Laptop specifications to run Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Ilustrator and Adobe Indesign

[Luka5CCC]

Hi,

Which laptop specification will suit best for using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Ilustrator and Adobe Indesign? I have to decide which one to buy.

1. Lenovo ThinkPad E15 Core™ i5-10210U 1.6GHz 256GB SSD 8GB 15.6" (1920x1080) BT WIN10 Pro Webcam BLACK Backlit Keyboard FP Reader
2. Lenovo ThinkPad L15 Core™ i7-10510U 1.8GHz 256GB SSD 16GB 15.6" (1920x1080) BT WIN10 Pro Webcam BLACK Backlit Keyboard
3. HP Pavilion 16-A0032 GAMING 1 Core™ i5 10300H 2.5GHz 512GB SSD + 32GB Optain 8GB 16.1" (1920x1080) BT WIN10 Webcam NVIDIA® GTX 1660 Ti 6144MB SHADOW BLACK Backlit Keyboard
4. Laptop Dell OEM Vostro 5501 15.6 FHD/i5-1035G1/16GB/M.2 512GB/GF MX330 2GB/Backlit 3y NBD
5.  

[D Fosse]

The two most important things here are disk space and GPU.

A 256 GB system drive can be ruled out immediately. You're going to get into trouble with that. 500 GB should be considered minimum for Photoshop. Even so, plan to store your images externally.

Photoshop needs a lot of free disk space for working temporary data exceeding any RAM you may have installed. This is known a the scratch disk. Scratch files can easily grow to 100 GB or more, depending on what you do.

The Nvidia 1660 should work well with Photoshop, but if the laptop also has an integrated Intel GPU there will be conflicts. The Intel probably needs to be disabled.

GPU switching seems like a good idea on the face of it, but Photoshop uses the GPU for actual data processing, and the result returned to Photoshop for further processing. You obviously can't send data to one GPU and get it back from the other. That will crash.

[D Fosse]

Oh, one more thing regarding laptop + external storage: get into good habits right away. Never save directly to an external drive. This is one of the most frequent causes of various problems including file corruption we see here. Work on your local drive, then copy over when done.

Working with these resource-intensive applications from a laptop, with the inherent limitations of a laptop, requires some planning, discipline and good habits.

[Luka5CCC]

Thank you for fast reply. Yes, I already have external drive of 2Tb. I'll take better look about GPU.

[Test Screen Name]

You should consider carefully whether a laptop screen would be big enough for the work you plan to do, especially in Photoshop. Many people work on very large monitors. You can connect a monitor to a laptop, but it needs to be in the budget. Don't think of any of those laptops though, the internal storage (256G or 512G) is enough for simple home use, but not serious design.

[D Fosse]

Yes, laptops have a lot of inherent limitations, and if I'm going to be perfectly honest, my recommendation is very clear: Get a fully speced desktop machine and a good monitor. Split the budget in two and spend about 2/3 on the machine, 1/3 on the monitor. That's a balanced system.

Using a laptop will be an eternal uphill battle, you will keep hitting the walls in a lot of ways. Especially if you're going to use Pd/ID/Ai in a combined workflow.

Another problem is that laptops are usually heavily manufacturer-modified, and that always makes basic troubleshooting difficult, and reduces reliability.

The most cost-effective and reliable option is to put together your own machine. It's not as difficult as people think, and component compatibility is so well tested these days that you never have any real problems. But most importantly - it lets you custom build exactly for what you need and nothing else.

Laptops are convenient, all in one package, off the shelf - but that convenience has a price.

[happie_97]

I agree with all of the great advice you received. 

I have a 256GB laptop and 1TB desktop. My laptop is great for mobility, but there are way more errors and issues with it than on my desktop.

As a result, I use my desktop daily and my laptop when I need to be portable, especially for travel.

However, if I absolutely had to pick a laptop based on your options, I would go for choices 3 or 4.