Laptop buying guide for Photo Editing and Graphic Design 2021​

Photographers and Graphic designers know once the image has been captured on a camera only a part of their job is done and some level of editing is required. It is very rare to find people who upload their images, even amateur photographers using their smartphones and especially when we talk about professional photographers.

Photo editing and Graphic design applications include all 2D visual softwares such as Photoshop, PaintShop Pro, PhotoDirector, and several others. What you need in a Laptop for photo editing and graphic designing that is not only portable but also does not limit your productivity slowing you down. In this blog, we will be looking at how to choose a laptop that is compatible with the photo editing softwares.

CPU

The processor should be your first priority if you are planning to buy a laptop for editing and creating 2D work in photo editing and graphic design softwares. It is responsible for accomplishing all of the tasks that you instruct your computer to do during the normal course of a photo editing session.
Most popular photo editing applications, such as Photoshop and Paintshop Pro, take advantage of single-threaded performance over multi-threaded performance. Though Photo editing is not as demanding on the CPU as other creative works such as animation, visual effects, and video editing. However, the editing softwares will become more demanding as you increase the resolution.

GPU

As many of you would assume that a GPU is a very important component when it comes to editing and creating 2D work in photo editing and graphic design softwares but that isn’t true. A mid-range graphics card will be more than enough and the primary job of your graphics card is to display a preview on your display especially if you have a 4k display. 

Having a discrete graphics card does help in displaying 10-bit High-Dynamic-Range color and should scale with the quality of your display to avoid bottlenecks. For an Entry-level Laptop, an iGPU is capable of displaying Full HD resolution on an HD monitor.

AMD vs Nvidia  

As you won’t be using GPU acceleration in your workflow and your tasks won’t be GPU intensive the difference in performance won’t be significant as other creative softwares.

RAM

Photo Editing and Graphic Designing are RAM intensive tasks. Just make sure you have at least 8GB of RAM for the previewing process especially if you are with large photo libraries. 

We recommend 16GB of RAM if you are planning to multitask otherwise if you only have 8 GB of system memory you might have to close background applications for your editing software to function smoothly.

Storage (HDD, SSD)

Raw photographs can take up a lot more space compared to regular images. Therefore, having enough storage space can be a content concern and can create issues in your workflow. An easy solution is to have an external storage solution. We recommend at least 1 terabyte of space internal/external to avoid any storage-related bottlenecks in your workflow.

If possible get a laptop with an SSD for your operating system, key programs, and work-related files. There are plenty of laptops that support SSD + HDD  hybrid storage and will provide you with both a faster and abundant storage.

Compare items
  • Laptops (0)
  • GPU (0)
Compare