I think) so what you can "get away with" depends to a large degree on your level of patience . [On my old PC I was running LR3 on a bit over 1 Gb of RAM - it worked ok, just meant when I moved a slider I had to wait for a second or two for the display to catch up - useable, but not ideal obviously.]

I don't know much about laptops but would suggest that if you don't need the portability then a desktop offers the best solution. This is mainly due to the ease of expansion - you can buy what you need now and add more RAM, disk space, etc later when needed. It also means that your next upgrade becomes cheaper as you can re-use components such as your monitor, keyboard, etc. With a desktop you can also determine the exact components you want and build it yourself (or have the shop build it for you which is usually not too expensive). If you are thinking of going this route, whirlpool is generally a good source of info.

If you go with an Intel CPU you don't need a separate graphics card as the integrated graphics is good enough for general photo editing. With a desktop you can always add a graphics card later if you find that you need one. (I don't know if AMD CPUs have integrated graphics).

You don't need a SSD. (I think you are better off putting the money into an extra HDD, maybe external, for backup).

You can probably get away with 4Gb of RAM if the budget is tight. I don't think I use more than 4Gb with both LR and PS loaded (although I rarely check usage), but my processing is fairly simple (no HDR, no panorama stitching, no complex filters, etc). Also my images are 12 Mp - I don't know if the 24 Mp images from your D5200 would require a significant increase in memory. With a desktop you can always add more RAM later if needed (up to the max supported).



Cheers.

Thx mate for the tips.. I am going to wait a few months before I get some kind of pc or laptop.. Mean while I use my daughters laptop just to play around with LR

Paul

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