I see this all the time. I need to get a new computer, but I don’t know where to start. So what is my advice on buying a computer for photo editing? When it comes to buying a computer for photo editing, there’s A LOT to consider. One of the easier choices is simply whether to get a desktop or laptop. That will depend on your lifestyle. If you’re comfortable staying at home, go with a desktop computer. If you like to travel, go with a laptop. Phew, that was the easy part, and if you are fortunate enough, get both.
In this article:
- Dan’s Recommendations
- Form Factor
- Processors
- Photo RAW
- Memory
- Video Card
- Display
- Storage
- What About Upgrading What I Have?
From there, the decisions to be made get more and more technical. How much memory do I need? Is spending more for a faster hard drive or a bigger video card? Why can’t Dan come with me when I’m ready to buy a new computer?
Luckily, I will dig into all the components and talk about what’s essential for which kinds of tasks when using ON1 Photo RAW. While this article is specific to the needs and traits of ON1 Photo RAW, these are also universally applicable to most other photo editing software options. Read on to discover the best laptop and desktop computers for photo editing! Don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions.
Dan’s Recommendations
Before we dig into all the components of the best computer for photo editing and what they do, some of you are probably saying, tell me what to buy. Okay, if all the computer terms and options are too much for you, here are my suggestions for a few computers that will work well with ON1 Photo RAW or other image editing applications right out of the box. Any of these configurations should serve you well for at least five years.
| Windows 10 | macOS | |
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| Desktop |
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| Laptop |
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Form Factor
First, let’s discuss the form factor. Should you get a laptop or a desktop? This goes a little deeper than just the choice of lifestyle. Laptops are portable but generally cost more, have smaller screens, less storage, and have less powerful video cards. But again, if you need to travel, they are a must. You can easily overcome the smaller screen and less storage by adding a nice external display and hard drive when you are not traveling. Until recently, there wasn’t much you could do to improve the video card on a laptop other than buying a good one, but with eGPU enclosures nowadays, you can upgrade your video card to desktop power levels.
| Pros | Cons | |
|---|---|---|
| Desktop |
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| Laptop |
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Processors
The processor, or CPU, is the “brain” of the computer in simple terms. It’s where your operating system and applications work. The faster the processor, the quicker it can work. Again, that’s in straightforward terms. Today most processors have multiple cores. Each core is capable of doing work. It’s like having multiple brains, assuming the application you are running knows how to take advantage of every core. Photo RAW uses the processor in three key areas. The first is browsing and opening photos. This opening or decoding step pulls the bits out of storage and assembles them in memory to work on them. Having multiple cores allows Photo RAW to work on multiple photos simultaneously. For example, if you are browsing JPG photos for the first time, we can quickly extract embedded previews by accessing one JPG for every core. So instead of getting thumbnails one at a time, you can get them six at a time if you have six cores. The same idea works when you are opening most file types; we can split up the work across multiple cores to make opening a single photo faster. Of course, this all depends on how fast your storage is, more on that later.
The second place the processor matters is when you export in the background. When you use the Quick Export or Export Now options, we can usually use the GPU, which is much faster than the CPU for image processing. However, if you use the Background Export option, this is done in the CPU and only with half of the available processor cores. This keeps resources available so you can continue working, but the export process will take much longer. As a rule of thumb, only use Background Export if you need to do more work in Photo RAW and aren’t in a hurry to access your exported photos.
The last place the CPU matters is when using Resize and Panorama. Resize uses the Genuine Fractals algorithm, which is only performed in the CPU. This hugely intensive process can be made much faster by having multiple cores.
There is another case where the CPU is heavily taxed if you have a weak video card. We always prefer to use the video card (GPU) for image processing. Still, we simply can’t do so on some old or underpowered video cards (such as Intel® Integrated Graphics) with little dedicated VRAM. In those cases, we fall back to the CPU. You can tell if this is the case on your computer by looking at the preferences. If the GPU Render option is off and disabled, your video card is the culprit in holding back performance in Photo RAW.
Photo RAW
When it comes to buying advice for a processor, I recommend choosing more cores over speed. A quick way to think about this is to multiply the processor speed by the number of cores and pick the higher amount. For example, we score an eight for a 4GHz processor with two cores. Compare that to a 3GHz processor with six cores giving you a score of 18 even though it is slower, the additional cores more than make up for it. This is a simplified view of how this works, and I’m sure there are plenty of electrical engineers who would point out the finer points I’m skipping over.
Memory
When choosing the best laptop computer for photo editing, it is imperative that your computer has enough ram. The memory holds onto what you are currently working on. As the processor works, it pulls bits out of memory, doing the calculations and putting them back in the memory. With the advent of GPU processing, ON1 Photo RAW needs way less memory. Don’t get me wrong, more memory will make certain things like browsing and toggling between photos faster, but having 16GB vs. 32GB isn’t going to make a big difference in your daily work. ON1 Photo RAW will use as much memory as you allow it. For example, extra memory lets Photo RAW store more previews for Browse, making the experience faster. This also allows ON1 to hold on to recently edited photos, making them faster to load if you need to return them quickly.
That said, most of us don’t work simultaneously in a single application. We have ON1 Photo RAW running, Photoshop, our email client, web browser, music, etc. Each app needs some of your memory and may use quite a bit of it. If you multitask or if you use ON1 Photo RAW as a Photoshop plugin, lean towards getting more memory. On the plus side, memory is inexpensive and not hard to upgrade on most computers. For ON1 Photo RAW, I recommend at least 16GB.
Video Card
Okay, this is where the rubber meets the road. The video card is one of the most important things when choosing the best computer for photo storage and editing. The video card, or GPU, is where we prefer to do most of the image processing. It is much faster than the CPU for these kinds of tasks. A sound video card will give you the most significant boost in performance. This is critical when considering purchasing a computer. Especially if you decide on a computer where you can’t change the video card, like a Mac or a laptop.
When looking for a video card, it can be hard stuff. If you zip over to Amazon, you will see “gaming” video cards starting at $50 and going to over $600. How do you know if you are getting a good one? Well, there are a couple of other factors to consider.
The first is the number and size of displays you plan to drive with it. Using a single 1080p display, you can get by with an inexpensive card (NVIDIA GTX-1060 or AMD Radeon RX 570) with VRAM as low as 2GB. However, if you are driving multiple 1080p displays or a single 4K display, you will want a more powerful card (NVIDIA GTX-1080 or AMD Radeon RX Vega 56) with 4GB or more VRAM. Keep in mind that a single 4K display is equal to the work of four 1080p displays! If you purchase a higher-end card, you must consider whether your computer case is large enough and if your power supply can drive it. The common mini-tower cases that most off-the-shelf PCs come in are not large enough, and their 200 Watt power supplies are not strong enough to power high-end cards. The amount of VRAM is essential. The more VRAM you have, the more we can store in it and operate on it at once. Shuffling data in and out of the video card is slow, so keeping more in the VRAM improves performance.
Before considering an upgrade to your current video card, Windows users have a couple of things to check. First, make sure you are using the correct video card. Some computers have both onboard integrated graphics and more powerful discrete graphics cards. This is common on gaming laptops and an increasing number of desktops. If ON1 Photo RAW can detect a discrete video card, it will use it, but sometimes the better video card is disabled or has the incorrect drivers installed to take advantage of it. We’ve provided a post about How to Update Video Card Driver and Set Default GPU to help with this.
Today, there is another option for video cards. If you have a laptop, macOS computer, or a Windows computer where you don’t want to upgrade the case and power supply, you can get an eGPU or external GPU. An eGPU enclosure is a box that can house a high-end modern video card as an external peripheral. They are about the size of a breadbox and connect to your computer with a Thunderbolt 3 connection. Your computer needs to be new enough to have Thunderbolt 3 for this to work. Starting around $500, you can combine a powerful desktop-class video card and enclosure to boost your editing performance to a whole new level.
Display
The display, or monitor, is your window to your photos, you are going to spend a lot of time looking very closely at it, so don’t skimp on this item. If you are purchasing a laptop or all-in-one, you are stuck with the built-in display panels. However, you can always add another display. If you are purchasing a desktop computer, the choice is yours. First, decide on the size and resolution of the screen you want. Today, 4k displays are quite common, but their performance and quality vary quite a bit. While 4k displays can be beautiful, you need to ensure that your video card can adequately service them. Some 4k displays can only refresh at 30Hz, half the speed of standard displays. If you are sensitive to flickering or do quick brushing or panning, you will see some stickiness.
The surface of the display can also have an impact. Some displays have panels sealed behind glass and have a glossy finish. These tend to protect the display panel, are easier to clean, and can have a deeper black appearance. They will also reflect light facing the display and can cause glare. Matte surface displays don’t have the glare issue but tend to have a weaker black point unless you are working in a dark space. Displays designed for graphic arts often have a larger gamut or range of colors they can show. This is often shown as a percentage of Adobe RGB 1998 that it can display. No matter what display you choose, it would help if you characterized it (profile it) with a custom display profile using an external colorimeter tool, such as an X-Rite i1. This will ensure that your displays’ colors and tones are accurate to what is in the file.
Storage
How you store your photos and videos greatly impacts performance, especially when browsing. Many photographers store photos across various external drives. Depending on the speed and interface of those drives, it can make a big difference in browsing and opening files. If you’ve had an old spinning hard disk for four or more years, it is likely a 4200 RPM drive in a USB 2 enclosure. A drive like this can read about 50MB/s, whereas a modern SSD using USB 3 can be 10x faster. You can see how simply upgrading your storage to SSD can have a huge impact. If your system volume (c: drive) isn’t an SSD, moving your browser cache location to a fast SSD will also make browsing much faster. You can check out our blog to learn more about catalogs and caches. When choosing the best computer for storage and photo editing, don’t worry about storage.
Always think about your backup strategy when you think about storage. Keeping your photos spread across multiple drives can lead to unintended duplicates, lost edits, and lost photos if a drive fails. I always recommend a backup strategy that includes redundant drives in different physical locations that sync together. A cloud storage provider like Dropbox or BackBlaze provides a great solution to back up and access multiple computers. However, cloud-based solutions can be expensive if you are a prolific RAW shooter. Hardware solutions with multiple redundant drives (RAID 0) are also a good option. It’s two hard drives in one, where they are mirror images of each other. If one drive dies, the other drive still has a backup of everything. In our studio, we use a fast RAID 0 drive to store the originals, which is backed up to a NAS (network-attached storage) in a different location. This gives us two back-ups in two different locations that all stay synchronized.
What About Upgrading What I Have?
When does it make sense to upgrade your computer versus just buying a new one? That decision is often easier with a laptop or Mac due to the limitations of what you can upgrade. If you can’t upgrade the video card, if the boot volume isn’t an SSD, if you can’t upgrade the memory, or if you can’t update to the latest operating systems, you probably need to purchase a new computer. If you have a Windows desktop computer and the processor is less than three years old, it’s relatively easy to upgrade the memory, storage, and video card and make big performance improvements. Leave a comment if you have any questions about finding the best computer for photo editing, and browse our website for RAW photo editing software, Photoshop plugins, and photo editing training.
21 comments on “The Best Computers for Photo Editing”
On February 18, 2020 at 1:26 pm David Price wrote:
Hi Dan
Very interesting and useful information. I will certainly be copying it and keeping it ready for when I might be able to upgrade.
(1) Does the more cores the better principal, apply equally whether you have an Intel or an AMD CPU?
(2) Hudson recomended using plug in SSD drives, (as cache drives), to boost the performance of Photo Raw. They are not mentioned above, other than as SSD Boot Drives. Are they still needed ?
and
(3) I have had to give up on Catalogues, simply because my laptop keeps on re-scanning the catalogues, again and again, until the CPU is so overloaded that photo editing is simply not possible. Is there a solution to this behaviour, and will the above mentined specifications be guaranteed to make cataloguing possible?
Best wishes
David Price
On February 19, 2020 at 11:29 am Dan Harlacher replied:
Hi David,
Yes, multiple cores on AMD processors work the same. We have a couple Ryzen machines that we test on. We don’t have a Threadripper yet, but would love to try it out.
Putting your Browse cache on an SSD is a smart way to make Browse faster. By default we use the boot disk location. If you boot disk isn’t an SSD, or you are short on space, then adding an external SSD and setting your Browse cache there will help.
For your issue with Cataloged folders, that certainly shouldn’t be happening. If you would be so kind as to contact tech support we can try to solve that. We are tracking an issue on Windows that sounds similar but we need help reproducing it.
On February 20, 2020 at 10:25 am David Price replied:
Hi Dan
Thanks for the response.
I had given up on catalogues. But, this afternoon, I have ceated a new catalogue to watch one of my plug in drives. It has since settled back into the pattern of continually recataloguing the drive.
I have submitted a request to ON1 Support.
Best wishes David Price
On February 19, 2020 at 6:02 pm Sarath wrote:
Thank you very much for the valuable information. I would like ask you a question regarding CPUs and GPUs. Does ON1 Photo Raw support multiple CPUs and or GPUs. As tasks are getting bigger, I am planing to move work to desktops (Currently ON1 PR is on two laptops, both windows and Mac).
I have access to multiple desktops with some having dual CPUs and 2-6 GPUs (Mac Pro with single CPU and dual GPU, Windows with Dual Xeon and 6xNVIDIA 1080i). Will the move to one of these machines benefit me? if so which one is the better choice?. I would like to keep the number of machines that run ON1 to two, a laptop and a desktop.
Thank you very much for you time.
On February 24, 2020 at 1:37 pm Dan Harlacher replied:
For multiple CPUs, yes it works the same. For GPUs, at this time we don’t support multiple GPUs. It is something we are considering. The technologies for that are in flux right now, we will probably wait for that to settle down a bit first.
On February 19, 2020 at 9:40 pm marc labro wrote:
hello,
I have a NUC8i7HVK2 with 32GB ram and an embedded Radeon RX Vega M GH Graphics. Lightroom and Photoshop and other plugins are quite fluent now.
PR2020 is nice but still slow and the blur display of image when i am brushing is tedious.
Is it a good graphic card for PR2020 ?
I have currently a problem of driver with OpenCL and try to have better drivers on Intel forums. OpenCL is a new name i didn’t know which seems possible with this card but in photoshop performances opencl is disabled and so, oil painting filter also.
It seems many people complain on Google with this open CL in adobe applications.
marc
On February 24, 2020 at 1:52 pm Dan Harlacher replied:
That video card is an integrated one on the latest high-end Intel chips I think. It looks pretty capable from the specs. I would turn off the Fast Preview option in the preferences, that will stop blurring the preview while you brush. OpenCL is a framework that lets the CPU and GPU share the same tasks. We don’t use it for anything we do, only OpenGL which all in the GPU, similar to a modern game.
On February 22, 2020 at 5:49 pm Magnus Wilson wrote:
Hi,
I just replaced my GTX 1080Ti 11BG for a Quadro P4000 to get full color depth on my Dell UP3216Q. I actually feel the photos load faster in Edit, but it could be personal “new-buyer’s” bias ;-). On the 4K screen, there are sometimes a small but noticable lag when adjusting sliders (already on GTX 1080 as well). I run On1 with Dual-screen mode (2K screen in Gridview).
Would On1 be able to utilize a double GPU configuration, if I keep GTX1080Ti for my other display (a 2K Dell 8-bit color)? Or will I instead face other Windows problems running 2 GPUs? If running 2 GPUs, is it better to connect one screen to each GPU or both screens to the P4000 card (and just use GTX 1080 as raw calculating power)?
I originally planed to sell the GTX 1080 to pay for the 2nd hand P4000 I bought…
Magnus
PS! I have a matching I9-9900K,3.6GHz plus Intel M2 disc with 2 separate partitions (C: and Q: with scratch+cache, the drive is SUPER fast > 1200Mb/s). My photos (I edit) reside on a 1TB USB3 SSD, so I feel the system is now working very well with Sony A7R2 compressed Raw (42MB/photo). However, often after editing for an hour or so, ON1 suddenly hangs…haven’t found any common denominator yet :-(.
Also, I don’t run cataloged folders (yet), but I regularly move all finished photos to a slower NAS storage solution (as negatives, and exported JPGs for the best photos). I’m only using On1 now, but I’m still in transition from many years of using LR. When I catch up, I plan to use cataloging…
On February 24, 2020 at 1:54 pm Dan Harlacher replied:
Interesting question. That’s not a configuration we have tested. Talking out team here they suspect that will work, but each video card will be an island if you will, each holding its own version of photos in VRAM rather than sharing. I’m not sure there will be a huge win on having a high-end card just for grid view.
On February 28, 2020 at 3:40 pm Merle Becker wrote:
Just want to say thanks Dan for this article, so beneficial. Really helps me to say ok if I did want to bump up here’s what I need to research. Thankfully, I am more of just let me and it work. Impressive effort on your and the company’s part to reach out like this.
On February 29, 2020 at 12:03 pm Michael Schrijnder wrote:
Hi Dan,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and specific knowledge of ON1 PR requirements as I am looking to upgrade to something new (specifically for ON1).
Currently running PR ON1 as my only Photo editor on a laptop with an i7-4710HQ 2.5/3.5GHz 4-core/8-thread and a GeForce GTX850M – 2Gb dedicated VRAM and a single 2TB Samsung EVO860 (boot/Win 10/photos/browse cache). The performance is a sort of OK considering the age of the laptop (appr. 5 years). Loading of the bigger HDR-panos (appr. 1Gb) though takes 5-10 secs to load.
Just a small remark regarding your explanation regarding disks. There seems to be a mistake (or I don’t understand your explanation). RAID0 is striping data across multiple drives and if one fails, all data on these drives is lost, but it is (very) fast. RAID1 will take care of an exact copy of the same data on each drive and if one fails, your data on these drives is not lost, but because of multiplication of the data it will be a bit slower. Best for performance and safeguard for loss of data is RAID0+1 (especially with spinning disks), but this would required a minimum of 4 disks.
If speed is of the essence then a NVMe (e.g. Intel Optane) will win from a regular SATA SSD and then sync/backup your work to another regular disk/NAS/cloud for safeguarding.
Anyway: thanks a lot for giving me the information I require and actually answering some questions I had in/for my decision process.
On March 2, 2020 at 12:34 pm Brian Lowe wrote:
Thanks Dan — this was just what i needed – as i am planning to upgrade soon.
I do find that the CPU of my current computer Dell XPS 9100 -Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz Cores 4, Video Card – ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series with 1 GB video memory, Work very hard when running ON1 2020, it revs up and down continuously.
Would i be right to assume more memory on the Video card would help?
Thanks
On March 3, 2020 at 7:08 pm Joel Retholtz wrote:
I’m looking for a new system to run On1 Raw 2020. I’m between a Ryzen 9 3900 and and Intel’s i9 9900k. I’m leaning towards the Ryzen for the greater number of cores however Intel has a quick sync function on their i9 which is incredibly fast if the program supports it. Where in On1 in relation to this?
Also, I was planning on an Nvidia RTX 2020 Super however after your explanation of GPU processing I think the money would be better spent increasing to the RTX 2020 ti and dropping system memory from 64 to 32 gig. I can always easily increase memory in the future if needed.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks
On March 18, 2020 at 9:18 am Michael Schrijnder replied:
Hi Joel,
I am looking for a new workstation as well. Either a iMac or a Windows based system. The Windows based system I was also looking at the Ryzen 3950X because of cores, with 32 GB memory. The graphics card I am leaning towards the NVidia RTX 2080 with 8 Gb of memory. This because of the # of cores and the 8Gb of memory as On1 PR can make use of the graphics card and certainly the memory in it. Just did not make up my mind as I need to “clear” my living room from any computer as we only have a small apartment….. So putting everything down with a Windows based system will be a sort of a hassle, and the iMac you just put it on the table and one cable and voila …. But then again a Windows based system and component specs are very attractive from a performance point of view and price point (as Apple is very expensive on “extras” which should be ” normal” for us as photographers. So, still brewing ……… 🙂
On April 2, 2020 at 5:26 pm Greg Huber wrote:
Hey Dan. I’m migrating from Lightroom to On1. On Lightroom I have my Catalog file on an SSD and my pictures on an HDD, which is Scott Kelby’s recommendation for speeding up Lightroom. What is the equivalent configuration for On1 to have all my sidecar editing happening on the SDD, but the mass storage for the raw files on an HDD?
Thanks!
Greg
On April 12, 2020 at 12:13 pm Merle Becker wrote:
Hi Dan, I just finished your article above on Best Computers. What great timing for me. Very informative, although I am in no way a Techie. So very thankful for the simplification of your article. Computer is just a tool for me to get to photography – just run so I can use ! This article is very recent but wanted to ck as I start this process if any category has possibly changed in your opinion? I am now on Laptop w/ Windows 10. Next one will most likely be my last PC acquisition. Limited use of Office now that retired and primary use is photography and hope to make it hum. TKS for your work.
On December 17, 2021 at 3:47 am Jurry De wrote:
Great article and very useful.
I am wondering however if, and if so how much the analyses with the introduction of the M1, M1 PRO and M1 MAX soc chips by Apple, has changed.
With system on chip all components share a unified memory bank that’s integrated, thus there will be far less read write memory activity in between the components, thus theoretically one would need less RAM.
Secondly, I didn’t know that ON1 in editing mode prefers to use GPU and only reverts back to CPU if the gpu cant keep up or is not able to do the editing. That raises the same question; with the new Apple chips then theoretically more GPU cores will have bigger impact than more cpu cores (I.e. the PRO CHIP comes with 8/14 or 10/14 or 10/16 cpu/gpu cores and with 16 or 32 Gb)
If I extrapolate your excellent explanation to the new chips, then I would argue that for editing with ON1 the 2 extra GPU cores might have bigger impact then the 2 extra cpu cores, plus spending $ 400 extra for the upgrade to 32 Gb is probably waste of money
On April 16, 2023 at 3:10 am David Walker wrote:
Hi,
with the advent of On1 raw 2023 and the introduction of AI denoise and tack sharp which appear to use the gpu extensively what is considered to be a good graphics card to achieve an acceptable level of performance? At present my quadro M2000 maxes out at 100% gpu when opening a 20Mb file which has previously been edited (using AI denoise & tack sharp ) and takes about 25s to perform the rendering during which time I am twiddling my thumbs just waiting. I appreciate that ‘acceptable’ is open to interpretation but it would be nice for the time to be a couple of seconds.
On May 24, 2023 at 5:48 pm James Ollick wrote:
Hello, I would like to know what the current recommendation is a new windows graphics card. I currently have an i9 9900k CPU with 64gb ram and a Radeon RX580 8gb graphics card. I also have the cache on an internal SSD which is my C drive. I edit photos from my D810, 36mb raw files. Usually 200 to 300 or more photos at a time from a photo shoot. It seems that the CPU and GPU ramp up to 90 some percent every time I click on the next photo on the filmstrip and this takes a couple of seconds before I can actually start to process the next photo. This is annoying. Can it be faster with a newer graphics card? I would like to stick with Radeon. Also, during editing, On1 PR 2023 just shuts off at random times during my edits. I have to restart the app and find he last photo I was editing. I always submit the inquiry window I get when I restart the app but never get a response from On1.
On May 27, 2023 at 11:09 pm Leif Romell wrote:
Hi Dan
Thanks for this informative post. One question that would be very useful to get an answer to is: which operations/functions in ON1 are most dependent on the GPU? Above is mentioned the exporting of images; what about all the new AI functions, Noise AI, Tack Sharp, etc. – are they mostly CPU- or GPU-intensive? I think different considerations will be important to different users – some will care more about speed during manipulation, some more about speed of export, etc. Would be very useful to have some indications, especially as ON1 has developed a lot since this original post.
On May 16, 2024 at 1:14 pm John Hillman wrote:
Do you have updated recommendations for ON1 Photo RAW 2024? My system is better than the above but is now extremely slow and often crashing with ON1 2024.
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