Best laptop for photo editing

sassybird

Would anyone be able to advise which laptop would be best for photo viewing/editing.

Ive been looking at the Acer Aspire range but wonder if integrated graphics would be ok or if I should go for one with a dedicated graphics card.

Hope someone can help

Regards

Hammyman

Integrated is fine. CPU and memory are what counts in image manipulation and even then, unless you're working on poster sized stuff in Photoshop then pretty much anything is going to be OK as long as its dual core.

totalsolutions

Works on my Sammy netbook NC20 (2gig RAM). Photoshop runs on basic processor really 1.6ghz but more ram and processor is better. See the requirements at Adobe. Better still is the dedicated graphics card for taking intensive processing from the CPU. GPU's are better suited for this application though. Early versions of Photoshop ran on basic laptops years ago.
The pro's use Mac Books.

Tip
go to http://kelbytv.com/ and view the Layers and Photoshop guys Podcasts. Even better is the Deke series - http://www.deke.com

Also this from Deke - http://www.deke.com/content/101-photoshop-tips-5-minutes

Randini3333

Two things to consider

1. The software you intend to use to edit pictures - professional or home user ?
2. The files size of pics and sorts of manipulations (filters/layers) you are working with - big file sizes and lots of filters will demand more horsepower.

If your using software aimed at the home user like Google Picasa then integrated graphics is fine. Professional software like photoshop does benefit from separate graphics cards but you may not notice the difference unless you're working with huge photo file sizes and are using lots of Photoshop filters on your images.

In either case (and as someone else has said), you'd be better off getting as much system RAM memory as you can instead of splashing out on a separate graphics card. Remember though, that for Windows 32 bit operating systems that 3gb is the maximum that it's worthwhile getting. Only 64 bit operation systems can use more RAM.

I reckon your dream set up (for Windows) would be Windows 7 64 bit version, running Photoshop (64 bit version), with 4gb of ram. If you're going to spend more, then you might as well buy a Mac (kills me to say that!). For non professional use, I reckon a bog standard Acer is fine (still get as much RAM as you can, though).

Also if you can afford it, a bigger screen will make for better experience when working with photos. So maybe go for more memory and a bigger screen instead of a discrete graphics card.

jaydeeuk1

'Best' laptop would be something with an IPS screen, not many laptops have them though. Some dells do. Photo editing, it makes hardly any difference if its integrated or not. In fact, I'd say an intel card would be much better than an ATI or Nvidia. Theres an interesting article on 2d acceleration on tomshardware where ATI/nvidia perform poorly.

Deal-Hunter_2

Agreed with jaydee - the graphics card only determines how fast things render, how the quality of what you see on-screen. For that reason a good screen is the most important part. An IPS screen would be really ideal.

NeverInDebt

It isnt just how fast the laptop is but also when it comes to editing how good the display is

I got a IPS screen and it costs over £400 just for screen (Dell U2410 monitor)

I think OP budget looks like it may be low they way they are posting, integrated graphics, Acer etc all low/mid budget

weegie.geek

A decent screen will be brighter and evenly lit than your average cheapo one. LED backlit ones are lovely and bright, but a bit more expensive than normal ones.

The bigger and higher resolution the screen is, the better. I'd probably go for 17" @ 1920*1080 or so. A smaller therefore lower resolution screen will be a pain for editing photos.

Dual (or quad) core and a minimum of 2GB of ram. Obviously if you want 4GB+ you'll want a 64-bit Operating System. A discrete graphics card won't be of much use unless you get a CUDA capable chipset from Nvidia, which will accelerate Photoshop, among other software. You'll have to do some research to see whether they money would be better spend on a faster CPU or a CUDA capable video chipset though.