Budget ish photo editing laptop

ThePrettyDamned · September 2023

I really need a new computer - my old alienware is a) desktop, b) 10 years old (!) and c) struggles with a lot of basic lightroom and photoshop stuff, especially some of the new functions.

It's also just a bit sluggish for photo editing. Mostly, though, I'd be happy if it was a laptop! I hate that I shut myself away to get photos onto the computer and do editing and printing. I really would prefer to hang with ladyprettydamned while doing this.

So I'm planning on wiping and selling that (it's actually pretty good for someone - i7 6700, gtx960, m.2 ssd and a 2tb disc drive all in a console sized alienware case). I reckon I could get £200 - £250. Not eligible for windows 11 upgrade.

Essential specs on laptop are good processor, 16gb ram and 100 percent srgb screen with decent resolution.

Best option I've found so far is this but really pushes the budget - is there a better bet out there?

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/lenovo-yoga-pro-7-14.5-laptop-intel-core-i7-512-gb-ssd-storm-grey-10249236.html?istCompanyId=bec25c7e-cbcd-460d-81d5-a25372d2e3d7&istFeedId=4d7eb93e-055f-499d-8ee5-1cdcc50d67d1&istItemId=rawxpxlit&istBid=t&srcid=198&cmpid=ppc~gg~1011 (Shopping%20Ads)%20Laptops%20-%20Brand%20Intel%20SEM%20Nov19~new%20ad%20group%2029/10/21~Exact~71700000059351609~&mctag=gg_goog_7904&kwid=GOOGLE&device=m&ds_kids=92700067225935904&tgtid=1011%20(Shopping%20Ads)%20Laptops%20-%20Brand%20Intel%20SEM%20Nov19&gclid=CjwKCAjwmbqoBhAgEiwACIjzEHcjv0KLsj7V2mi8rsFfXeDKk0QjIxMhS0E2uuEPIirVs11iK4u8URoCuVYQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I'd love a framework but they're a bit too expensive, and ladyprettydamned is keen on a touchscreen... Don't ask me why, we have an ipad...

guyinlyon · September 2023

15-inch MacBook Air
Apple M2 chip with 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
8GB unified memory
256GB SSD storage
15.3-inch Liquid Retina display

Don't worry about the 8Gb of RAM as the M2 chip a very efficient user of RAM.

Pair that with a copy of Affinity Photo (https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/)
for around £75. Affinity is equal in power to Adobe Photoshop but it's a one-time payment and included updates in that. It operates somewhat differently from Photoshop but it only takes a week to get used to it.

ThePrettyDamned · September 2023

guyinlyon said:

15-inch MacBook Air
Apple M2 chip with 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
8GB unified memory
256GB SSD storage
15.3-inch Liquid Retina display

Don't worry about the 8Gb of RAM as the M2 chip a very efficient user of RAM.

Pair that with a copy of Affinity Photo (https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/)
for around £75. Affinity is equal in power to Adobe Photoshop but it's a one-time payment and included updates in that. It operates somewhat differently from Photoshop but it only takes a week to get used to it.

I won't be switching from lightroom so may as well stick with my Adobe plan. Nothing comes close to lightroom in my experience, and the cloud infra is getting pretty good too.

I considered a macbook but the ram, while more efficient, isn't ram - if it's ram switching (and with lightroom it will be!) it'll slow down. But mostly, you've recommended a laptop £600 more than the one I said was already pushing my budget... Even the 13 inch is 350 quid more, which is a few years of Adobe sub.

Tannin · September 2023

Just get rid of the Adobe slugware.

I ditched Photoshop and ACR in favour of DxO PhotoLab a few years ago and the usability difference is night and day. And the performance, even on quite modest hardware, is vastly better too.

Adobe products can bring any computer to its knees. Upgrade to something a bit more modern and efficient, and a lot nicer to use.

ThePrettyDamned · September 2023

Tannin said:

Just get rid of the Adobe slugware.

I ditched Photoshop and ACR in favour of DxO PhotoLab a few years ago and the usability difference is night and day. And the performance, even on quite modest hardware, is vastly better too.

Adobe products can bring any computer to its knees. Upgrade to something a bit more modern and efficient, and a lot nicer to use.

How is migrating to dxo from lightroom, especially for catalogue management? And does it offer cloud storage?

I mean, I will have external drives regardless but cloud backup for jpegs is pretty amazing. Bonus points if the android app is any good!

But happy to consider other software. I don't care for a photoshop replacement as much as a lightroom one.

ThePrettyDamned · September 2023

Ooo @Tannin dxo photolab actually meets what I need comfortably. And affinity would do the rest...

So with that in mind, I am happy to move away from Adobe (happily!) - is the laptop I linked OK, or is there better value? Is an m1 macbook air suitable?

Edit: lack of cloud is a bit of a shame, I want a really quick, simple way to share to mobile devices, but I can probably work something out.

Tannin · September 2023

Cheers @ThePrettyDamned I can't comment on Apples. Last one I used was an Apple 11c. That would have been in 1986.

Nor can I comment on DxO's catalogue management either as I don't use it (or any other commercial image management software). I use a fast, simple graphics viewer (my favourite one is ancient and obscure, but you get to much the same sort of place with the likes of XNView, Irfan View or any of a hundred others). This has the advantage of blazing speed (as compared to *any* full-fat photo processing software, be that Lightroom, Adobe Bridge, DxO, or any of the various others). I am talking night-and-day speed advantage here.

It only sees JPGs, which is fine. (This is also where some but by no means all of the speed advantage comes from.) I always shoot raw & JPG, so I just sort and catalogue the JPGs and then, every so often, launch a tiny program which, in the blink of an eye, looks at where I've filed the JPGs and puts all the raw files in matching locations. Job done.

From time to time I spot a JPG that looks promising enough to be a candidate for publication, at which point I drop both it and the matching raw into a scratch folder for development and post-processing.

Alas the tiny program which does the heavy lifting (locating the JPGs and moving the raws into matching places) is a batch file I wrote myself years ago (and once in a while update for some reason) and it would need to be rewritten in some Apple-compatible scripting language (BASH?).

So in short I only use PhotoLab's core functionality: raw development and further post-processing.

I always liked Adobe Camera Raw and it was pretty much the only reason I kept paying for Photoshop/Lightroom month after month. (I did use Photoshop for many years: very capable but slow and unpleasant to use.) Switching to PhotoLab was a big change, in most (but not quite all) ways for the better. If you are familiar with control points from using the Nik plugins, you have already mastered most of what you need to know. They are at the heart of the interface.

There are one or two downsides. The integration between PhotoLab and the Nik Collection is surprisingly clunky and primitive. Mostly that's not an issue, once in a while I find that I need more than it can provide, in which case I fire up Affinity and run the Nik Collection plugins from there instead.

Affinity doesn't have a dodge and burn tool, which drives me nuts! (It has a thing they call "dodge and burn" but it doesn't work properly - compare with the Photoshop one. Apparently this is a design decision and Affinity don't plan to fix it. Grrr.) Now you can (and very often should) achieve the same or a better result inside PhotoLab using control points, but not always and there are times where a simple dodge and/or burn is exactly what you need and there is no easy way to get it even when you have Affinity too.

While PhotoLab is in most regards faster, easier to use, and as good or better than ACR at developing a raw image - often much better - it lags when it comes to rescuing badly under-exposed images. Lightroom/ACR is the champ here. As with the missing dodge and burn tool, DxO apparently take the view that you can achieve a fairly good result using control points (which is more-or-less true given sufficient skill) so why should they provide an easier way? (Ans: because the Adobe system is easier and gets a better result.)

That's about it for things I don't like about the DxO package. In most other respects it shines. When it comes to dealing with noisy high-ISO images, it wipes the floor and remains easily ahead of the competition. (The gap seems to be slowly narrowing. My guess is that DxO are already pretty close to extracting all of the useful information from a noisy image and there isn't much technological improvement possible from here. Other image processing companies are catching up, little by little, and eventually they will all be on the plateau and there won't be much difference. But that's a few years off yet: for now, DxO is the best at this.

The company is much nicer to deal with than Adobe. None of this bleed-you-every-month subscription-only model nastiness, you pay once and own it forever. Mayor upgrades are chargeable of course, but they give you a substantial discount and (at least so far) always provide a worthwhile lift in functionality. I've got to the stage after a few (5 or 6?) years of ownership now where I don't bother to read the blurb they send me about each new upgrade, I just say "yes" to it and pay a few dollars without checking anything: they are always good.

ThePrettyDamned · September 2023

Tannin said:

Cheers @ThePrettyDamned I can't comment on Apples. Last one I used was an Apple 11c. That would have been in 1986.

Nor can I comment on DxO's catalogue management either as I don't use it (or any other commercial image management software). I use a fast, simple graphics viewer (my favourite one is ancient and obscure, but you get to much the same sort of place with the likes of XNView, Irfan View or any of a hundred others). This has the advantage of blazing speed (as compared to *any* full-fat photo processing software, be that Lightroom, Adobe Bridge, DxO, or any of the various others). I am talking night-and-day speed advantage here.

It only sees JPGs, which is fine. (This is also where some but by no means all of the speed advantage comes from.) I always shoot raw & JPG, so I just sort and catalogue the JPGs and then, every so often, launch a tiny program which, in the blink of an eye, looks at where I've filed the JPGs and puts all the raw files in matching locations. Job done.

From time to time I spot a JPG that looks promising enough to be a candidate for publication, at which point I drop both it and the matching raw into a scratch folder for development and post-processing.

Alas the tiny program which does the heavy lifting (locating the JPGs and moving the raws into matching places) is a batch file I wrote myself years ago (and once in a while update for some reason) and it would need to be rewritten in some Apple-compatible scripting language (BASH?).

So in short I only use PhotoLab's core functionality: raw development and further post-processing.

I always liked Adobe Camera Raw and it was pretty much the only reason I kept paying for Photoshop/Lightroom month after month. (I did use Photoshop for many years: very capable but slow and unpleasant to use.) Switching to PhotoLab was a big change, in most (but not quite all) ways for the better. If you are familiar with control points from using the Nik plugins, you have already mastered most of what you need to know. They are at the heart of the interface.

There are one or two downsides. The integration between PhotoLab and the Nik Collection is surprisingly clunky and primitive. Mostly that's not an issue, once in a while I find that I need more than it can provide, in which case I fire up Affinity and run the Nik Collection plugins from there instead.

Affinity doesn't have a dodge and burn tool, which drives me nuts! (It has a thing they call "dodge and burn" but it doesn't work properly - compare with the Photoshop one. Apparently this is a design decision and Affinity don't plan to fix it. Grrr.) Now you can (and very often should) achieve the same or a better result inside PhotoLab using control points, but not always and there are times where a simple dodge and/or burn is exactly what you need and there is no easy way to get it even when you have Affinity too.

While PhotoLab is in most regards faster, easier to use, and as good or better than ACR at developing a raw image - often much better - it lags when it comes to rescuing badly under-exposed images. Lightroom/ACR is the champ here. As with the missing dodge and burn tool, DxO apparently take the view that you can achieve a fairly good result using control points (which is more-or-less true given sufficient skill) so why should they provide an easier way? (Ans: because the Adobe system is easier and gets a better result.)

That's about it for things I don't like about the DxO package. In most other respects it shines. When it comes to dealing with noisy high-ISO images, it wipes the floor and remains easily ahead of the competition. (The gap seems to be slowly narrowing. My guess is that DxO are already pretty close to extracting all of the useful information from a noisy image and there isn't much technological improvement possible from here. Other image processing companies are catching up, little by little, and eventually they will all be on the plateau and there won't be much difference. But that's a few years off yet: for now, DxO is the best at this.

The company is much nicer to deal with than Adobe. None of this bleed-you-every-month subscription-only model nastiness, you pay once and own it forever. Mayor upgrades are chargeable of course, but they give you a substantial discount and (at least so far) always provide a worthwhile lift in functionality. I've got to the stage after a few (5 or 6?) years of ownership now where I don't bother to read the blurb they send me about each new upgrade, I just say "yes" to it and pay a few dollars without checking anything: they are always good.

Nice. I may give it a go around black Friday sales.

I love control points in nik, so that's great news! I also prefer the way dxo edits in general - it seems to get better colours and contrast a bit easier (I've had a play with free trial).

Dodge and burn in affinity - can you do this through making a couple of curves layers? I like to make one that boosts exposure pulling up at about the 2/3rd point, and the other drawing it down at the 1/3 point, then revealing from a layer mask as needed? I would think affinity could do that, and a macro could set all of that up in a click if affinity has them (it surely does!).

Tannin · September 2023

^ Funny you should suggest that.

I spent a little while earlier today making a start on figuring that out, or something similar. Your 2/3 1/3 hint sounds like a good 'un. I'm no Affinity wizard, I really only bought it for dodge & burn (discovering too late that it doesn't work properly) and very occasional other stuff I can't do in PhotoLab. I'll return to that task tonight and get the process sorted. (Unless I see something shiny, of course. Most small jobs take me weeks because I have the attention span of goldfish on speed.)

BigMonka · September 2023

I can't help with the laptop hunt but I'm interested in hearing if there are any real alternatives to Lightroom as I'm still using LR6 as I think that was the last version you could buy outright without needing a subscription. It's pretty old though so wondering what other options are out there.

darthed1981 · September 2023

You don't mention how much ram in your old PC?

I'd have thought that spec was easily, easily able to handle some photo editing, even in RAW format, but you may be hitting a bottleneck with only 8GB of RAM, the latest versions of W10 and W11 are quite greedy with it, on top of greedy Adobe programs may be the issue. You need 16GB, 32 GB is probably silly... but RAM is crazy cheap right now if your mobo supports that much of it.

Of course wanting a laptop for more company is quite understandable as well

Incidentally, getting Win11 onto older hardware recently became much easier as Rufus, beloved of linux users everywhere for making Linux boot USB sticks, will now make you a Win 11 one which bypasses the TPM and CPU restrictions.

guyinlyon · September 2023

ThePrettyDamned said:
I considered a macbook but the ram, while more efficient, isn't ram - if it's ram switching (and with lightroom it will be!) it'll slow down. But mostly, you've recommended a laptop £600 more than the one I said was already pushing my budget... Even the 13 inch is 350 quid more, which is a few years of Adobe sub.

If you're buying down to a budget, have fun.

(Amused by the "is a few years of Adobe sub" line. It's amazing how they've suckered people into accepting the subscription idea.)

ThePrettyDamned · September 2023

Tannin said:

^ Funny you should suggest that. I spent a little while earlier today making a start on figuring that out, or something similar. Your 2/3 1/3 hint sounds like a good 'un. I'm no Affinity wizard, I really only bought it for dodge & burn (discovering too late that it doesn't work properly) and very occasional other stuff I can't do in PhotoLab. I'll return to that task tonight and get the process sorted. (Unless I see something shiny, of course. Most small jobs take me weeks because I have the attention span of goldfish on speed.)

One of the nice things about my dodge and burn method is that you can start there, use a brush to reveal the layers, then tweak the curves themselves afterwards for a nice smooth gradient (pull toward middle of tone curve) or more contrast (1/3 2/3 type approach).

And then there is layer transparency as well - I always start overcooked then change the transparency. I'm sure affinity can do all of that

ThePrettyDamned · September 2023

darthed1981 said:

You don't mention how much ram in your old PC?

I'd have thought that spec was easily, easily able to handle some photo editing, even in RAW format, but you may be hitting a bottleneck with only 8GB of RAM, the latest versions of W10 and W11 are quite greedy with it, on top of greedy Adobe programs may be the issue. You need 16GB, 32 GB is probably silly... but RAM is crazy cheap right now if your mobo supports that much of it.

Of course wanting a laptop for more company is quite understandable as well

Incidentally, getting Win11 onto older hardware recently became much easier as Rufus, beloved of linux users everywhere for making Linux boot USB sticks, will now make you a Win 11 one which bypasses the TPM and CPU restrictions.

Currently have 16gb ram, but it's the processor that seems to bottleneck (and generally just being old in terms of what the software can handle!).

I've ordered the lenovo and will hopefully collect today. It's got the i7 13700h and 16gb ram, with a 100 percent srgb screen so that should be perfectly fine for the next 8 years

I'll be selling the desktop when I've moved everything onto external drives and wiped it. It's a decent little computer for £150-£200, has a m.2 ssd for boot drive, 1tb of storage on top and 16gb ram and gtx960 so it's capable of older games at HD resolution. Just struggles with editing due to lack of sheer compute power.

I compared benchmarks and holy moly modern laptop i5 absolutely destroys the old desktop i7!

Edit - it seems a lot of the updates in software require more efficient computing to work well. Every time I open lightroom or photoshop there is a warning my hardware is not able to accelerate a lot of functions or something. It's just buggy and frustrating now...

hywelg · September 2023

I find Affinity is still very much in its infancy. I have PS CS5 and Affinity Photo can do alot of what PS can do but for special enhancements Luminar is the way to go. I have the previous version and will upgrade to Neo soon. Some of the plugins are really good.

ThePrettyDamned · September 2023

guyinlyon said:

ThePrettyDamned said:
I considered a macbook but the ram, while more efficient, isn't ram - if it's ram switching (and with lightroom it will be!) it'll slow down. But mostly, you've recommended a laptop £600 more than the one I said was already pushing my budget... Even the 13 inch is 350 quid more, which is a few years of Adobe sub.

If you're buying down to a budget, have fun.
(Amused by the "is a few years of Adobe sub" line. It's amazing how they've suckered people into accepting the subscription idea.)

I wouldn't say "suckered" - for a long time, they offered the best in work flow and result. There *still* isn't really a completely credible lightroom alternative. Adobe are evil because they can be... The mobile app is fantastic as well. I'll genuinely miss that if I do move away, and you get cloud storage - it's really not bad value, especially at black Friday price!

Anyway, I did try a macbook air and was very disappointed. It worked brilliantly but the touch pad and keyboard were not fantastic, and it felt a bit flimsy and built down to a price - and was well out of budget besides, especially for 16gb (I've seen edit work flows on macbook air m1 with 8gb ram and it does ram swap and slow down so 16gb would be best).

I can't afford that - if I sold photos I'd be fine, but I just need something that'll work well enough. I'm going to trial dxo photolab 6 and see how that does, and if it works I'll pick it up in black Friday sale - finally get away from Adobe!

Axe_meister · September 2023

Even on a new Mac I would avoid 8GB of RAM, whilst swap management is very efficient we found that it would trash the SSD. And because the SSD is soldered you can't replace it.
With 16GB of Memory the OS takes up about 10GB without any apps loaded (same with our my 32GB Mac mini).
Also no doubt with the next release of MaxOS memory requirements will be even higher. Ram is one thing you should not skimp on.

ThePrettyDamned · September 2023

Axe_meister said:

Even on a new Mac I would avoid 8GB of RAM, whilst swap management is very efficient we found that it would trash the SSD. And because the SSD is soldered you can't replace it.
With 16GB of Memory the OS takes up about 10GB without any apps loaded (same with our my 32GB Mac mini).
Also no doubt with the next release of MaxOS memory requirements will be even higher. Ram is one thing you should not skimp on.

Ram is also cheap - I really don't understand the serious gouging apple have on ram and ssd storage.

I think 8gb ram is a perfect entry level laptop, but going up to 16gb shouldn't really cost as much as it does, regardless of soldering.

That said, I did try a macbook Pro - way out of price, ut felt seriously well made in comparison to the air, I'd absolutely love one but I'd need to more than double my budget for sensible ram and ssd.

Axe_meister · September 2023

In the Mac case, ram is part of the SoC so not even soldered onto the motherboard

ThePrettyDamned · September 2023

Had a proper go this morning, importing 24mp raw files and processing in lightroom.

SO SMOOTH. It is better than my pc was when brand new. The slow bit is the AI - so AI masking, AI noise reduction etc - that was expected as they can use graphics acceleration (and my laptop just has integrated graphics) but I seldom use those functions and it still only takes 20-30 seconds to identify the person, create a mask and then let me select iris, face, hair etc. So that's pretty amazing still.

Can't wait to try dxo though. I'll get the free trial tonight and see how it fares. Next step for me is getting new external ssd drives to migrate my files to. Lightroom can map them into a catalogue, but dxo doesn't seem to do that - it looks more like a file explorer type job which would still be OK as they are mostly sorted very well.

Culling was quick, generating previews was quick, sliders were smooth and it only stuttered when I tried sliding things around while previews were being built. So... The 13th gen i7 13700h is great.

On the laptop - I love the feel of the keys and the track pad. Windows 11 seems fast now, but we all know how that may go... The screen is beautiful, very sharp (it's not 4k,its the one below) and the colours seem accurate as compared to my dell ultrasharp when set to srgb, so I reckon I can print comfortably from it. Tests to occur at the weekend.

Dxo and lightroom have huge colour spaces so ensuring I'm working with srgb should make it quite straightforward.

Side note - I used the lumix cinelike colour profile in lightroom as a camera match profile and for bright, clear photos it works fantastic. Lovely colours with minimal tweaking, nice contrast, good skin tones and not overly dark or flat. Very cool.

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