/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/lets-talk-about-how-laptops-just-dont-cut-it-with-todays-photoshop-requirements/td-p/14392906Jan 31, 2024
Jan 31, 2024
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I bought Lenovo Legion 7i laptop with i9 and 32GB of fast ram, top of the line gaming, fastest processor, fast ram. But when I do my standard phoshop tests like "time to open" or "speed_test.atn" it is way slow, twice as slow as my 2 year old desktop with older components.
Why is that? I think its becasue of heat, that they cant put components that can use the high transfer rate and processing power of photoshop without creating too much heat.
And there is no way to tell how a laptop is put together, or how exactly the companents perform with photoshiop, without buying it. The numbers/specs mean nothng.
Anybody have a laptop that opens photoshop in 5 seconds?
all of those things? Lenovo is the only company to offer 1 matte, 2 sRGB, and 3 IPS screens which is exactly what photographers preferred. And for $2200 its going to perform well.
thats what i did, turns out you need more graphics and ram than you did before. the Puget test will show you everything you want to know, enter Photoshop and then the laptop brand to search results
A laptop screen is never suitable for critical Photoshop work. It has nothing to do with whatever logo sits on the other side. It's just the physics of a paper-thin screen. There's no way to get even brightness and color across the screen, and that's not something you can calibrate your way around.
But with a calibrator it may be good enough as long as you're aware of the limitations so that you can work around them - for instance by having a good desktop monitor available.
Portability comes at a cost. There is no free lunch.
Laptops are what has given Microsoft a bad name. The problem with Windows laptops is that they are usually so heavily modified by the manufacturer that you can no longer find the original operating system or component drivers. All these extra layers cause nothing but problems - in short, it's a mess. These modifications are never done with high performance advanced applications in mind, they target the "average" consumer/gamer.
In the desktop/stationary segment, the situation is completely different.
Jesus videos are awesome and I have been watching for a few years now. I doubt he is using a laptop on his high end work. Serious doubts anyone editing images, and/or video is using a laptop for a living in the industry. Based on personal experience I would not purchase a laptop for photoshop. If you are just starting out with PS then a stand alone laptop is sufficient. I was told 5 years ago my RTX 2070 video card was overkill. Still using the same video card today. However, by today's std rather middle of the pack. Still functional, and I can get what I need done albeit slight latency on large tasks. A suggestion is when building a computer I would spend most money on monitor (lifetime investment), look for maybe upgrading these every 5 years: video card, Mb, RAM, CPU. Again there are several factors to consider. Windows users can run Performance Monitor as they work. If latency appears to be longer the normal I collect the data and determine if I need to upgrade.
/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/lets-talk-about-how-laptops-just-dont-cut-it-with-todays-photoshop-requirements/m-p/14397292#M778387Feb 02, 2024
Feb 02, 2024
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I get it. On battery they can only run on half power because heat. They forget to tell you the published specs are just when its plugged in. Even though the power setting is set to "optimize performance" when on battery, you get less. Why sell a portable battery powered computer if you can only use it on AC? Its to the point where you have to spend $6k just to get a decent machine. No thanks. If I'm going to have to use AC, I'll just use a portable desktop. What a racket.
Which is why Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel, and now to Apple Silicon. They are killing it with the current portable models because of performance vs efficiency that Intel and AMD thus far can't match.
/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/lets-talk-about-how-laptops-just-dont-cut-it-with-todays-photoshop-requirements/m-p/14397595#M778417Feb 02, 2024
Feb 02, 2024
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One factor I did not see mentioned. That is how large the internal SSD hardrive is. Photoshop depends on a huge volume of drive space as scratch. Especially for large images. Also, the number of undo states chosen in the prefs can have a major effect on performance. If you want to test real PS performance run a multi-step action with the undos at 2, 20 and 40. I think you will see quite a difference in times.
Yes, drive space is a factor. However, the cost for drive space is very nominal. You can buy a 2 Tb NVMe SSD for ~$100. If you exceed this space may want to take a look at investing in addiitonal external storage for archiving your files. Again very nominal. FWIW: The first Hard Drive was 3.75 Mb, size of 2 large refridgerators, and weighed over 2,000 lbs. When they went main stream they were 40 Mb and cost $350.
/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/lets-talk-about-how-laptops-just-dont-cut-it-with-todays-photoshop-requirements/m-p/14397801#M778447Feb 02, 2024
Feb 02, 2024
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I am out of touch now, but last I heard, Scott Kelby and The Photoshop Guys (Dave Cross and Matt Kloskowski) were all using MBPs exclusively. As in, that was the only computer they owned.
The MSI Creator series laptops are supposedly built specifically for content creation apps like Photoshop, but they also mention Premiere Pro and After Effects, which are both hard on system resources. THIS ONE is a whopping $9136 and it does not look especially well spec'd. I have to be missing something as similarly spec'd MSI Creator laptops — with 19 CPU — appear to be around half that price.
My current laptop is so old it runs Windows 8 (I tried to install Windows 10, and it was having none of it). I'm thinking of running some more workshops for the camera club peeps, so I'll need some hardware for that. The problem, as others have said or alluded to, is that running Photoshop on a laptop is a miserable experience after using three big screens on a turbo-nutter-barsteward workstation.
Yes, MSI supposedly has some very good specs for very good prices, but they don't have Photoshop screens which are matte, IPS and SRGB. Almost all Lenovo computers use this screen. The ThinkPad series has two internal M.2 slots, you can use two 4TB for 8TB internal RAID0 if you want and have 7000 MB/s, I don't know how many other laptops you can do that.
If you don't mind sharing your user experience over time for other users. May be title it as Laptop Experience. This would be an awesome thread for those considering to purchase a laptop for image editing.
/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/lets-talk-about-how-laptops-just-dont-cut-it-with-todays-photoshop-requirements/m-p/14397939#M778462Feb 02, 2024
Feb 02, 2024
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I know my work Dell that has 32GB of RAM sometimes struggles and sounds like a plane taking off w/ Photoshop and Illustrator, but I can use a MacBook Air from over 3 years ago and 8GB of RAM and it handles it just fine
The last Windows laptop I owned came with Windows 8! I don't like using Photoshop on a small screen, and did not need a laptop but last year I was travelling, and I'd been asked to run some workshops and I ended up with a MacBook Pro M2 Pro with 1TB drive and 16GB unified ram. And it runs Photoshop amazingly well. There are some wait states if I ask it to do heavy lifting, but for normal use with plenty of layers and a reasonable size project, it is snappier than my i9 13900K Windows 11 with 64GB, RTX4080 and very fast drives. Plus it is lighter than equivalent Windows laptops, and has double the battery life. I am still not a fan of the Apple OS though.
/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/lets-talk-about-how-laptops-just-dont-cut-it-with-todays-photoshop-requirements/m-p/15194116#M856416Mar 05, 2025
Mar 05, 2025
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This is an interesting discussion! I’ve noticed that even high-end gaming laptops sometimes struggle with Photoshop due to thermal limitations, especially during prolonged use. It’s similar to how some games, like Stardew Valley, run smoothly on almost any device, but others demand serious hardware. I had to tweak my Legion 5’s settings to improve performance—maybe undervolting or adjusting power settings could help?
Twenty years ago I was running PS on a Sony Vaio while on the road. There were some latency issues. I would not even consider editing with PS on a laptop. Even with a high end desktop there are latency issues when post processing. A nice feature in LrC is the tethering capability on a laptop.
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