A question for laptop users with Lightroom...

johncook

johncook

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hi guys,

Just interested to find out what laptops (make / model) people are using to run Lightroom (non Apple laptops) and how accurate they find the colour reproduction. Did it need much tweaking?

The reason I ask. I'm after a new laptop and wondering if I can get away with a slightly cheaper laptop that gives decent colour reproduction. (Say sub £600)

I use a 5 yr old i5 asus laptop with an ssd. Performance is good, much better after ssd installed but the display is too cool and I can't easily correct it.

I know a nice MacBook with retina would be ideal but I don't fancy spending £1500 at the moment.

I could always go to pc world with a usb stick and some test photos to check colours (may well do this) but thought I'd ask here as it might point me in the right direction faster!
 
laptops are always going to be compromise for editing. viewing angles, cheap screens, even the horrid gloss on the macbooks. a good external non glossy IPS display will always be king for this usage.

either way the screen should be calibrated with a hardware device (spyder, colormonki etc). and preferably all of the auto brightness options etc turned off.
 
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easiest way is use a dock & do the main changes on an external 'calibrated' monitor.
 
Diving Pete said:
easiest way is use a dock & do the main changes on an external 'calibrated' monitor.
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:plus1:

That's what I did several years ago and it worked well . Much easier with a desktop though.

I doubt if PC world would let you load images onto their demo laptops, plus the may only have windows standard software loaded. The only place I've ever managed to load images on to a computer is at an Apple store , and that was by appointment
 
I agree with the others, laptop plus external monitor. A few months ago I got a new laptop from PC Specialist and TBH the monitor on it (IPS) is not bad but lacks contrast, I can get quite close when editing on just the laptop and then do a final check on the external monitor. My feelings re PC Specialist are mixed, it's good that you can specify exactly what you want, and I went for a 128GB SSD for the OS and Applications which means everything starts and runs quickly and also have a big HDD to store data and photos. The thing that I would really mark them down for is the Laptop case/keyboard which is pretty cheap, all plastic, limited set of keys.
 
Aorus x7, 3x160gb SSD, 1tb HD, 6gb graphics card, 16gb ram, i7........mega fast, but bloody useless, sounds like a hovercraft. Worst purchase of 2015.

Colour? Everything we do is on the web, so colour is pretty irrelevant.
 
Another vote for an external monitor.
Studio488, not sure what you mean by colour irrelevant?
 
i guess he means that you cannot guarantee that the viewer has a calibrated display?

however i disagree, as getting it right on a calibrated display at least gives you the peace of mind that it is correct for anyone that really cares about colour representation.
 
I've done image processing on both Macbook (pre-retina screens suck badly) and Dell XPS15 with QHD display (not a cheap option). Despite the QHD screen I'll use an external monitor with the XPS in preference every time, because I'll miss stuff on a tiny screen, even when it's pretending to be 32" wide.
 
neil_g said:
i guess he means that you cannot guarantee that the viewer has a calibrated display?

however i disagree, as getting it right on a calibrated display at least gives you the peace of mind that it is correct for anyone that really cares about colour representation.
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We use out of the box setups, all our monitors are used at defaulf, this is how most people use them (we deal with 98% web) in 10years and 700,000+ images all for ecommerce, we have never had a colour issue.
 
neil_g said:
so a professional ecomm photography company, using monitors straight out of the box on factory default, no calibration?
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It's not uncommon. We would process hundreds of images a week using iMacs that hadn't ever been professionally calibrated where I used to work.
 
JBrown1 said:
It's not uncommon. We would process hundreds of images a week using iMacs that hadn't ever been professionally calibrated where I used to work.
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oh no, im not surprised at the slightest. i used to do the site changes for a national retailers ecomm platform, i got fed up of telling the ecomm team about how inconsistent the imagery was but they're just admin monkeys and have no idea about colour profiles for example.

it just puzzles me somewhat that a photography studio can spend thousands on cameras, lighting, staging, computer equipment etc and not manage their output.
 
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neil_g said:
oh no, im not surprised at the slightest. i used to do the site changes for a national retailers ecomm platform, i got fed up of telling the ecomm team about how inconsistent the imagery was but they're just admin monkeys and have no idea about colour profiles for example.

it just puzzles me somewhat that a photography studio can spend thousands on cameras, lighting, staging, computer equipment etc and not manage their output.
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The output is fine and managed very well, you cannot argue with hundreds of thousands of images over 10 years :), images go through anything up to 4 machines, ultimately the clients machines are not calibrated, the customers are not calibrated, the only time we calibrated the 10imacs onsite caused chaos, we defaulted them within hrs of doing it,

it's totally different for print, but online there are too many parameters that are uncontrollable.
 
as a side note, we do use datacolor passports and pro grey cards, so it's not entirely without some control.
 
There are also calibrating laptops such as lenovo thinkpads with inbuilt xrite, takes seconds to calibrate, best way for portable and colour correct ;)
 
Thanks for the replies. Interesting comments. I'm not a pro so absolute colour accuracy is not essential, just like to get as close as possible.

As I said my asus tends to be a little bit too cool compared to my iPad and iPhones and family iPads / MacBook pros.

I've got used to tweaking the colour temperature on Lightroom so it's right on most displays. Just be handy if the machine I used was more accurate!
 
sirch said:
I agree with the others, laptop plus external monitor. A few months ago I got a new laptop from PC Specialist and TBH the monitor on it (IPS) is not bad but lacks contrast, I can get quite close when editing on just the laptop and then do a final check on the external monitor. My feelings re PC Specialist are mixed, it's good that you can specify exactly what you want, and I went for a 128GB SSD for the OS and Applications which means everything starts and runs quickly and also have a big HDD to store data and photos. The thing that I would really mark them down for is the Laptop case/keyboard which is pretty cheap, all plastic, limited set of keys.
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which model did you go for? I was thinking to go for i7 optimusVII as it has IPS screen
 
asaspasas6 said:
which model did you go for? I was thinking to go for i7 optimusVII as it has IPS screen
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I went for the Ultranote 15.6" IPS with a core I5 processor. As I said the laptop case/keyboard are pretty cheap/plasticy but the screen isn't bad and the service was good.
 
sirch said:
I went for the Ultranote 15.6" IPS with a core I5 processor. As I said the laptop case/keyboard are pretty cheap/plasticy but the screen isn't bad and the service was good.
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over a years ordered many laptops from them for my friends etc. and all seemed more or less decent quality (but all laptops ordered were TN panles, not an IPS). Maybe in the last few years they started to use cheaper cases? how is the keyboard on yours (noisy etc.)?
 
Keyboard action is OK, my big beef is the lack of separate Home,End,Page Up, Page Down, etc. which every laptop I've had for about the last 15 years has had.The case is entirely plastic and the top of the lid (back of the screen) can b pushed in and just feels cheap compared to say a cheap Lenovo/HP etc
 
i checked out the site. competitive pricing but sounds like build quality is a bit... iffy!
 
Studio488 said:
The output is fine and managed very well, you cannot argue with hundreds of thousands of images over 10 years :), images go through anything up to 4 machines, ultimately the clients machines are not calibrated, the customers are not calibrated, the only time we calibrated the 10imacs onsite caused chaos, we defaulted them within hrs of doing it,

it's totally different for print, but online there are too many parameters that are uncontrollable.
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Interesting response, thanks, as I used to work for a company in the broadcast market who had our own fonts, specific pantone colours to be used on everything. Thinking about a small website you're right it's probably not a consideration if using standard palettes. I guess it depends on the target audience.
 
Byker28i said:
Interesting response, thanks, as I used to work for a company in the broadcast market who had our own fonts, specific pantone colours to be used on everything. Thinking about a small website you're right it's probably not a consideration if using standard palettes. I guess it depends on the target audience.
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Very true, target audience and what is actually being shot, for example, a handbag, under studio flash one colour, outside daylight, another colour, inside standard lighting another colour, all subtle but all different, now try to compare those colours to your iPad, iPhone, laptop, desktop, even Smart TV, basically you have no chance, the base colour could be different depending on how or where the consumer is looking at it in the first place, the only option is to trust your workflow is the best you can get using guides and experience.

We also use the free online calibration tools just to keep a check on brightness and contrast, ect, they can be very useful.
 
We use laptops for running LR for culling. The laptops we use are laptop tablet combos running windows 10. They have 2gb ram and 32gb of storage. We transfer catalogs on usb sticks. Colours dont matter as we only use them for culling.
 
Studio488 said:
it's totally different for print, but online there are too many parameters that are uncontrollable.
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Exactly that. There really is little point in calibrating for the web, as no two monitors have the same viewing output.

Print though is a different matter entirely. The colours have to be absolutely spot on (providing the printing company are up to spec, but then they should be)
 
Just because you can't control monitors by others, doesn't mean that what you put out there shouldn't be correct. Out of my own personal pride I just wouldn't do that, whilst full well knowing that people have all sorts of different settings, situations etc....At least what we output it correct, and those viewing have a choice.....
 
Microsoft Surface Pro 3 i5 and it runs fine. I've calibrated it, but only really use it for culling etc and do the bulk of my editing on my desktop.
 
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