Laptop or Tablet - Help!

Gothic Image said

playwithlight said

You can get the Adobe Photography plan for £ 9.98 per month that includes Lightroom and Photoshop. Opt for Lightroom Classic. 

... or quite a bit less than that if you keep your eyes open on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.  I've never paid full price.

Or Affinity Photo for under £20 for a lifetime license on the iPad ;-)

Always buy my Macs and tech gear from Cex as I get a 2 year guarantee with them there. For work I use a 27" iMac and, being ambidextrous, the mouse works just fine in either hand. Love the big 5k screen but, in all honesty, I use it for animation more than image editing. If you go with a laptop it may be worth looking at a large external screen in the future. Not sure I could cope with editing on a phone or iPad. I'd say go for a lappy so that you have mobility with power. A colleague at work uses Affinity apps and Capture One for editing on an M2 MacBook and I use Photoshop and Capture One. The choice of Windows or Mac is a personal one - go with whatever you're happiest with. I love the simplicity of the Mac as it aligns perfectly well with the simplicity of my brain!

The Ghost said

Gothic Image said

playwithlight said

You can get the Adobe Photography plan for £ 9.98 per month that includes Lightroom and Photoshop. Opt for Lightroom Classic. 

... or quite a bit less than that if you keep your eyes open on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.  I've never paid full price.

Or Affinity Photo for under £20 for a lifetime license on the iPad ;-)

Indeed. And I think if you're editing only HEIC/JPEG/modest-sized raw files it's good on all current iPads. I'd definitely want an iPad Air or Pro for more than 24mp raws though.

The Ghost said

Gothic Image said

playwithlight said

You can get the Adobe Photography plan for £ 9.98 per month that includes Lightroom and Photoshop. Opt for Lightroom Classic. 

... or quite a bit less than that if you keep your eyes open on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.  I've never paid full price.

Or Affinity Photo for under £20 for a lifetime license on the iPad ;-)

Agreed, but we were talking about Adobe ...  :-)

Unfocussed Mike said

The Ghost said

Gothic Image said

playwithlight said

You can get the Adobe Photography plan for £ 9.98 per month that includes Lightroom and Photoshop. Opt for Lightroom Classic. 

... or quite a bit less than that if you keep your eyes open on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.  I've never paid full price.

Or Affinity Photo for under £20 for a lifetime license on the iPad ;-)

Indeed. And I think if you're editing only HEIC/JPEG/modest-sized raw files it's good on all current iPads. I'd definitely want an iPad Air or Pro for more than 24mp raws though.

I edit 80Mp 16bit TIFFs on my venerable 10.5” Pro in Affinity. With live filter layers (admittedly not as many as on my Mac.)

The Ghost said

Unfocussed Mike said

The Ghost said

Gothic Image said

playwithlight said

You can get the Adobe Photography plan for £ 9.98 per month that includes Lightroom and Photoshop. Opt for Lightroom Classic. 

... or quite a bit less than that if you keep your eyes open on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.  I've never paid full price.

Or Affinity Photo for under £20 for a lifetime license on the iPad ;-)

Indeed. And I think if you're editing only HEIC/JPEG/modest-sized raw files it's good on all current iPads. I'd definitely want an iPad Air or Pro for more than 24mp raws though.

I edit 80Mp 16bit TIFFs on my venerable 10.5” Pro in Affinity. With live filter layers (admittedly not as many as on my Mac.)

I must say I've not tried it in particular depth on this (late 2018 I think, first with USB-C) 11" iPad Pro; it wasn't fast enough on the first-generation iPad Pro.

I still love this thing for what it is, though -- I just find it frustrating that I cannot _quite_ do my day-job on it.  I would love that -- the sheer off-the-shelf interchangeability of it is thrilling otherwise.

(Blink Shell gets pretty close though)

Adrian Stewart said

Have a look at CEX. It's second hand, but it all has a two year guarantee.

I'll have a look thank you, although I find that sometimes it's more expensive than buying new?!

Rob B Photography said

I’ll bring my MacBook Air and editing tablet along to the next social and you can have a play

The windows machines are going to be cheaper than a Mac but essentially from an editing point of view they do the same thing, I have just ended up finding the Mac’s work better for longer but you do need a half decent amount of memory and had space otherwise they would be a nightmare and that will push up the price

I also have an iPad I don’t edit on it myself but your welcome to try it as well and see what you think

Thank you! That'd be really helpful :)

Lews said

RebeccaSophia What's your budget Rebecca? (Approximate!)

Edited by Lews

I'm hoping not to go above £1000, I can't justify more than that for photography :(

indemnity said

RebeccaSophia I'm sure you can pick up a suitable used fast enough laptop and a wacom sml tablet with enough left for say 8gb ram Samsung A8 4g within your budget. I use Capture 1 and Imaging edge and Paintshop, so laptop suits well when I can't use desktop, I don't use PS LR or Affinity, this set up covers most things I need and can run DJI apps for Pocket3, RS3, and drone leaving phone free (have separate RC controller for drone too). The tablet is great for all apps instead of phone and images and has usbc. The laptop tethers directly for cameras so quite a bit of freedom and alternative options. Suits me, though might not be for everyone.

is 8GB of RAM enough? I've been told by a friend that I shouldn't go for less than 16GB for photo editing, but I'm not sure what RAM is to be honest.

MidgePhoto said

RebeccaSophia said

...As a left hander I struggle with using a mouse with my right hand (although have never used a left handed mouse, so I assume i'd be rubbish with that too), so i'm not very accurate, which led me to the tablet idea, although I don't think you can get full editing software on a lot of tablets? ...

On mice and other pointing devices, since most else has been said.

A lawyer, solicitor, of my acquaintance early on in computerisation adopted the habit of holding the mouse in his non-dominant hand, and a pen for writing on paper in the other. Good fopr that purpose, I suspect less so for editing images.

The trackball, which Kensington sell a reasonably priced example of, is an ambidextrous pointer.  Imagine a mouse with a big ball, upturned.  They have their moments particularly when space is limited.  You can strap one to your thigh, if that suits you. 

The Mole is an alternative when you are doing things with both hands.  it is like a mouse, but bigger and lives on the floor, under your desk, to be worked with a foot.  Most people are less precise with their foot.  Footballers might be an exception.

I use a mouse for some things, and a Wacom pen on my Wacom pad for others (for me the pen is the best tool for editing), there is some crossover.  The pad makes a good mousemat if space is tight, even for an ordinary mouse rather than a Wacom one.

The Bat is a pointing device less relevant here.

Other methods of pointing and clicking include infra-red pupil trackers, which are apparently useful for people using all their other limbs to fly a helicopter and wanting to annihilate something at the same time, or for people with effectively no limbs.  Something like that goes on in the viewfinder of some of the Canon cameras, to pick out which focus point you want to use by pointing your eye at it. Mildly clever.

And the LEAP device, which looks upward from your desk, and observes your fingers and thumbs precisely.  Software for it is less common than one might hope. Very cyberpunk.

Don't edit with a mouse, pens are much better.

A mouse is useful to have, for text and controls.

The mouse needn't occupy your desk.

How interesting! I don't think i'll be going to such extremes, maybe in the future when we all have flying cars and AI does all jobs for us :D

The Ghost said

Gothic Image said

playwithlight said

You can get the Adobe Photography plan for £ 9.98 per month that includes Lightroom and Photoshop. Opt for Lightroom Classic. 

... or quite a bit less than that if you keep your eyes open on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.  I've never paid full price.

Or Affinity Photo for under £20 for a lifetime license on the iPad ;-)

This is why i'm on Affinity! I wouldn't say no to photoshop/LR in the future though if I felt like I needed to. No rush to spend that much every month though!

£1000 is plenty!

Personally, I would concentrate on laptops with the best calibrated colour screens that can display a high percentage of the RGB colour space accurately - Macbook Air/Pro, Dell XPS or Microsoft Surface.

16GB memory is getting to be the minimum now although I'm still using a Dell XPS with 8GB.

If you are planning to use Photoshop now or in the future, have a look at this information as they are setting minimums for supported hardware:
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/photoshop/system-requirements.html

I think my Dell XPS will reach its Photoshop "end of use" fairly soon because the GPU (graphics card) doesn't score 2000 on PassMark's GPU Computer Benchmark Chart (https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/directCompute.html)

But, for now, a recent version of Photoshop runs reasonably on my Microsoft Surface Pro 4 that would cost about £200 secondhand. So, you don't have to spend a fortune especially if you plan to use something other than Photoshop.

indemnity said

RebeccaSophia I'm sure you can pick up a suitable used fast enough laptop and a wacom sml tablet with enough left for say 8gb ram Samsung A8 4g within your budget. I use Capture 1 and Imaging edge and Paintshop, so laptop suits well when I can't use desktop, I don't use PS LR or Affinity, this set up covers most things I need and can run DJI apps for Pocket3, RS3, and drone leaving phone free (have separate RC controller for drone too). The tablet is great for all apps instead of phone and images and has usbc. The laptop tethers directly for cameras so quite a bit of freedom and alternative options. Suits me, though might not be for everyone.

is 8GB of RAM enough? I've been told by a friend that I shouldn't go for less than 16GB for photo editing, but I'm not sure what RAM is to be honest.

8GB of RAM is just for a tablet which you would be able to get in addition to a used laptop within budget

Be aware that the average laptop screen will at best only give you around 60% of sRGB.  High end laptops with IPS screens are much dearer, so you might want to factor in a monitor if you go with the laptop.

I've started using Lightroom Mobile on my iPhone when I'm out doing wildlife and street photography, and I'm seriously impressed with how good it is. While it's not as much control as editing on a big screen, desktop version of Photoshop and Lightroom (my usual workflow for portraits etc), it's getting the job done nicely. I'll be pairing it with an iPad soon for some street photography/mobile printing sessions.

I will advocate for the cheapo 'bang-for-buck' solution I have adopted.

I have a pretty well spec'd i7/16GB/500GB Lenovo Thinkpad (£295 from cash converters) and I have it semi-permanently hooked up to a nice used Dell 27" monitor (about £150 I think.)

RebeccaSophia said

Hello!

I want to invest in some technology for editing, but i'm a bit stuck. I'm not a techy person and the more I learn, the more confused I get!

What's your budget ? 

Timmee said

I will advocate for the cheapo 'bang-for-buck' solution I have adopted.

I have a pretty well spec'd i7/16GB/500GB Lenovo Thinkpad (£295 from cash converters) and I have it semi-permanently hooked up to a nice used Dell 27" monitor (about £150 I think.)

I forgot to mention that Cash Converters do a 2 year warranty on their laptops. I was idly browsing when I saw my current laptop in my local shop. I thought it looked a pretty great deal, but I was amazed when they mentioned it came with a 2 year warranty.