Laptop, desktop, or both

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What are you using for photo processing

  • Laptop

    Votes: 22 33.3%
  • Desktop

    Votes: 27 40.9%
  • Both

    Votes: 17 25.8%

  • Total voters
    66
Windows 10 "Gaming" laptop. One of the most powerful GPU/CPU at the time w/32 gig ram, plus portability. However, mostly connected to external monitor on my desk.
 
16" MBP which basically is my desktop with a second calibrated monitor. I have an OWC hub with 2 NMVe enclosures that provide quite fast performance. I leave it there mostly, and why.... you asked.

Ask you can tell from my user name I have a small coffee business. I use a 2018 MacBookAir for roasting but it also doubles as my on the road computer. Doesn't have heavy processing power but will easily do my file transfers of images and light editing.

So back to the MBP - plenty of processing power (but it's more than the standard model, screen is great). I can take it with me if I want.
It's flexible, that's the main reason for the laptop.
 
Currently using a laptop since it was the cheaper overall solution for my business when I was starting out a few years ago. I will be switching to a desktop in the upcoming future to get higher performance and it also gives me the flexibility to upgrade various components in the future (better processor, more RAM, etc)
 
Both. I build my own Windows desktops and am due for a refresh but sourcing my preferred components, especially the GPU/video cards I want is a challenge. I use a MackBook Pro for on-site editing and submitting and when traveling.
 
Both.

For me, it's mostly because my life runs on my computer. I was going to go with just a laptop, but my wife pointed out that if something happed to my laptop on one of our trips, it would be a nightmare getting things back to normal once we got home (even with backups). Plus, the laptop acts as a backup for my Mac Studio if something happens to it.

In short, I need redundancy :)
 
I use my desktop as it has lots of power: Ryzen 3900x, 32 GB, SSD drives, nVidia RTX 2070 Super. I've been building them for years.

I have a Dell XPS 15 for travel, but don't really use it to process images. I put images on it for backup and look at the best ones, too.
 
The 16" MacBookPro was my core tool -- but then came the Mac Studio Ultra and enforced lock-in -- the Ultra is ridiculously fast and capable. Each time I go out on a shoot for a couple of days I take my 2021 MBP and, even though it was the top of the range at the time, it is soooo sloooow now. But, what I really miss are the pair of 32" monitors so I can see what I am doing.
 
I had desktops (towers) and iMac most of my life. When the M1 chip came out for the MacBook Pro, I bought one (13" and a 27" external monitor). Today's laptops are extremely powerful, have great battery life and there I little or no penalty in performance vs. desktops. I would suggest getting a laptop even if, like me, most of your editing and work is done at home. The flexibility to carry the laptop with you when traveling is worth the slight incremental cost.
 
For my use it's Desktop for processing and storage with backup drives. Laptop only used for photography vacation trips where I can download photo files and some Post Processing in the evenings.
 
I use a Mac Studio and am very happy with it. When traveling, don’t count out the iPad Pro with M1 or now M2. The Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop apps do well for most on-the-road edits and with a USB-C hub can backup memory cards to a SSD or two, or three. The M2 version is a noticeable improvement over my prior pre-Apple Silicon version. With the latest M2 version, on my last trip I was transferring at about 15GB per minutes from card reader to my SSD and there’s no lag using the Adobe apps.
 
I want a 30-inch display for general image culling and it provides more real estate to view images and also the Photoshop menus on a single screen. Prior to having a 30-inch display I used two 24 inch displays. I can upgrade the GPU for maximum performance with a desktop which is important. Laptops have similar GPU's but with much less VRAM.
 
I switched from doing 90% of my PP on an iMac and 10% on MBP (usually just when travelling) to now running my new MBP as both a laptop and a desktop but 90% of my processing is driven by the laptop but I'm using an external 32" monitor. So I guess that may still sort of count as a desktop considering these latest M1Max MBPs are faster than almost any desktop.
 
I use an engineering laptop: Lenovo P15 Gen 2 (i7-11850H, RTX A3000 with 6GB, 32 GB expandable to 128GB, 3 hard drives). It's kind of portable, being a big, black brick that weighs about 6 lbs., but it many respects it's a bit of desktop replacement.
 
Both, photo and video are both important in my situation. I have always built my own desktop systems and I enjoy the real estate and resolution of a 32" 4K monitor when working on photos or video. I have an older XPS15 for travel that works fine for photos and light video editing in Resolve Studio. Great for culling photos at night or getting out some quick video clips for friends/family on social media. When I'm at home, the laptop is connected to a 27" monitor and most often used for non-photo or video related tasks.

My main desktop machine is one I built back in 2017 that, at the time, was about top of the line with a 4GHz I7-6700K (overclocked 15%) and 32GB Ram, Samsung nVMe SSD. I wasn't doing much video, so I went budget with a GTX-1060 GPU and that served me well until I got into Resolve and more demanding video production. A couple years later, 64GB and GTX1660 GPU followed along with a couple 1TB SSD's for working media storage, one for photos, one for video projects. About 2 weeks ago, I got a great deal on a lightly used RTX3090 from a guy that just upgraded to the RTX4090...what a difference for video!! Somewhat surprisingly, the I7-6700K is holding it's own for video editing...I was concerned about that when I added the RTX3090, but it's feeding the GPU very nicely...still got some life left in it.

There are two shortcomings to the system I need to consider in the next year or so...one, the system is not Win 11 compatible and two, that series of CPU does not support hardware decoding of 10-bit, H.265 4:2:2 video by the internal GPU...nor does the RTX3090. Why is that important...well that's the most practical format to shoot with my Z9, especially 8K...quality and color grading capability in Nlog is outstanding and file sizes are manageable. I can get a lot of footage on a 512GB card...not so if I shoot RAW and we all know the price of the fastest 2TB and 4TB CFx cards!

Win 11 is not a priority for me, but there would be a considerable increase in proxy or optimized media generation in Resolve with a newer CPU. No real impact for photo editing, though. I think I'll stand pat with what I have until sometime next year and see how the new CPU's and GPU's shake out.

When I travel, the working media SSDs travel with me and I connect them to the XPS laptop...and they're backed up to offline storage at home before I leave. When I return, they are reconnected to my desktop system and I'm good to go with whatever I've done while away. Very transparent for my needs and I do backup daily work and raw files to a 2TB SSD when traveling.

I can't imagine not having both systems...sorry for the long-winded reply...some context might be helpful for others.

Cheers!
 
I am a desktop guy.

My wife and I have two I7 laptops with 1TB SSD disks, but we only use them for downloading and a quick look at our shots. All real work is done on our desktops. I use Sandisk 2TB USB SSD to backup. Each day is backed up to a total of three SSD removable disks. Otherwise, we use the laptops so seldom I need to turn on and upgrade the Windows OS and Photoshop before each trip.

I have an I9-9900K, 32MB RAM with 1TB SSD gaming desktop. My wife has a newer system with an AMD equivalent processor. Both systems are connected to a Synology DS920 with four 8TB drives mirrored 1:1 to give 14GB of total storage.

After a trip I copy all files to the desktop and do processing using the local SSD. Before doing this, I move all previous files to the Synology NAS. I find that sometimes my RAW files exceed the 700MB that I can free up on my drive so I am considering adding a second internal SSD drive.

I can work off the Synology but it is slower.

Regards,
Tom
 
Both. Mac Studio (M1 Max 64 GB's RAM) connected to 2 x 27" monitors for my desktop and a fully tricked out 16" M1 Pro MacBook for the road. Def overkill for processing pics but I do video editing for a living so it's all specced out for that.
 
Laptop. Desktop doesn't bring enough extra to the party to justify the hassle of using two computers. Plus laptop monitors have improved dramatically and when calibrated get things plenty close for display. If final output is to be print I plug in to my wide gamut monitor for final edits.
 
We have a 16" MacPro laptop which is good for editing but not for travel. For travel we use Windows 7 and Windows 10 Lenovo laptops and netbooks that have more ports than the Mac laptops of the past.

I have worked with an external monitor attached to a laptop but it is far from ideal. I get better GPU processing and a better monitor setup and I can use a full size backlit keyboard. The Lenovo laptops have backlit keys which along with the IBM Trackpoint are why we have not bought anything else. Best for customer support is Apple with Lenovo and HP tied for second place.
 
I have both.
Large monitor and many internal and external drives for accurate processing and back ups of images.

Laptop for light-weight, portable computer for nightly backups, to external HDs, internet, etc. But very limited processing is done on the laptop and always re-done on the desktop.
 
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