On Wed, December 15, 2010 08:31, Don Roberts wrote: > I hate to make this a computer forum but there hasn't been much photo > talk lately so.... Emily's last post made me wonder: How many of you > PHOTOGRAPHERS - on topic now - use a laptop as your main working > resource? Will they suffice for doing PS work with a number of large > files and a need to see detail in images? How do you configure? Can > one use the laptop screen for PS tools and an external monitor for the > image without a lot of problems? Any comments on this might help me > decide where my equipment money goes next. Most laptop screens don't even show 24-bit color, and are drastically unsuitable for serious photo editing. (Not all, and if you need one, you can get one; but there are a dozen or something models, out of all the hundreds of laptop models made.) I have a laptop, with an ordinary inadequate screen, that I use when I'm away from home. I can dump my memory cards, keep a copy on the HD and burn a DVD, or copy to an external HD, or upload to a server if I've got good connectivity and the volume is relatively small. I do some minimal proofing, and I can judge sharpness at least. Sometimes I make photo galleries for the web from the proofs. And I don't need to spend the money for a fully photo-quality screen. At home, it's all desktop. I'm currently running 8GB of RAM, and (having replaced a burned-out motherboard) that's only filling half my slots, so I can upgrade to 16GB when the time comes. I've got a Dell 24" monitor, and a Spyder 2 Express for profiling. And a mouse I like, and a Wacom tablet that I'm still trying to learn to use effectively. I've used a second screen on a laptop (Windows), and that works fine. My old laptops haven't gotten up to the point where they have modern digital output ports for video (DVI or I suppose HDMI), which limits the quality you can drive the external monitor at. You're limited by the graphics chipset in the laptop, generally. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
