Known Participant

Question

Specs for new computer

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
May 28, 2019
3 replies
3975 views

I need a new computer. I am an amateur photographer and Adobe home user, working only in Photoshop and Lightroom. I do a lot of photo editing and some graphic design, often working almost pixel-by-pixel, with many layers. I have always had a Windows machine and do not want to change. Also, I need a laptop, since I move around a bit.

I am willing to pay for features that will make things easier and faster, stopping just short of overkill. I need a large hard drive (my current hard drive of 500 GB is almost full), since I like to store my files locally.

Suggestions, please...thanks in advance.

This topic has been closed for replies.

KShinabery212

Community Expert

I always tell people to think about what they might do in the future. As new software comes out... you might find yourself doing things in a year or two that you are not doing now.

For example. I was heavy into Photoshop and Illustrator. But then when Animate CC and Character Animator came out I got back into animation. Now I am editing videos from time to time. So always think future forward. Even if you think you will not be into something in the future... you might find yourself wanting to to try new things later.

I have a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2 and a Wacom MobileStudio Pro. Once I had the ability to draw directly on the screen my life changed. My workflow got better and now I find myself trying out new software. These both run Windows 10 and are amazing devices.

Worth the investment.

Apple is good... but a PC can do just as much. And I woudl even say hey go for a PC.... if you need a desktop then build one! You can always update that! With an Apple you are stuck with what you bought.

So again... think about the future. You may start exploring other Adobe products and even other software. So make sure that you get a device that can handle anything.... as you never know where the future will take you and having the power to create new things is great! Limiting yourself to a device that can only manage what you are doing now is a bad thing.... so make sure to get something will more power than you think you will need if that makes sense.

Let's connect on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kshinabery/

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

Watch out for SSD (a new faster kind of hard disk). This is popular, and extremely fast. Unfortunately it's also expensive so computer makers put in one as small as 128 GB, even in a quite powerful computer. A laptop with both SSD (as a second disk) and big hard disk may be ideal but rare; so you may either need a more expensive 2 TB SSD, or a very large hard disk. As a rough ballpark a 2 TB hard disk might be $100, but an SSD might be $500. Prices are certainly dropping.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

Check out the system requirements for Creative Cloud + Lightroom + Photoshop + Bridge, etc... + your OS.

Adobe Creative Cloud system requirements

These are just basic recommendations. Depending on what size files and how many layers & filters you work with, you could be needing a faster processor, better graphics card and a good deal more physical and ram memory. My motto is "buy the best PC you can afford."

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

C

cranberryAuthor

Known Participant

These recommendations seem to be "basic" and "minimum"---not what I am looking for.

D Fosse

Community Expert

Photoshop and Lightroom have somewhat different requirements. Lightroom is mostly CPU limited. The faster the better, and the more cores the better - up to a point. Above 6 cores is probably not paying off.

Photoshop is a different animal. It is mostly bandwidth limited - it moves large amounts of data back and forth from memory. That doesn't necessarily mean RAM. You never have enough RAM for Photoshop no matter how much you put in. The key for Photoshop is the scratch disk. This is a portion of a drive that Photoshop uses for storing temporary working data.

You get best performance with the scratch disk set to your system drive (as long as it's an SSD). The faster your system drive, the better. And you obviously need to have enough space. 500GB is minimum.

If you can avoid it, no dual graphics! Photoshop doesn't like that, it doesn't know which one to use. So to speak. But beyond that, any reasonable video card will do. It's not performance critical - it just needs to work. And that can be a problem with buggy video drivers. It's really not possible to give specific advice here. The card will work, the problem is the drivers.

EDIT: I would normally advise to split the budget in two and spend half on a good monitor. That's the one component that lets you work better, not just faster. With a laptop, I'd still recommend keeping an eye on the display. Some are better than others, although you shouldn't expect too much.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded