Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

[manishbjain]

Hello ,

I have posted this earlier too and am still looking for the answer as am still confused . I am basically looking to buy a laptop that will offer me the best color management possibility and also offer me robust speed for all my graphic works for print and 3D stuff, So there are two features that I am basically looking at

1. Speed
2. Color Mangement (that will help me get close to what I am going to print)

There are few laptops that I am considering

Lenovo Y700 Series
Asus ROG (GL553VE)
Apple Macook Pro.

Can you please advice me the best among these or anything else you can think of.

[skoobey]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

I use a Mac but slash that right away. I would also look into Alienware, they are great machines, buy you have to look for the display details as I have no idea about the display performance.

MBP right now is just not worth it. Display is the best, but the rest(including the price) is a joke. So underpowered. Either get the last gen MBP (still on sale as new and a great machine) or wait for the next update.

Whatever you buy, don't fool yourself into thinking that you don't need a monitor if you get a great laptop. No way no how. Also, you can get a great tower, and a great monitor and a good laptop for the price of a single top of the line laptop machine. I did go that route, and would do it again(more is more).

[Tony W]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

The Lenovo and Asus seem to be aimed at gamers. Not suggesting that is necessarily a bad thing but....

For Photoshop performance you will get the best from the fastest CPU you can find and max out on memory. With loads of memory the scratch disk although used to write will not be used to read which is likely to be the area where slowdowns will be observed. An SSD is a nice feature to have but will not affect the speed of PS other than faster start up Lightroom a little different I believe.

A decent spec graphics card is advised due to the fact that PS and LR can both utilise GPU acceleration and while at the moment only slight gains in future builds we can expect better?

Although I have both PC and Mac my bias is PC. If you must go the laptop route it is highly likely that you will find the monitor and graphics limiting and therefore you may want to budget for a monitor from either NEC or Eizo. Bear in mind that even this route limits you as the graphics card unlikely to be upgradable.

While limiting relating to portability a midi tower (or tower) PC, or the Apple equivalent with a good NEC or Eizo monitor is IMHO always going to be first preference.

If you have to use a laptop due to rough editing or tethering in the field then do the serious stuff using a seperate monitor back at base fine, but a suggestion would be to look at the laptop screen spec and try to find one that is matt (anti glare) as this will broaden your choice of editing environment.

[skoobey]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

Tony, please, NO PRO LAPTOP comes without an SSD. lol OR any laptop over 1000$
Any CPU is fine for Photoshop 2017, from Core2Duo onwards... same goes for graphics card... OP clearly stated that he needs the PC to be good for 3D as well... You don't need a monitor from NEC or Eizo... all these guys working on expensive monitors and putting out crappy work, there are plenty good monitors for 500+ dollars, and any current graphics card will support a typical 2k monitor (2560x1600).

Basically, everything Tony said is complete bull. Only thing that I absolutely agree with is that you need a separate monitor, whether you use the laptop as the main machine, or not.

Tony, why are you giving such bad or unrelated advice? I would not think you'd be the one to speak such nonsense. All those things would not make much sense 10 years ago, let alone now.

[Tony W]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

Tony, please, NO PRO LAPTOP comes without an SSD. lol OR any laptop over 1000$

And your point is??
Cos my point is that an SSD is not necessarily the speed up that many graphic programs rely on (other than a fast one off start up) and further that laptops are not necessarily the best buy.

Any CPU is fine for Photoshop 2017, from Core2Duo onwards... same goes for graphics card...

Do not be a complete numpty here. Of course any CPU is fine as is likely with the graphics cards GPU. BUT..It is very clear to any professional user that PS minimum recommendations are woefully inadequate for serious image editing and are likely to lead to much less than optimum performance
IF 3d via PS being considered then you will find that without the correct graphics card that features will not work correctly.

OP clearly stated that he needs the PC to be good for 3D as well...

Once again AND YOUR POINT IS?
The basic suggestion offered of CPU, GPU and max. RAM is solid So show us any other professional 3D editing software that does not greatly benefit from a fast multicore CPU and a similar fast GPU and cannot use more RAM!

You don't need a monitor from NEC or Eizo...

Of course you don't you can buy very good monitors for a couple of hundred $. But once again you miss the mark by a very large margin. NEC and Eizo have not become industry standards without good reason. They were the first AFAIK to offer hardware calibration, a valuable feature to have. Their reliability and warranty response are second to non - a thing that professionals will appreciate. Yes they cost more and the old adage of you get what you pay for is true and very necessary in a professional environment.

all these guys working on expensive monitors and putting out crappy work, there are plenty good monitors for 500+ dollars,

Irrelevant to the thread

and any current graphics card will support a typical 2k monitor (2560x1600).

And so, what in light of what has been pointed out to you relating to pro editing software requirements do you still not understand

Basically, everything Tony said is complete bull. Only thing that I absolutely agree with is that you need a separate monitor, whether you use the laptop as the main machine, or not.

Tony, why are you giving such bad or unrelated advice? I would not think you'd be the one to speak such nonsense. All those things would not make much sense 10 years ago, let alone now.

Once again we have skoobey shooting off at the mouth without the slightest sign that the brain has been engaged. Demonstrating quite clearly that he is OUT OF HIS Depth or is unable to comprehend. It is also understandable why he is having some work difficulties

[skoobey]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

I do not know about editors, maybe you should ask some 3D related magazine editors about that. But I am very involved in 3D modeling and rendering right now, and I know for a fact that a tower(especially with multiple GPUs) is a far bigger bang for your buck.

Editing is not what the Photoshop is for... you have Lightroom from the same family for that.

I'm sorry you got offended and need to rant, but you really have posted total crap.

[Tony W]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

What a pity you cannot seem to comprehend what is written and you reply with absolute bollocks missing the whole point as expected.

It is eminently clear that you are incapable of answering intelligently on any technical issue relating to PC's and you just regurgitate google chatter you have looked up.

Do not waste mine or anyone else time until you can provide some concrete evidence to support your crackpot views

[skoobey]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

Let me feed you ego one more time by replying. Go to bestbuy, and lookup what's on offer TODAY, not 10 years ago. Then, come here and comment.

[Tony W]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

You ain't bright enough to feed me in any shape or form

You are totally oblivious to the requirements of the editing programs you profess to use and stupid enough to suggest Bestbuy as a source for professional equipment - don't know about your country but no such store in U.K.

Of course I appreciate that you are not a pro user but you should really check your facts about system performance and requirements for Graphics programs.

Why don't you study a little more and present something resembling fact relating to software and attempt to refute the facts as laid out in post #5

[klev]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

A decent spec graphics card is advised due to the fact that PS and LR can both utilise GPU acceleration and while at the moment only slight gains in future builds we can expect better?

Well gpu acceleration made its way into photoshop around CS5. CS4 merely added opengl rendering. Adobe went the OpenCL route at a time when that framework was still stabilizing, whereas a lot of professional applications went with CUDA. It was more stable and had NVidia's backing. They have since written a lot of stuff for it, much of which is machine learning focused (neural networks toolkits and other stuff that keeps popping up in tech news).

Lightroom didn't use any of this for the first several iterations, and at this point I'm not sure they have a reasonable plan/path to change that. We don't have any way of knowing what their internal architecture looks like or how it's laid out. GPUs are also quite annoying in some ways. They offer efficient parallel operations, but they typically have a high dispatch cost required to launch a particular kernel.

I am of course speculating on this, but I don't think the gpu will be a great factor for real photoshop use. It matters more for 3D modeling, especially if you have a high polygon count. It was easy to choke any notebook gpu the last time I touched that, which was a while ago.

[andrewrodney]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

Well at least the new MBP display is wide gamut (DCI-P3) and the entire OS and associated applications are color managed. I’ve got one, nice but it’s nothing like my NEC PA272W in terms of a high end color reference display, similar to Eizo. No laptop is!

[Tony W]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

Well gpu acceleration made its way into photoshop around CS5. CS4 merely added opengl rendering. Adobe went the OpenCL route at a time when that framework was still stabilizing, whereas a lot of professional applications went with CUDA. It was more stable and had NVidia's backing. They have since written a lot of stuff for it, much of which is machine learning focused (neural networks toolkits and other stuff that keeps popping up in tech news).

Lightroom didn't use any of this for the first several iterations, and at this point I'm not sure they have a reasonable plan/path to change that. We don't have any way of knowing what their internal architecture looks like or how it's laid out. GPUs are also quite annoying in some ways. They offer efficient parallel operations, but they typically have a high dispatch cost required to launch a particular kernel.

I am of course speculating on this, but I don't think the gpu will be a great factor for real photoshop use. It matters more for 3D modeling, especially if you have a high polygon count. It was easy to choke any notebook gpu the last time I touched that, which was a while ago.

At last a well reasoned post.

My understanding of the basic Adobe requirements for efficient workflow is:

Accelerated GPU features using the Mercury Graphics Engine from CS6 (I think!) using both OpenGl and OpenCL framework. Compatible cards tested and listed by Adobe should offer all the GPU accelerated features below:

Camera Raw, Image Size, Select Focus, Perspective Warp, Liquify, Adaptive Wide Angle filter, plus?. These also use GPU acceleration via OpenCL, Blur Gallery, Smart Sharpen, Select and Mask.

Lightroom has its own minimum requirements and from CC/LR6 with 64 bit OS and OpenGL 3.3 and above. 1 GB of VRAM to 2 GB of VRAM suggested minimum (the latter for 4K monitors). From memory LR had issues with some cards (or probably more precisely the drivers) seemingly mostly those from AMD. In any case users were reporting that they had to switch off graphics acceleration other than suffer either complete failure or major slow down.

PS 3D features will not work if your graphics card is not supported or its driver is defective

Neither PS or LR use NVIDIA CUDA pipeline. I have seen suggestions that Illustrator does but never seen any evidence stating that CUDA involved, with NVIDIA just stating "NV Path Rendering, implemented as an extension to OpenGL, an open standard for graphics performance"

I can only imagine that Adobe did not want to get drawn into a less than open standard which at least on the face of it is the NVIDIA CUDA route.

[Tony W]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

Well at least the new MBP display is wide gamut (DCI-P3) and the entire OS and associated applications are color managed. I’ve got one, nice but it’s nothing like my NEC PA272W in terms of a high end color reference display, similar to Eizo. No laptop is!

The fact that Apple seems to have its act together on colour management is certainly a plus.

As a pretty much dyed in the wool Windows user I just cannot understand what MS are playing at. Their latest incarnation W10 actually taken one step backwards by introducing/replacing Windows Photo Viewer (a colour managed application in Win 7 and 8) with an app. called Photos which is not colour managed and has caused the tearing of hair and the rending of garments in certain quarters.

Perhaps even worse is the fact that the old Windows Photo Viewer can be revived in W10, BUT - you loose colour management which was within the original Win7-8 version, unless you have upgraded from these. Therefore a clean install of W10 requires a registry hack to bring back Windows Photo Viewer into the colour management fold - go figure

IMO it is past time that MS should have implemented a better colour management rather than relying on others to include in their applications.

[klev]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

At last a well reasoned post.

My understanding of the basic Adobe requirements for efficient workflow is:

Accelerated GPU features using the Mercury Graphics Engine from CS6 (I think!) using both OpenGl and OpenCL framework. Compatible cards tested and listed by Adobe should offer all the GPU accelerated features below:

Camera Raw, Image Size, Select Focus, Perspective Warp, Liquify, Adaptive Wide Angle filter, plus?. These also use GPU acceleration via OpenCL, Blur Gallery, Smart Sharpen, Select and Mask.

That sounds right. I noticed a difference with Liquify. Some stuff like iris blur is really painful without it, but I didn't find a lot of difference between gpus. Most of these operations were near instant on the gpu, so going to a stronger one wouldn't make much difference in cases where I am already running code via the gpu rather than the cpu. In my (very limited) experience in this area, gpus are good when you have a lot of math with minimal branching. It's a lot like programming with vector extensions like AVX, although you don't have to worry about memory address alignment.

Lightroom has its own minimum requirements and from CC/LR6 with 64 bit OS and OpenGL 3.3 and above. 1 GB of VRAM to 2 GB of VRAM suggested minimum (the latter for 4K monitors). From memory LR had issues with some cards (or probably more precisely the drivers) seemingly mostly those from AMD. In any case users were reporting that they had to switch off graphics acceleration other than suffer either complete failure or major slow down.

Yeah I saw this. I have read complaints that it runs slower with gpu acceleration enabled, which is technically possible. GPU programming is asynchronous. You set something up and basically push it off to another piece of hardware, and there's a significant cost to do so. I imagine that addressing each file separately can become an issue.

PS 3D features will not work if your graphics card is not supported or its driver is defective

I've never used it. It didn't look that great or very useful, even compared to something like Blender. I could be wrong.

Neither PS or LR use NVIDIA CUDA pipeline. I have seen suggestions that Illustrator does but never seen any evidence stating that CUDA involved, with NVIDIA just stating "NV Path Rendering, implemented as an extension to OpenGL, an open standard for graphics performance"

I can only imagine that Adobe did not want to get drawn into a less than open standard which at least on the face of it is the NVIDIA CUDA route.

The last time I checked, Adobe didn't claim illustrator used any kind of GPU acceleration, and I wouldn't worry too much about undocumented results. If they add something silently, it's not possible to know whether it will really stay.

Adobe did incorporate some of NVidia's technology into After Effects some time ago. As I recall Premiere used it for a little while as well. OpenCL is obviously more universal, but it took a long time to become really practical.

[Damo77]

Re: Laptop Close to monitors like Eizo

I have an ASUS ROG laptop, and its screen is BEAUTIFUL.

The whole laptop is beautiful, in fact. I've had it for many years, and it's still going strong. Whenever it eventually dies, I'll definitely be getting another.