UKH

Afternoon all,

I have been looking at upgrading my laptop to use for photo editing and reckon i've narrowed it down to the following two machines.....The Acer ConceptD 3pro and Chillblast defiance 15".

Just wondered whether anyone had any thoughts or input? Both seem like decent machines good processor and graphics card with plenty of storage and much cheaper than other similar models such as the Dell XPS 15. Or if anyone would recommend anything else i'd be interested to listen.

https://www.chillblast.com/chillblast-defiant-15-gaming-laptop-1.html#produ...

https://uk-store.acer.com/conceptd-3-pro-laptop-cn315-71p-black?utm_source=...

Cheers all,

John

Thinking outside the box:

How about a relatively budget laptop and a good large external desktop display? May be cheaper and better than a high end laptop for photo editing?

or alternatively iPad, Affinity Photo software and cloud storage?

For photoediting, check that the screen us good and accurate. Not always tge case with gaming laptops. Aim to get as close to AdobeRGB, full sRGB and naturally also REC.709 (for video).

not all expensive worklaptops manage this (e.g. my current and older Lenovo).

This was my first thought but unfortunately I am not in a place where I have enough space for a desktop monitor. Wanting stay with a PC as all of my software is for PC not Mac

Yea the Acer seems to be very well reviewed for screen true RGB colour and resolution

Agree that a quality external display is great for photo editing, but photo editing can be demanding on hardware too.

A  budget laptop risks a lot of waiting round while editing, particularly if you're working with big image files.  Lightroom supports GPU acceleration, gaming laptops tend to have these as part of standard spec.

But as mentioned above, gaming laptops can have poor resolution screen (fast though), and most importantly for photoediting the color renderation is not always of high priority. If you don't know what the pic really looks like, why bother with editing. And no GPU will help, if the screen is sh!te. Quite a conundrum.

The Acer the OP mentioned will most likely have a (slower) screen, but it'll have most likely have a lot better color science and output than a gaming one (after all, made for creative work, where getting the colors right actually matters)... 

You may be interested in this thread I started a few months ago:

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/photography/laptop_for_photo_processing-7...

My budget wasn't going to run to the sort of laptops you mention in your OP and I ended up getting the Dell Inspiron 17 3000 discussed in the thread. No doubt HeMa will be back to point out that the screen and colour are completely rubbish, but it is a nice big screen for a laptop and my photos look significantly improved from my old laptop and I am very happy with it. One very important point for me is that the screen can be viewed from quite a wide range of angles without it going dark or bright and the colour changing - this is really important when editing and viewing photos, and depends on the type of screen, so definitely worth checking out.

If you're serious about colour, it's worth creating a profile for your screen with something like this - https://www.amazon.co.uk/datacolor-S5P100-Datacolor-Spyder5PRO/dp/B00UBSL31... .

Do you know if this can be used to calibrate a projector so that photos look the same on it as on my laptop? I bought a reasonably good projector but calibrating it seems just like Father Ted's car: youtube.com/watch?v=8mdwAkWvWMw& 

Those were my thoughts. I'm leaning towards the Acer as very well reviewed for creative work and still seems to compete speed wise and screen wise against industry top rankers such as the Dell XPS 15 and Macbook pro, both of which are nearly £1000 more expensive

Yea a Spyder will make a lot of difference, set one up at my Families home as my Dad does a lot of photo work

Yea I did come across that, Dell wise the XPS 15 seems to be the go to model for 2D and 3D creative work but is so bloody expensive, even through warehouse deals or refurbished models

I assume you're talking about a projector that displays photos from your computer? I suspect the answer is no - the colorimeter is hung over the screen of the computer, and a profile is created by running a program which generates a series of known colours and seeing how they display on the screen.

I have an Epson printer which comes with printer profiles for the most common photographic papers, and the colours that it produces are to my inexpert eye identical to the colours on my profiled screen.

Yes, I just connect the projector to my laptop and it reproduces the screen. I wondered whether I could use the read out (or whatever) from the thing to then manually adjust all the myriad colour settings on my projector.

No, it creates a profile file which is then used to drive the PC screen.

What software are you holding on to?

I'd recommend a 2nd hand/refurbed Mac everytime for value to power ratio.

Also, I've never had to recalibrate a Mac screen, if that is a concern of yours.

I'm using a Macbook bro hooked up to my second Dell monitor and am pretty happy with my setup.

You don't have to go nuts on a second monitor. My Dell was around £200. 

I used to edit on an iMac but didn't like the reflective screen. It's great for viewing images on, but I've had much better results editing on the dell which has a matt finish. 

The guys in the thread are right. Editing programs need some good hardware to run them. Invest in a good laptop.

I use a colour calibration tool too, the Spydr 5 Express (an old one now) to calibrate my colour profiles once a month. I do this once for the laptop and second monitor.

Hope that helps .

Affinty Photo for editing, them have Anquet mapping software as well for PC

It does dude, I think i'll go with the Acer as the screen quality is very well reviewed and thats a big thing for me. I'm going to call Chillblast and see what they say about their screen, small company and open to chats. Also so much storage and a slightly better graphics card than the Acer.