Dedicated GPU for Photoshop?

[ponder]

Friend just called me and she needs to buy a new laptop, She's looking at the R4999 Acer from Makro. The laptop will mostly be used for email, browsing & your general office application with a wee bit of photoshop on the side when required.

Is a dedicated GPU required with PS products these days? I told her she'll be fine with the Acer as she'll only be editing photos on the odd occasion.

The salesman tried to flog her the Packard Bell which has a nvidia gpu with dedicated ram for PS. She went there to buy the Acer, she does not like the white colour of PB and I don;t like the brand as it had a rep some time back.

 

[LazerFazer]

A dedicated GPU for PS isn't a requirement, although there's no harm in having it. Keep in mind without a dedicated GPU PS operations will just be slower, I wouldn't expect the interface to be any less responsive though. Take a look at http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cs6-gpu-faq.html for more details. Also, keep in mind the onboard GPU in all new-ish Intel (and AMD I think, but not sure) systems is fairly powerful. Obviously not as powerful as a dedicated chip, but it does generally support the latest DirectX and OpenGL APIs.

 

[b@nD]

Dabbling

Friend just called me and she needs to buy a new laptop,
with a wee bit of photoshop on the side when required.

Please note -- personal opinion of a miserable grumpy hardware addict

IF it is only a wee bit -- then you do NOT need PS !
This is an incredibly powerful complex program for professionals ( and pretty expensive if you go the legal route )
She should use ELEMENTS
or
LIGHT ROOM 4 ( which is actually more orientated to photographers than PS )

IF you are serious about graphics then get a serious machine

DELL Precision , Alienware , IBM , Sager , HP etc etc .........
or
Stick to cooking recipes

Here are the official ADOBE specs

Comprehensive Creative Suite 5 and 5.5 Hardware Requirements

This is the best Laptop site I have been able to find

Notebook Review

Caveat Emptor

Oohh BTW -- I have not even mentioned that OTHER fruity thing that all Graphics people seem to go on about

 

[Daniedj]

Packard Bell is a division of Acer since 2008. Build seems similar. Saying I cannot find fault with a PB. Not like some Compaqs that's flexible.

I've seen a couple of Laptops with Nvidia Optimus which sounds nice in principle but I've yet to see it work correctly for me. Usually recent Intel i-x series CPU's got a GPU built into the CPU. The Nvidia chip is only activated when the driver detects that the application will benefit from switching to the Nvidia GPU. I use Freemake to convert video files. I cannot get it to use the Nvidia GPU's CUDA. It keeps on using the on-CPU Intel GPU. Not a biggie as the Laptop is quick.
PS should be a different matter as it is more wellknown than Freemake.

Today's integrated GPUs are much more usable than they were 10 years ago.

 

[encrypted]

Friend just called me and she needs to buy a new laptop, She's looking at the R4999 Acer from Makro. The laptop will mostly be used for email, browsing & your general office application with a wee bit of photoshop on the side when required.

Is a dedicated GPU required with PS products these days? I told her she'll be fine with the Acer as she'll only be editing photos on the odd occasion.

The salesman tried to flog her the Packard Bell which has a nvidia gpu with dedicated ram for PS. She went there to buy the Acer, she does not like the white colour of PB and I don;t like the brand as it had a rep some time back.

That PB does come for R500 less, with a 3g modem and 100MB/month for 12month AND 3 year on site warranty. Which is a sweet deal. However, its not an i5 and doesn't have 6gb ram. So the acer wins.

 

[Rickster]

Nvidia Quadro should do the trick....IF you had the cash and a desktop.

 

[Tun@]

The Nvidia chip is only activated when the driver detects that the application will benefit from switching to the Nvidia GPU. I use Freemake to convert video files. I cannot get it to use the Nvidia GPU's CUDA. It keeps on using the on-CPU Intel GPU.

You should be able to force it by - Nvidia Control Panel/3D settings/Manage 3d settings & select 1) & 2)
1) being the program & 2) being the dedicated GPU

 

[nanonyous]

With the exception of CS5 Extended's 3D functions that are of virtually no use to your average 'photography oriented work', only Potatoshop CS6 uses the GPU for much. It's generally used for speeding up and smoothing cropping, rotation/transform work and smoother zooming/panning. As far as I'm aware it doesn't do much else for speeding things up.

And bond, Lightroom 4 is technically not 'better suited' to photographers as it does nothing more than one could do using Photoshop's built in ACR module, just with a prettier, more streamlined interface and an effectively built-in Bridge system. Once it comes down to doing more advanced processing or editing of images, Photoshop beats it hands down.

Besides, the op hasn't even mentioned exactly what it is their friend would need PS for in the first place.

I'd sooner look at a laptop like this one, personally.
https://www.nivo.co.za/buy~gigabyte.p.series.p2532n.15.6.notebook.computer.9wp2532n.2670.750.~p30978

 

[Inn3rs3lf]

"The laptop will mostly be used for email, browsing & your general office application That's what you should focus on first. An i7, with 8Gb Ram is beyond overkill for email and browsing. No matter how much PS on the side she does. If money is no question, by all means.

Bond was just saying that lightroom was made for photography, whereas Photoshop wasn't. Not that it was better.

Tell her to take her old one into Incredible Corruption, and get a discount off the new one. (If it is still running) They are actually very well priced on certain budget ranged Laptops and netbooks.

 

[nanonyous]

"The laptop will mostly be used for email, browsing & your general office application That's what you should focus on first. An i7, with 8Gb Ram is beyond overkill for email and browsing. No matter how much PS on the side she does. If money is no question, by all means.

Bond was just saying that lightroom was made for photography, whereas Photoshop wasn't. Not that it was better.

Tell her to take her old one into Incredible Corruption, and get a discount off the new one. (If it is still running) They are actually very well priced on certain budget ranged Laptops and netbooks.

Well, sure, i7 may be 'overkill', but if the difference is around R1.5k> from R5k to R6.5k to get an i7 quad-core with HT and 8gb ram versus an otherwise similar machine that has just a dual-core i5 first-gen and 4gb of ram, I'd take it purely from a 'future-proofing' perspective alone. Relatively insignificant price difference, marked performance difference.

Also,

IF it is only a wee bit -- then you do NOT need PS !
This is an incredibly powerful complex program for professionals ( and pretty expensive if you go the legal route )
She should use ELEMENTS
or
LIGHT ROOM 4 ( which is actually more orientated to photographers than PS )

I'll repeat myself; aside from having an integrated 'bridge'-like facility in the single program suite, Lightroom 4 is offering nothing specific that Photoshop doesn't do in its ACR module for raw conversion. Photoshop, as the photo bit in its name implies, is very much a photography-oriented piece of software with the functionality it provides. The vast majority of its functionality is testament to this; any other 'design oriented' or even drawing/painting oriented features it has are merely cross-over functionality with sister products like InDesign or Illustrator; this doesn't mean it's better than either of those for the specific tasks they're suited to.

Lightroom is first and foremost a library management tool. It just happens to also have the ACR functionality built into it for processing one's photos, with very, very limited editing functionality on the side.

So in this way, Lightroom is not automatically 'better oriented for photographers' while Photoshop 'isn't'. If anything, the inverse is true - Lightroom = kiddy grade, Elements = middle school, Photoshop = high school

 

[ponder]

Tell her to take her old one into Incredible Corruption, and get a discount off the new one. (If it is still running) They are actually very well priced on certain budget ranged Laptops and netbooks.

Laptop is already purchased, her old one went to her work to be used by the admin staff.

 

[Hamrat]

Yeah, the Photoshop route is expensive. Though for photo editing Lightroom 4 is the way to go, although it has got speed issues. I would advise against it if she's only doing dabbling, as it is fairly expensive when put in perspective next to the PC.
I'd recommend GIMP/PS elements, and Windows Photo Gallery, Lightroom is mostly geared towards the pros like Photoshop is
As for a dedicated GPU, if she's dabbling, inbuilt one will suffice. If she's dealing with 30mb RAW files on a daily basis (extremely unlikely) then I'd say yes it would be advantageous to have one

 

[Hamrat]

You are forgetting Lightroom offers the convenience of ACR and Bridge in one program, so you don't have to switch to Photoshop everytime you want to edit an image

It's suited to photographers who want to do simple corrections to an image like white balance, exposure compensation corrections, watermarking, so on and so forth

For me having to process 3000 images from a weekend photoshoot in Photoshop would be torturous without Lightroom

 

[nanonyous]

I did not 'forget', I explicitly pointed it out as one differentiating factor.

Also that you use 'edit' and 'process' in the same post amuses me given the recent argument I kicked up on what constitutes editing and what constitutes processing, and how people are misusing the word 'editing'.
That being said, Lightroom may be better suited to initial processing workflow, tagging/metadata editing and library management, but that doesn't, on its own, make it the 'better oriented to photographers' tool. Depending on just what kind of photography you're doing it might actual hinder your ability to work on photos in a sense, as the bulk of your work might consist of editing that cannot be achieved in Lightroom (owing to its lack of editing tools aside from spot removal). If anything, Lightroom is a supplementary software package to render Bridge largely redundant in one's workflow; just like you could have an adjustable spanner that is not automatically better than a torque wrench, yet having the two together may improve your ability to work efficiently.


It's also worth pointing out that a dedicated GPU is not going to automatically improve performance just because you're working with '30mb raw files'; there are very few software packages for photo processing/editing that make real use of GPUs for acceleration, and even then that use is limited to a handful of functions that often constitute a very small portion of what your average user 'processing' photos would ever need.

For an active example of this, Lightroom performs no better on a GTX460 than it does on the Intel HD graphics chip present in an i3-530.

 

[Hamrat]

I did not 'forget', I explicitly pointed it out as one differentiating factor.

Also that you use 'edit' and 'process' in the same post amuses me given the recent argument I kicked up on what constitutes editing and what constitutes processing, and how people are misusing the word 'editing'.
That being said, Lightroom may be better suited to initial processing workflow, tagging/metadata editing and library management, but that doesn't, on its own, make it the 'better oriented to photographers' tool. Depending on just what kind of photography you're doing it might actual hinder your ability to work on photos in a sense, as the bulk of your work might consist of editing that cannot be achieved in Lightroom (owing to its lack of editing tools aside from spot removal). If anything, Lightroom is a supplementary software package to render Bridge largely redundant in one's workflow; just like you could have an adjustable spanner that is not automatically better than a torque wrench, yet having the two together may improve your ability to work efficiently.


It's also worth pointing out that a dedicated GPU is not going to automatically improve performance just because you're working with '30mb raw files'; there are very few software packages for photo processing/editing that make real use of GPUs for acceleration, and even then that use is limited to a handful of functions that often constitute a very small portion of what your average user 'processing' photos would ever need.

For an active example of this, Lightroom performs no better on a GTX460 than it does on the Intel HD graphics chip present in an i3-530.

Maybe I'm using the wrong terminology here, but I was agreeing with you in saying that Lightroom is targeted towards photographers.

I hear what you're saying about the GPU for Lightroom, but photoshop cs6 does benefit from a dedicated GPU with 3d rendering, so on and so forth.

I'm willing to accept I'm wrong on my points

 

[bwana]

Please note -- personal opinion of a miserable grumpy hardware addict

IF it is only a wee bit -- then you do NOT need PS !
This is an incredibly powerful complex program for professionals ( and pretty expensive if you go the legal route )
She should use ELEMENTS
or
LIGHT ROOM 4 ( which is actually more orientated to photographers than PS )

Would tend to agree with this assessment.

 

[ponder]

I also don't understand why people buy photoshop just to edit a few pics now and again, they won't come close to using 5% of it's features and power. I had a *cough* copy which I barely used and eventually just uninstalled.

 

[bwana]

I also don't understand why people buy photoshop just to edit a few pics now and again, they won't come close to using 5% of it's features and power. I had a *cough* copy which I barely used and eventually just uninstalled.

True - these days I do a solid 90%, maybe more, of my editing right in Aperture - I suspect Lightroom users do likewise - and when I roundtrip it out it's usually to a Nic Software app rather than Photoshop.

Photoshop elements should cover most of what a photographer thinks they need Photoshop proper to achieve.

 

[LazyDemoni]

I also don't understand why people buy photoshop just to edit a few pics now and again, they won't come close to using 5% of it's features and power. I had a *cough* copy which I barely used and eventually just uninstalled.

What, you mean people actually buy Photoshop?! lol, I know what you mean though. I have an artist friend who actually paints images using it and he says he tried others but nothing else is as good.

For simple photo editting, I use GIMP and UFRAW. The only supposed problem with GIMP is that it's only 8bit. I didn't even know this until someone pointed it out to me.