Photoshop RAW image work; CPU or memory intense?

grumpycrab

Hi, somebody's looking for a laptop to do Photoshop RAW image work. Is CPU or memory (or both) important? I'm trying to find out what specific product they're using. Thanks.

EDIT: product is CS5, using portrait professional. I'll look the spec up.

WhiteChristmas

Any laptop designed for Vista or Win7 should run it without difficulty.

If it's an older machine than that (especially if it's been "upgraded" to a newer operating system) then it might be a bit sluggish, especially if it has less than 3GB RAM.

Does Portrait Pro work on RAW files? I used the PS plug-in a while back but was unimpressed; turned junior into a Men In Black extra...

Hammyman

You'll need RAM and lots of it. Once you start getting past a couple of stored "undo's", all versions of Adobe CS start using huge gobs of RAM. I've seen Photoshop at over 16GB regularly on the machines at my wifes' work.

WhiteChristmas

Is that for heavy design work, Hammy?

I do fairly intense photo processing (CS3 until recent update to CS5) on my straight-out-of-the-box 3-year old Dell Studio laptop with 3GB RAM - no issues at all.

Worst thing about image processing on most laptops is the lack of screen calibration options.

andygb

I have Elements 9, and I have noticed that the machine is bogging down at times. I am running Windows 7 with 3GB of RAM - I do not think it is enough.

grumpycrab

WhiteChristmas wrote: »

...
Does Portrait Pro work on RAW files?...

Thanks. PortraitProfessional Studio works with RAW files, the standard version doesn't.

Hammyman

WhiteChristmas wrote: »

Is that for heavy design work, Hammy?

Yep...A3 size typically.

robhullfury

Im running elements 7 on a viao 3gb with windows 7 32bit and it seems fine. Must admit it was abit better on 64 bit but my wife managed to drop the laptop and bust the harddrive when I took it for repair it came back with 32bit but I didnt notice for a while

moonrakerz

andygb wrote: »

I have Elements 9, and I have noticed that the machine is bogging down at times. I am running Windows 7 with 3GB of RAM - I do not think it is enough.

Run CCleaner and defrag your HDDs - does wonders !