Lightroom/PS on a netbook

roadeh

roadeh

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Hi guys,

I've got a 6 month trip around South America coming up soon and so want a way to be able to tweak images as I go (to kill travel time and so I don't have so much to do when I return!).. has anyone managed to get Lightroom or Photoshop running acceptably on a netbook? Obviously weight is a bit of a premium so a netbook is the only really viable option.. as I don't have £1k for a Macbook Air :)
 
That's gonna struggle IMHO... both with memory and processor speed. Never mind, you'll have time to drink a beer or two whilst you're waiting on it to do stuff ;)
 
What sort of spec is the one you were thinking of? we have CS5 and LR3 on an old-ish dell laptop with a 1gb of ram and they both run ok, not as fast as a decent desktop but they both work. Ok I'm not sure I'd want to try photomerge with half a dozen large raw files but for the normal tweeks it's fine.
 
I have a Asus 1005HA and i ran PS and Lightroom on it. It was slow but if you get good enough RAM in it, it'd make it a lot better.

I now have an Alienware m11x, and both work amazingly well! :)
 
Hmm, well I'm actually open for suggestions on models.. Budget would be around £300, but am reasonably flexible on that. As I said I've got 6 months, so if there's anything that's on the horizon that'll be noticeably better, I'm happy to wait.

My other question is how people find using them with such a small screen?
 
it is going to be hard for you to edit on a netbook, also the screen has to be calibrated etc but you can still crop the pics
 
i would give up on photoshop, but you might get away with lightroom if your careful, if nothing else, it lets you sort through, delete anything obvious, and have it ready for importing into your main library on your return

also means you can tag images while its still fresh in your head
 
im using Lightroom and Elements 6 on a Zoostorm net book, not sure what spec it is but was only £200.

im finding it ok but can be a bit slow but not enough to bother me, ive just stuck a 22 inch monitor on it and that makes a world or difference, the standard 10 inch screen is just to small really although mine has great colours even un-calibrated and its pretty close to the prints ive had done.

i have all pics backed up on a external drive and dont keep any on the netbook so as to avoid hundreds of pics slowing the netboook down even more..

So yes it is do able, also the netbook is ideal for sticking in a backpack to upload pics on the move..
 
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I've just bought an Acer One netbook with an 8.9" screen and just 1Gb of RAM. I installed Photoshop on it and it runs but it's not as quick as my quadcore desktop with 4Gb of RAM.

Opening a single RAW file in bridge will take about 20 seconds rather than 2 seconds on my desktop and running actions and adding filters takes longer.

I suppose if you are away for 6 months then you'll have plenty of time to play with the images. Accept the limitations and a netbook will be fine for you.
 
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Thanks guys that's really good information to have - I'm not expecting major performance.. I'll just want to do curves, sharpening, some light cloning and sorting mostly.. anything major will definitely be left till I get back!

Also an interesting idea about only using LR.. does seem like a good idea not to have to do any destructive editing on the pics until I can see what I'm doing properly!
 
roadeh said:
Thanks guys that's really good information to have - I'm not expecting major performance.. I'll just want to do curves, sharpening, some light cloning and sorting mostly.. anything major will definitely be left till I get back!

Also an interesting idea about only using LR.. does seem like a good idea not to have to do any destructive editing on the pics until I can see what I'm doing properly!
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I do all that sort of editing with no real issues on mine so you should be fine..
 
suggs said:
im using Lightroom and Elements 6 on a Zoostorm net book, not sure what spec it is but was only £200.

im finding it ok but can be a bit slow but not enough to bother me, ive just stuck a 22 inch monitor on it and that makes a world or difference, the standard 10 inch screen is just to small really although mine has great colours even un-calibrated and its pretty close to the prints ive had done.

i have all pics backed up on a external drive and dont keep any on the netbook so as to avoid hundreds of pics slowing the netboook down even more..

So yes it is do able, also the netbook is ideal for sticking in a backpack to upload pics on the move..
Click to expand...


this is an interesting feedback, i was thinking about lightroom to use on travel which is less ressource consuming that a photoshop.
Did you find it long to load pictures or is that just the initial boot that is taking time?
 
yeah can be a bit slow on initial start up but loads raw files from my D200 straight into LR pretty fast, and also files from my external drive are quick to.

i would say if you get rid of all other stuff that you dont need off the hard drive and keep it just for photo editing it would be plenty fast enough as a travel setup, would defo recommend using an external drive such as a western digital passport to store/backup your pics, it runs of the usb so no external power source needed and is tiny and very light...
 
I don't find the speed as much of an issue as the screen size - you'd be better with something like a Compaq Mini with the 11.6" screen rather than the standard-ish 10.1"....
 
+1 on the screen size issue, you'll find yourself zooming in/scrolling more than you'd like.. I use a d620 (12.1wide) and its a cracking little cheap laptop and works pretty well on CS5 tbh..
 
Ive had an Acer Ferrari One for about a year and a half now and I can do CAD/PS/LR/HD movie streaming/gaming. Naturally it is not as flawless as my £3k laptop but it only cost £400(back then). Probably the best bit of gadgetry I have bought for a very long time, happily took it around Italy last summer and as it is about the size of a book, goes pretty much everywhere with me.

Ipad... bah!:bonk:


Im sure you could pick one up now for around £200.
 
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