Photoshopping laptops

Because I spend so much of my life immersed in graphics software, and because I've got the geek creds, I'm frequently asked to recommend hardware that's suitable for digital imaging. Usually, that means laptops that can handle the rigors of Photoshop. So here's my take, circa summer of 2007.

First of all, any decent laptop can run Photoshop these days. In fact, I run it--all of Adobe Creative Suite 3, plus Photoshop Lightroom--on a Dell Latitude D420. It's hardly what I'd call a graphics powerhouse, but when I bought it about six months ago, I was looking for the lightest system possible for less than $2,000 to replace my dead-but-still-ultralight Panasonic Toughbook T2. Optimally, however, you want a system with the fastest available dual-core CPU; support for more than 2GB of RAM; a large, fast hard drive (120GB or larger; fastest available); a large, high-resolution display (17 inches or better); and a good, discrete graphics subsystem. If you have to make trade-offs, I suggest you sacrifice size for speed on the hard disk. You can always offload files to a slower USB hard drive, but you need Photoshop's scratch disk to be fast. You don't need to worry about the amount of graphics memory for the GPU--even CS3, which is the first version to take advantage of the acceleration routines in the graphics chip, doesn't need all that much. If you're running CS2 or earlier you may not see much benefit at all to the discrete chip, but it future-proofs you if you want to upgrade. (Oh, and personally, I recommend sticking with Windows XP or OS X and passing on Vista if possible. It just sucks up system resources and adds byzantine security overhead with little added benefit for the high-end imaging crowd. For consumers, it's a slightly different story.)

I've put together some suggested configurations for various budgets, plus one for Photoshoppers on the go who prefer a laptop under 4 pounds.

Suggested configurations:

Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch

Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch