Lightest, smallest computer that runs lightroom

It could be worth looking at the Atom/Windows8 Tablets that will come out next year. If you want a lightweight travelling alternative.

Will they have USB3 and can they render pics in Lightroom in a reasonable time ( rendering is mainly Processor power)?

I assume that Photo Editing is too much to ask!

Here is a review of one of these new PCs. It's an Intel Win8 system running a dual core Atom with 2gb of RAM. It will run Lightroom, etc. but it is not going to be a screamer. Still it's under two pounds, probably a bit more with the optional keyboard dock.

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/review-samsung-ativ-smart-pc

The Microsoft Surface PRO which should be available next year may be a better option. About 2lbs with a keyboard cover, Core i5, 4gb RAM. That system should be comparable to other very capable ultrabooks but in smaller package.

My wife recently bought a Lenovo Yoga 13" ultrabook and it's very nice. 3lbs, touchscreen, very speedy.

It could be worth looking at the Atom/Windows8 Tablets that will come out next year. If you want a lightweight travelling alternative.

Will they have USB3 and can they render pics in Lightroom in a reasonable time ( rendering is mainly Processor power)?

I assume that Photo Editing is too much to ask!

I believe that it depends on what you want it to do!

For me it is primarily to download pics when away, rendering them into Lighroom. Then having a quick look and throwing away the obvious bad ones.

I assume that this is the typical dive vacation tasks :-) The rest is beer time/ Hammock time/Social time etc :-)

I believe that 4GB RAM is the minimum for these tasks. For more serious photo editing you will need more.

Rendering & moving over to PC is mainly a Processor task ( as long as the SD/CF card is fast enough).

Then it is just a question of processor power how fast the process will be ( clock speed and amount of cores).

Thanks again for all the feedback on this topic. I am still looking and hope to move forward with this soon. When I started this post, I was looking for a laptop that would allow me to download my pics into Lightroom while traveling and also back them up to an external hard drive while I am away. And do this all with the smallest, light weight laptop I can get away with for travel purpose.

I really like traveling with photoworkshops. I love these becuase it is ALL photographers and it makes for a great time and lots of folks to share thoughts, learn from, get tips and share photos with.

So..to ask again, what is the minimum hard drive RAM (?) that I need to get on this laptop to run lightroom? I thought it is 2GB ram - am I mistaken on this? I know that I have to carry a slim portable hard drive to save the pics on - back up to my SC cards.

Are there any new laptops coming out in the next couple of months to wait and watch for?

Thanks for all the help - DiverPam

From Adobe

System requirements

Windows

• Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
  
• Microsoft® Windows Vista or Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 or Windows 8
  
• 2GB of RAM
  
• 1GB of available hard-disk space
  
• 1024x768 display
  
• DVD-ROM drive (if installing from DVD)
  
• Internet connection required for Internet-based services*
  

Mac OS

• Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support
  
• Mac OS X v10.6.8, 10.7, or v10.8
  
• 2GB of RAM
  
• 1GB of available hard-disk space
  
• 1024x768 display
  
• DVD-ROM drive (if installing from DVD)
  
• Internet connection required for Internet-based services
  

So yes 2gb is the minimum you need but I think it will be pretty slow.

Bill

Probably 4GB of ram (memory) is needed. Storage (hard disk) is less important as you can use external for backup and archive during a trip.

Here is another option that just became available. Acer W700 tablet at 2.1 pounds for $800. (options for faster CPU) Very similar to the Surface pro, but it does not have the super cool keyboard cover of the Surface. Instead it is a tablet that comes with a Bluetooth keyboard.

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Iconia-W700-6607-11-6-Inch-Tablet/dp/B009H1BHZ0

Screen Size 11.6 inches

Max Screen Resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels

Processor 1.8 GHz Core i3-3217U

RAM 4 GB SDRAM

Hard Drive 64.0 GB SSD

Graphics Coprocessor Intel® HD Graphics 4000

Graphics Card Ram Size 128 MB

Wireless Type 802.11bgn

Number of USB 3.0 Ports 1

Average Battery Life (in hours) 9 hours

I confess I'm also curious about the Surface Pro for this application (and I'm a bit of a hater of the 'iPad' and all tablets in general, since they all seem to me to be more vehicles for consuming multimedia content vs. having much actual utility, outside of highly scripted cases...I do love my Kindle though, but that's just a digital BOOK and smaller than the 2-4 hardbacks I'd be lugging on any given week otherwise).

Would need either a handfull of really big micro SDHC cards for storage (it has a slot) or a thin external SSD...but the processor seems beefy enough, it's got 4 GB RAM and a good screen resolution for its size, and the included stylus would in my opinion be a plus for most Lightroom adjustments outside the keywording. The jelly keyboard makes it effectively a laptop if you really want to be 'typing' but doesn't add bulk, and the tablet form factor in general seems sturdier than the ultrabooks for travel slipped in a backpack or gear bag, has USB3 and a display-port for connecting to larger monitors...battery life is being predicted in the 4-5 hr range which is about on par with ultrabooks as well, although less than most 'tablets'... Price for the 128GB one is supposedly right at ultrabook $999 type levels but then you have to spring for the keyboard too.

At least it comes with a usable (for Lightroom, not turning this into a Mac-vs.-PC fight!) OS, vs. all the Mac-then-dual-boot suggestions

The biggest downside is you still need to tether to an external storage solution, whereas any ultrabook is going to have at least a 40GB or so SSD built in...

I confess on my last trip I ditched the laptop entirely and just spent an additional couple hundred to have a good SDHC card (8GB) for every dive day, swapping cards each and every day. I'd chimp and triage a few photos off the cards using the camera at night, plus gain my 'what should I try different next day' insight from that review, but told myself I wanted to enjoy my vacation vs. spending my evenings processing, as I knew I would if I had the laptop in hand. A pile of SD cards with a nice protective case is way smaller than the smallest laptop!

Surface Pro's aren't out until early next year though (don't get the Surface RT, although the formfactor is about the same if you were just curious as to its 'feel' its totally inapplicable for Lightroom), so you would have to wait if you wanted to go that route.

Sounds like there are several options coming out in the new year that are worth waiting on to check out.

Another question to add to the mix. I am used to a keyboard and have not used the tablets. What kind of difference does this make in using Lightroom and having access to all the functions? Does the lack of a keyboard change things?

DiverPam

I think you already know it will change things. The question is how much and will it be easy enough to adapt? Outside of keywords and filenames (actual typing), do you use a lot of keyboard shortcuts for Lightroom adjustments, mouse-click then keyboard for numerical adjustments, or do you use the mouse to move the sliders around? If the latter, I'd think that a stylus or touchscreen might work fine for that and you'd adjust quickly, but YMMV. Of course only a true Windows OS tablet will run the full Lightroom program, so that limits your choices a bit, and it all depends on how well they've implemented touchscreen or stylus type controls of typical mousing movements in Win 8; I have yet to try it out myself so I just don't know. The quality of the touchscreen itself also makes a difference.

Also, on the storage front, I recently ran across this: http://www.anandtech...node-320-review

Basically it's a 2.5" hard drive enclosure (can also fit a solid state drive), with USB3 connector OR built-in wireless, and even a built-in battery. Price with included 320GB HDD (which will eat the battery quicker than an SSD) isn't too unreasonable either. Sounds like it would be a great backup storage solution for any sort of tablet or ultrabook form factor. One of the things I dislike about the idea of using a tablet like Surface Pro for lightroom is if I'm in 'tablet' form-factor (not using keyboard) but still have to be tethered to storage...well, that's just going to be awkward. If using as a 'laptop' on a table with a keyboard, then I wouldn't care. But wireless external storage, now that's a great solution.... (it's funny isn't it? Instead of a 'heavy laptop' what I'm considering is basically all the pieces of a laptop but not integrated: screen, keyboard, external storage, would need external CD/DVD drive or network to a real computer to install software, etc etc etc....)

Rather than the Macbook Air, I think I would go for the 13" Macbook Pro as it would be...

... heavier, and not what Pam's asked for. My 13" is definitely too heavy in the era of excess baggage and weighed hand luggage.

I would tell anyone that they should get a minimum of 4 gigs of ram. Apple ram is very hi quality but is also expensive. When I buy a new computer I get it with the least amount of ram I can and then order the ram I want from Crucial. Ramjet is also good. Both companies make very high quality ram and are considerably less expensive. I have never had a problem with any of the ram cards I have ever purchased or was given.

Since the wetpixel upgrade, the posts over the last few days are gone. So wanted to update you ....I did it! Finally ordered my laptop. I got an Asus 11.6" Zenbook Ultrabook, i7 processor, 4 GB memory and 128 SSD, Windows 7 OS.

I decided to go with the 11" screen after comparing them side by side in the store. There was just enough difference for me in the comparison to make it worth it for travel. Since this is not my primary computer and for travel, I felt this fit my with my original requirements well. My eyes are actually uncrossed now...have not looked at computer specs in a few days.

I could not have done this without all of your help and input. Your information has been invaluable to me during this process. Thanks for putting up with my questions. Now just waiting on UPS to arrive with my new laptop.

Happy diving and photography - Pam

Thanks for the (restored) update. My Surface Pro 128G arrives soon, and I've verified Lightroom's license permits 2 installs per copy; its never been anywhere but my desktop so that'll be about the first thing I load to the Surface. After the obligatory playing around with the new toy period....

(I actually got tired of waiting for mine to arrive and went to a local Best Buy to check them out earlier this week, and they had three of the 64GB versions left...after playing a while there I bought one and presented it to the wife. Only about 30GB available storage, but that can be bumped a tad by moving the recovery stuff all to a USB drive, and with a 64 GB microSD card she's back to a respectable 100GB storage for her purposes -- mostly Office, continuous donations to the iTunes Borg Collective, Netflix and social media. She'd probably have been OK with the RT, but I wanted the flexibility of a 'real' Windows computer for her just in case. Expensive way to soften the opposition to my getting a new toy... but she's very happy with it so far. The screen is pretty amazing, frankly, for the size, and the soft touchtype cover really does work despite no 'tactile' feedback (moving keys). I'm quite impressed and looking forward to my own.)

@DiverPam: The ASUS Zenbook 11.6" is a great little Laptop ( Ultrabook). Congrats!

I am very happy with mine so far!

/Erik

Update on using the Surface Pro for a Lightroom engine (128 GB version). The short version: it works, probably acceptably for travel use, but its a bit slow / small to be really satisfying for that purpose beyond travel use.

First the upsides.

• Screen is superb, crisp, good color gamut, and appears well calibrated out of the box.
• Comes with a stylus which makes for a quite useful tablet-mode 'mouse' substitute to do editing without requiring a bluetooth mouse. The touchpad on the touch keyboard also works better than I was lead to believe from reviews. But the stylus is really nice - the capacitive sensor in the screen is sensitive enough to the stylus that you get a floating cursor indication just holding the stylus near (and that also turns off finger gestures, so if a finger intrudes into the edge of the screen it's not registered as another touch for a pinch gesture or whatnot). One thing this makes possible is 'closing' both sidebars in Lightroom by default, because just hovering the stylus near them activates the auto-open so a single click on a setting, then move away, and you can use all the screen real estate for the image being edited (although I do tend to leave the current batch filmstrip across the bottom open as well).
• Ditto for the touch keyboard itself - despite being a nonmoving keyboard (no actual button mechanism) you do have enough of a ridged texture for a tactile feedback that your fingers are on the keys, and it works surprisingly well, even ignoring palm rests but still registering finger taps. Any errors I have with the keyboard are more related to the fact that it's small and I'm used to a full-size keyboard I fly on at work, so I tend to 'overthrow' my fingers and hit for example backspace or backslash when I was after "=" or "Enter". For those who must have tactile motion response, the 'typepad' exists, but after playing with one in the store, I found it didn't help me any compared to the touch cover.
• The WiFi does work fine with the Patriot Node enclosure I also bought, letting me move pics to and from an 256 GB SSD wirelessly instead of being limited to storage 'on' the device directly. The micro SDXC card slot also works with a 32 GB card, but I configured mine as a virtual hard drive that automounts and that slows down storage to it (I did the dynamically resizable VHD option, which is slower at runtime and also required NTFS vs. exFAT which shortens life a little bit perhaps). Overall storage "on" the 128GB Surface Pro with the 32 GB card is on the order of 110-115 GB (the 128 GB is really only about 120GB since they call 1e9 bytes = 1GB, you lose about 28GB to the OS and programs plus the recovery partition, which I chose not to delete although I did make a USB recovery drive, then add the card back in with a little overhead held back on it as well for errors.
• The included full-size USB3 port is nicely fast, letting me use a very compact (Kingston Mobilite G3) card reader to get photos off the camera, or if your camera supports USB3 you could do it via cabling.
• Charges nice and fast, about 60-90 min, included charger hardware is nice and small (and 110-240V capable), and includes a USB port to charge additional accessories as well. Far smaller than the typical laptop charger bricks I was used to.
• Although compared to a true tablet the Surface Pro is thicker and heavier, I found no difficulties using it handheld in tablet mode for as long as the battery held out to do so. It never got unacceptably warm while processing images, and the fan noise through the sort of hidden 'ridge vent' that circles the perimeter was never intrusive to me. (I did play a game that really taxed the video capabilities to hear what it's like at full bore, and it does become audible then, but never hit that level of thermal load running Lightroom.)
• I've had no errors of any kind running Lightroom 4.3 (have not yet loaded 4.4). The Surface Pro is running full Windows 8 so I shouldn't have expected any, but it probably does have kind of a unique driver load.

Downsides:

• Although this is a multicore i5 processor, with 4GB RAM, processing is a little slower than I would like. I chalk this up to the integrated graphics. Probably fast enough for travel where luggage space is a premium, but if I'm not travelling I can tell I'll be going to the 'real' desktop vs. doing editing while sitting in an armchair downstairs, beyond perhaps just initial tagging and keywording.
• The overall form factor is smaller than I thought it would be, once you start using it. (Which is funny, because the biggest negative review of the Surface Pro seems to be that its too big to be a 'real' tablet.) The screen resolution is fabulous, but that means the interface text is TINY. And sometimes trying to get the stylus right on the one or two pixel border to drag and reshape the toolbar area is a serious effort, like playing that game "Operation" on a touchscreen! I suspect an 11" laptop use would have some of the same frustration.
• Although the Surface Pro is billed as having a full Wacom-like pressure sensitive digitizer and stylus....its not really pressure sensitive for Adobe products right now, only a couple of Microsoft apps. Basically they rolled their own, vs. truly using the Wacom drivers. They claim that feature is coming....but updates on a timeline have been few and far between. Promised since about early Feb with the actual launch and still no known release date.
• Battery life is a bit shorter than I'd like while processing images. I'd say I got 2-3 hrs of really solid use before I needed to plug in. Probably enough for travel, any longer than that and I'd prop it on a table with the kickstand and have a keyboard on it, which means I'd also not mind finding an outlet.
• Which brings me to the kickstand angle when using it in 'laptop' mode on a tabletop. I find it holds the screen just a tad to close to vertical for my comfortable viewing. I'm 6'2", fairly long in the body vs. the legs, so my 'seated height' has me kind of looking down on it more than I want. I do wear bifocals so at least looking thru the bottom portion of my glasses works, but I keep wanting to push it further away from me on a desk or table of typical height than I feel is comfortable (for keyboard and touchpad access) to make the viewing angle feel better. Makes me hunch down to get lower and cock my head back when using it this way, which of course is bad for the posture (especially in evenings between dives, since I tend to get a little stiff-necked from tipping my head back trying to get my face against my (Ike) housing viewfinder port on dive trips already...this might accelerate the purchase of a 45 deg viewfinder ).
• This might be more a Win8 complaint in general, but "Libraries" such as photos or music won't let you add directories on 'removable' drives to the automatically searched locations that builds its database. Yet they consider a USB3 thumbdrive 'not removable', but the SDXC slot...is not??? Of the two, on a tablet formfactor, I'd tend to see a thumbdrive as a way more temporary attachment to a microSD completely hidden in an internal slot! So to include photos on the SDXC in your library, you have to hack around that limitation: create a VHD (virtual hard drive) file on the SDXC, set up an auto-mount on boot task to mount it, and you can assign that 'drive' as a location to search for the library databasing. Silly and counterproductive, since the VHD file requires reformatting the card to NTFS vs. the exFAT that microSD cards prefer. This only matters because you are sort of storage limited on the Surface Pros, and I for one would rather put all my music (about 11GB, just encoded as middle-of-the-road bitrate WMA) on the SDXC to leave the onboard SSD available for programs and documents and the like.
• Windows 8 is kind of schitzophrenic with being all touchy-feely-swipey-pinchy in "app" mode, but not so much in 'desktop mode'. Lightroom of course operates from the desktop mode. Some gestures do sort of seem to work (pinch to zoom being one) but seem laggy. I think I'll use this less as a 'touchscreen' and more as if my stylus is a mouse, since you can both left-tap and right-tap with it (side button on stylus makes a tap act as a mouse 'rightclick'). This isn't a complaint specific to the Surface Pro, but I'd sure like to see Adobe adding a lot more gestural features to improve the usability model for touchscreens (or Windows 8 blurring the line between App and Desktop operations...either way).
• In 'desktop' mode the onscreen keyboard (accessed with a little taskbar button quite efficiently) 'overlays' the desktop. Wish Win8 would let you rotate the Surface Pro into 'portrait' mode and just 'shrink' the desktop to say a 4:3 aspect ratio that fills the top portion of the screen, and put the onscreen keyboard BELOW that space. So keyword entry, filename entry, etc. while using Lightroom on the Surface in 'tablet' mode (no attached keyboard) means temporarily obscuring the screen and losing the flow. If I could use the whole 9:16 screen real-estate (in portrait) as a 4:3 desktop or even a square 1:1 desktop, I'd still have quite acceptable resolution and plenty of space for the keyboard on screen below.

I don't regret the purchase at all, I find I'm using it a lot to surf the web and such downstairs with the wife while she watches her shows, where I would otherwise have retreated to the upstairs desktop. I look forward to bringing it on my dive trip in a couple of weeks and using it on a liveaboard - I think the smallness of it will make it viable whereas I wasn't even planning on trying to do any photo triage if I was restricted to our older 15.7" boat anchor HP Pavilion laptop. (My last photo trip I just bought an 8GB SD card for each day's shooting so a flood wouldn't cost me anything but that day's images, and did only basic chimping/pruning in camera, holding all post and showoff to after the trip.) I won't feel like a table hog in the galley at all, since I can use it in tablet mode. We can also use it as a personal DVD player (32GB USB3 memory stick holds plenty of movie selections) in our cabin. I'm also strongly debating not bringing my Kindle and just using this to read on, even though I've always said I don't want to "read" an LCD, I like the e-ink.

I'll post any updates after that trip, if it significantly modifies my opinion in either direction, but right now I'd suggest to those who are SERIOUS about wanting to do Lightroom processing on trips - maybe wait and see what the next Surface Pro model looks like vs. this first one, and see if the expected spec bump (and evolution of W8) are 'there yet'. Or consider one of the actual ultrabook laptops. The current model seems like its just a bit too far to one side the size vs. functionality curve to satisfy all but the most space-frugal.

Nice review!

I am of the opinion that the graphics have nothing to do with the speed of Lightroom. I do use the internal graphics on my i7-desktop ( and too much RAM). It is blazing fast with LR4, even with my D800 photos. ( Some filters in Photoshop uses the Graphics. ) I decided against external graphics, due to higher noise levels.

The processors in the portables are nowadays mainly the ULV ( Ultra Low Voltage) versions. The performance are a bit lower, but the battery life longer.

I believe that LR mainly needs a fast Processor and secondly RAM.

I am bringing the ASUS Zenbook 11.6" on a photo vacation soon. I am interested how I will find that it deals with the huge D800 RAW files. My tests at home looks good. The downside on it is that it is impossible to increase the RAM.

/Erik

Yeah, I have the same RAM issue with the Surface Pro - no expandability. There's also a new driver download for the graphics card that might let me tweak performance a bit more. I'll see if that makes any difference, and I did throttle my CPU to 95% of 'max' performance when plugged in, 85% when unplugged, to help thermal reliability, so I was artificially hobbling myself a little.

I tend to agree with you that Lightroom should be more memory/CPU limited than graphics card limited, but the (don't call it "Aero" anymore) Windows desktop rendering engine since Vista treats even windows as 2D pictures in a 3D rendered plane, has window frame transparency capability, etc. I found a page that suggested Lightroom 4.1 wasn't coded for GPU-acceleration, and haven't found anything newer than that to suggest 4.4 is either, but there might still be some influence from the fact that your RAM is shared with the integrated graphics. The only other suggestions I've found for speedup involve tweaking the cache memory for Lightroom some, which I haven't tried yet either.

My tests were with shots from my Sony A99 also which is 24 MP, all RAW files. My underwater camera remains the A55 though at a much smaller file size.

I think I'll be satisfied for the trip, but some of my earlier posts about the S-Pro were kind of 'enthusiastic' so I wanted to temper those a little with the review. Of course anyone who makes a toy purchased based on some other anonymous idiot's postings had already made up their mind and was just looking for agreement, but at least my conscience is clear. Maybe this thread can morph into some settings suggestion to optimize Lightroom use now that we've selected fairly aggressively small and lightweight systems of various flavors....

Hello, I am new to this forum and I have a similar question. I am a photographer. I've recently upgraded my Lightroom and Photoshop and my 5 year old computer is suffocating. I am thinking of buying a new model that will fly with the new image processing tools. The performance and reliability is my preference. I don't know which is better - a desktop or a laptop. If the laptop I don't have any preference to its weight since I am mostly going to use it in the office. All my applications are Windows based, but from this thread I understood it shouldn't be a problem to switch to Mac if that is the only option I have. I am not extremely technical, also I've changed hard drives, a fan and RAM a few times. My preference is the fully assembled unit with the OS installed. What would this nice community recommend for me? Thank you!

When I first had my Mac, I was running Lightroom and Photoshop CS4 on Windows within the Mac until I got Lightroom and Photoshop CS5 for the Mac.

 

VirtualBox is what's known as a virtual machine. You could actually run any operating system you want inside it. I happen to have Windows 7 64-bit running. You will need to install Windows inside VirtualBox which means you need the Windows DVD and license key which you hopefully have from your existing machine.

 

Andy

There isn't really "Lightroom for Mac" since the same license key will unlock either version. So if LR is your only concern, switching is easy. I suspect if you are on Adobe CC, the same is true.

The Mac hardware and OS really is nice, but there are reasons to stay with PC.

Below are the "official" Adobe Lightroom system requirements (which I got from the B&H site).

 

What are your thoughts about these requirements given Pam (and my) need for a fast and super light weight traveling computer (or MAC) that can run Lightroom. Do these requirements need to be enhanced to make the SW run efficiently? What do these systems REALLY need? (ie: what processor, how much RAM, etc.. I'm not sure about PAM but I'll be taking 16+/- mp RAW photos and I will be on a liveaboard.

 

 

Mac OS:

Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support

Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.7

2.0 GB of RAM

1.0 GB of available hard-disk space

1024 x 768 display

DVD-ROM drive

Internet connection required for Internet-based services

My Mac with 4 GB of RAM *really* bogs down when making 1:1 previews in LR. Basically becomes unusable while it's doing that because it swaps out everything else. So if I could start that process and then go to dinner, I could use the machine again when it's done. I'd suggest 8 GB for LR if at all possible (and I put 16 GB in my desktop).

The DVD-ROM is completely unnecessary. You can download the Lightroom trial edition and then just type in the License key. I own the DVDs of LR2/3/4/5 and I suspect only #2 has ever come out of the case.