Photo Editing Laptop Recommendations

[bholliman]

I'm looking to replace my aging HP laptop with something more capable of handling photo editing. I primarily use Lightroom 6 and Photoshop CC for editing as well as Zerene Stacker. I purchased a 5DSr a few months ago, so the RAW files I'm working with are huge. My old laptop did pretty well with my 6D and 5D3 RAW files, but crawls with the larger 50mp files.

I do most of my photo editing on a laptop since I spend a great deal of time on the road and when I'm home I'm busy with the family.

I am planning to get a higher end laptop with an i7 Skylake CPU, 16gb of DDR4 RAM and a fast hard drive with at least 128gb SSD. Probably a 15.6" display to keep the overall size down. I can connect to a 27" display when at home.

My main question is about the laptop display. I'm pretty sure I want an IPS display, but not sure if I need a 4K display or if 2 or 3K will suffice considering the smaller 15.5/6" screen.

Thoughts?

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Microsoft has been blowing competitors away with the screen quality of their tablets, I'd give them a hard look.

http://www.displaymate.com/Surface_Pro4_ShootOut_1.htm

 

[Zeidora]

I also have a 5DsR and use Zerene, but on a desktop. How many frames are you stacking? If you do <10, you may be able to get it done on a laptop without it running too hot. I usually run 80-200 frames as 16 bit tifs, so 300 MB each. There is also the RAW to .tif batch conversion of those files prior to feeding them into Zerene.

My 6 core MacPro desktop gets quite warm with all 12 units running full blast for 10-15 minutes. Not sure I would want to do that on any laptop.

For editing 5DsR images in Affinity Photo and DxO, I have a 32" NEC 322 UHD 4K display and a smaller 27" normal resolution (Apple Cinema). The 4K makes editing quite a bit nicer, less scrolling with the 50 MP files. On a 4K I would not go smaller than 32" because menus get very small. With just a touch of eye astigmatism (no glasses for daily life or normal reading), I now use reading glasses for work on the 4K display.

 

[bholliman]

Microsoft has been blowing competitors away with the screen quality of their tablets, I'd give them a hard look.

http://www.displaymate.com/Surface_Pro4_ShootOut_1.htm

Thanks for the tip, I had not considered any of the 2-in-1 or hybrid tablet/laptops. I will go to Best Buy this afternoon and look at them.

I also have a 5DsR and use Zerene, but on a desktop. How many frames are you stacking? If you do <10, you may be able to get it done on a laptop without it running too hot. I usually run 80-200 frames as 16 bit tifs, so 300 MB each. There is also the RAW to .tif batch conversion of those files prior to feeding them into Zerene.

My 6 core MacPro desktop gets quite warm with all 12 units running full blast for 10-15 minutes. Not sure I would want to do that on any laptop.

For editing 5DsR images in Affinity Photo and DxO, I have a 32" NEC 322 UHD 4K display and a smaller 27" normal resolution (Apple Cinema). The 4K makes editing quite a bit nicer, less scrolling with the 50 MP files. On a 4K I would not go smaller than 32" because menus get very small. With just a touch of eye astigmatism (no glasses for daily life or normal reading), I now use reading glasses for work on the 4K display.

I'm a novice stacker! I've been stacking less than 25 16-bit TIFF's currently, as I learn more that will ramp up.

I also plan to upgrade my desktop display in the next few months. Sounds like I definitely need to get a 32"+ 4K display. As you pointed out, I do quite a bit of scrolling with my 1920x1080 27" display now.

Thanks!

 

[wsmith96]

If you are wanting to keep a laptop over a tablet, you may want to check out the HP Zbook series. These are basically portable workstations and you can get their Dreamcolor or touch screens along with workstation graphics which adobe products are optimized for. I have a Zbook 15 I use for work and it can handle anything I throw at it. To give you an idea, I can drive up to 5 monitors with my laptop. I currently have 3 HP ZR2440's on it now. They also have a model called Zbook Studio, which is basically the same power in an ultrabook format. I do know that their Z Turbodrives are awesome for storage performance.

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/zbook-15.html
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/zbook-studio.html

A link to their displays as well.
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/ultrazdisplays.html

 

[bholliman]

If you are wanting to keep a laptop over a tablet, you may want to check out the HP Zbook series. These are basically portable workstations and you can get their Dreamcolor or touch screens along with workstation graphics which adobe products are optimized for. I have a Zbook 15 I use for work and it can handle anything I throw at it. To give you an idea, I can drive up to 5 monitors with my laptop. I currently have 3 HP ZR2440's on it now. They also have a model called Zbook Studio, which is basically the same power in an ultrabook format. I do know that their Z Turbodrives are awesome for storage performance.

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/zbook-15.html
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/zbook-studio.html

A link to their displays as well.
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/ultrazdisplays.html

Thanks for the tips. I checked out these links and plan to get a hands on look zbook this week as my neighbor has a fairly new one. I'll check out this week.

 

[wtlloyd]

Lenovo P50 with a 3k screen is my next laptop. Replacing a Lenovo W530.