What is best computer for photo editing
Which Computer for Photo & Video Editing?
hi I'm Tony Northrup and today I'm going
to answer a very common question which
is what computer should I buy for photo
editing or video editing I'll try to
address both questions as we go that
they are very different questions and to
do it I'm going to be using my own
personal computer as an example and I
warn you that this computer is going to
be wild overkill you don't need this
much but if you're a nerd you might just
enjoy checking it out first I'll try to
address the question of Windows versus
Mac and I have to disclose that I worked
for Microsoft for like 20 years I wrote
something like 30 something books about
Windows so I'm not unbiased here I don't
have any current connection with
Microsoft except some of my books are
still on the shelves but I am a Windows
guy and the reason is that for the buck
you tend to get more power out of a PC
there's a little bit of an apple tax
that goes along with Mac it's not that
much though especially nowadays and they
Apple makes some really amazing hardware
so it comes down more to personal
preference if you're a Mac person if you
just find it easier to use then go
forward but nowadays most of the stuff
you hated about Windows is gone Windows
is pretty stable use all the same apps
Lightroom works the same Photoshop works
the same Premiere Pro works the same
during the video editing being on a Mac
certainly gives you a few more options
because you could use Final Cut Pro
which is available only for the Mac but
otherwise for the most part you'll
probably get a little more power for the
same amount of money if you go with
Windows up first the disk and that's
probably the most important thing for
both photo editing and video editing
especially in Lightroom which is the one
app everybody wants to be a little bit
faster most of the time it's
bottlenecked by your disk the disk
stores files persistently so when you
import pictures from your camera to your
computer it's copying them all to the
disk and then every time you go to open
up those pictures it is to read them
back from the disk and if you have a
slow disk your computer is going to seem
very very slow even though it's probably
only the disk for photo editing for
working with Lightroom in particular or
for video editing especially 4k files
you absolutely need an SSD so there are
two types of drives available on the
market nowadays field magnetic Drive
which is the conventional drives just a
hard disk drive their little ease like
plates of magnets that a little head can
read just like a record player basically
but a lot packed in there
conventional drives are less expensive
they are also much much slower the new
generation of drives are called SSD or
solid-state drives and they work exactly
like the flash memory cards that you put
in your camera so there are no moving
parts they tend to be very very fast for
bandwidth first which would be
transferring a large file like copying a
4k file or a huge raw file but they're
particularly fast at random access so if
you ask an SSD to read a particular
picture from the computer conventional
hard drive will have to wait a little
beat beat as it waits for the disc to
spin around to that particular part of
the drive and waits with the head to get
in place but that happens very instantly
on an SSD so everything just goes much
much faster I find that I often can make
a computer seem brand new just by
upgrading the standard drive to the SSD
but for those of us in to either photos
or video there's a big problem with SSDs
and that's storage space because SSDs
just don't get to be that big most SSDs
that you find for a reasonable price are
like 256 gigs and you can fill it up
real fast with even just taking still
photos but especially with video I think
the bare minimum size needs to be about
a terabyte and that's what I have in
this computer the main drive where
Windows is installed where my Lightroom
catalog is and where I edit my videos is
on a one terabyte SSD drive which you
can see right here you can see it a
little more clearly on the back these
drives get about 500 megabytes a second
of throughput both in and out for
reading and writing and even though one
terabytes not going to be enough for me
so what I have to do is archive my stuff
so I use that drive as my working drive
and it's fast and it means that I flip
through pictures in Lightroom much
faster than I could if I had a magnetic
drive but I would fill up one terabyte
so quickly that I have an array
of conventional magnetic drives here and
when I import pictures in Lightroom they
go to my C Drive the fast drive and then
every couple of weeks I end up using
Lightroom to copy those files over to my
B Drive which is the collection of these
big magnetic drives so you see here I
have 4 8 terabyte drives and that's 32
terabytes of storage in total but I have
them mirrored using storage spaces a
Windows 8 feature that kind of
intelligently mirrors them and I'm using
a special file system called re FS which
helps to protect them in case a file
gets damaged and go in and detect that
corruption and fix it that's been really
important for me and that's a lesson
I've learned the hard way because the
extra protection against corruption is
important because I've had drives that
start to get corrupted and even if you
have a backup you probably won't notice
that that data has been corrupted and
then the corrupted data will actually
get backed up so with this new file
system our EFS it's capable of detecting
that sort of corruption and
automatically correcting and so I hope
to save corrupted video and photo files
in the future by using that however our
EFS requires that every drive be
mirrored and that means that for 32
gigabytes of storage I only get a 30
terabytes only get 16 terabytes of
actual usable space now you'll see I
have a fifth magnetic drive down here a
4 terabyte drive that's an older drive
that I use to backup my C Drive here my
1 terabyte SSD so I kind of continuously
run backup to that 1 terabyte SSD to
that 4 terabyte drive in case that drive
fails it's only a matter of time before
any drive in your computer fails and it
can't tell you how many emails I get
from panicked people saying my computer
won't boot where are my pictures how do
I get my pictures and any IT guy knows
the first thing you think is well you
get them from your backup but most
people don't have backups and you will
lose everything
backing up to a local Drive like this is
a good start but I also suggest you get
a web storage service or a cloud storage
service just Google that they're a bunch
of
different services out there they will
take your files and copy them up to the
web they work great as long as you have
maybe a terabyte or two of pictures
which will satisfy most people if you
have you know I'm over 16 terabytes of
storage now so that's too much data for
me to easily transfer to the web it
would take on the order of six months of
filling my bandwidth upstream for me to
be able to offload that to anybody else
so it's not especially usable but it's
critical that you have an off-site
backup local backups are good but they
won't protect you from fire theft
natural disaster so what I do instead is
I regularly use external hard drives and
I backup all new files so those external
hard drives and then I basically give
them to Justin and Justin takes them to
his house where if there is some C's far
enough away that if the nuclear power
plant next to me has a problem he
probably won't be impacted if there's a
fire at my house or theft I'll be able
to go back to those files so you need
that off-site backup as well I also want
to give a tip about free disk space
whether you have an SSD or even more so
an older magnetic drive it's important
to maintain a certain amount of free
disk space because drives get slower and
slower as they start to fill up with
magnetic drives it kind of works like a
record player and if you imagine a
record spinning the outside of the
record is basically spinning the fastest
and the inside is spinning the slowest
so that first data that you write to the
computer your first pictures are going
to be written to the outside of the
record
therefore the drive spinning at a
constant rate will be spinning that
outside much faster that's why your
computer seems to be much more
responsive much faster when it's new and
those older pictures residing on the
outside of the drive will be easier to
access will be quicker to access as you
feel your drive up your writing in the
middle and that means it's spinning
slower and it's getting slower and
slower part of the problem is that your
drive is also filled up so as you're
writing data the computer has to find
little open spots in the drive to save
the file and that means that any one
picture might be written at ten or a
hundred different spots on the drive
with a magnetic drive that means that it
can end up taking a lot longer to read
it so anyway long story short try to
keep quite a bit of free space on all of
your drives to maximize performance it's
still an issue with SSDs though not
nearly as much I just try to keep like
15 percent free of my SSDs and you
should be fine
the next tip that's going to maximize
your performance in Lightroom or in
video editing is a USB three memory card
reader so many people have a modern
computer with USB 3 but they're using a
USB 2 memory card reader and it slows
everything down USB 3 USB is just the
connection uses connect your camera or
your smartphone or your memory card
reader or a hard disk drive an external
hard disk drive to your computer so USB
3 is substantially substantially faster
it's much much faster and any computer
made in the last couple years probably
support USB 3 through those little ports
with the blue in them the older USB 2
ports are just all black I highly
recommend if you're looking for a new
computer make sure you pick a computer
that has USB 3 and then get a USB 3
memory card reader your desktop user
like myself I have an integrated memory
card reader in this computer but the one
that it came with was USB 2 so even
though it was built into the computer it
was connected internally with USB 2 and
then everything was slow so I had to go
onto Amazon and buy myself an internal
USB 3 memory card reader and then wire
it through this computer to get the most
performance out of it
but end up being really important now
I'll talk about the processor in the
computer which is the next most
important thing after you have a fast
drive after you have USB 3 memory card
readers the processor is going to make
the next big difference this is my
processor in here and you'll see it's
really quite buried under a bunch of
stuff the processor is what the computer
uses when it's converting your files to
a dmg it's what it's using when you're
making big adjustments most of the time
when it's rendering previews it's using
the processor and the disk together
really heavily so upgrading your
processor will make a big performance
difference and for that reason when
you're picking into a computer so just
getting the fastest processor that you
have the budget for and I'll talk in a
little bit
about different parts of the computer
where you can actually save money
because I'm not going to tell you just
to get the biggest thing for everything
no but the processor and the disk speed
are areas where you do want to spend
your money on you can save your money in
other ways the processor is extremely
important and is particularly so for
video editing now I went over the top on
this and you don't have to do that I got
the newest Intel processor and then I
also overclocked it so that is an option
nowadays Moore's law for desktop PCs at
least it's kind of been broken in the
last few years and new computers aren't
that much more faster than older
computers so if you're not satisfied
with that overclocking has become a very
stable and reliable option this computer
which was custom built by a computer
maker has a water cooler on it and that
means that it can cool the processor
more efficiently you can take just about
any processor and make it run much
faster the challenge is dissipating that
heat because if you run a processor
faster the it'll overheat
basically so you need something that's
extremely efficient at moving the heat
away from the processor and exhausting
it the water cooler here does this that
is I think a 3.3 gigahertz processor and
I typically run it at 4.4 gigahertz so
I'm getting about 30% more processor
performance out of it because I'm able
to use the water cooler and because the
computer itself supports an overclocking
system the the motherboard and the bios
kind of define that I picked a
motherboard and BIOS specifically
designed to support overclocking as well
as the hardware required for it you go
and do buying over off-the-shelf
Dell you're not going to get that option
you can sometimes overclock those
computers but they're generally not
designed for overclocking Alienware is
one exception to that by the way all
these rules generally apply to laptop
computers as well you you want an SSD
most of them will have USB three
built-in and you want the fastest
processor you can get memory it very
much depends on what you're doing a lot
of people just tell you to get as much
memory as you possibly can and I think
that would be a waste of money I find
most features of Lightroom work just
fine and for gig
it's or less and this little laptop here
only has 4 gigabytes of RAM and I use it
for like all the time when I travel and
it's just fine now if you get into
Photoshop and you're working with a
Photoshop picture and you have often
when we do pictures that will have 20 50
layers you can get it into a lot of
layers and many different photos merge
together and at that point you might
need more memory it's not a common to
see Photoshop using 16 gigabytes of
memory also recently with Lightroom 6
they introduced a new HDR and panorama
features in monitoring the memory on
those features I find that they will use
well over 4 gigabytes they'll go into 8
16 gigabytes they will use all your
memory if you go and create a very large
panorama so if you plan to take
advantage of those features I might
recommend jumping up to 8 gigabytes or
even 16 gigabytes but if you're looking
at a laptop and you're just doing casual
editing and Lightroom 4 gigabytes is
probably going to be fine you can spend
your money elsewhere the monitors are
one of the most important parts too for
me as a desktop user I prefer to have
two monitors so take whatever budget you
have for one monitor instead of buying
that big huge 4k monitor buy two smaller
monitors with that same budget and
you'll probably be much happier
partly because Lightroom is designed to
work with two monitors you're doing
video editing applications like Premiere
Pro are also designed to work well with
two monitors and it greatly improves
your efficiency I find in laptops where
you might not have a monitor connected
most of the time I recommend getting the
highest resolution monitor you can the
new Retina displays are becoming pretty
common and there are some 4k display is
built into laptops that will make a huge
amount of difference when working with
Lightroom when doing things like
previewing your pictures and making sure
that pictures are sharp those extra
pixels will make it much easier it also
leaves more screen space for tools in
say Photoshop or Premiere Pro so
basically pick two monitors whenever you
have that option the the more resolution
per monitor the better especially with
laptops where you're traveling with a
lot
think it's worth it to spend the extra
money on a 4k or Retina display the new
version of Lightroom scales really well
to those higher-end displays something
most people will misunderstand is the
video card and the GPU the graphics
processing unit that's built into it now
your CPU here the processor is very fast
and can do lots of computations but the
graphics processor the GPU is many many
times faster at doing simple
calculations so applications such as a
video editing apps like Premiere Pro or
Final Cut will offload a bunch of the
work to the GPU and that makes things go
much much faster now Photoshop and
Lightroom technically can offload some
tasks to the GPU Photoshop will do it
only with some filters when you're
applying some filters most of the time
it does not use the GPU at all Lightroom
will do it like m6 will do it when
you're making some develop module
adjustments so you might see a hair and
performance improvement when you're
using say adjustment brushes and
stacking many many different adjustment
brushes or if you're doing some sort of
transformation and Lightroom for the
most part you're not going to notice the
performance benefit in Photoshop or
Lightroom so if you're doing photo
editing but not video editing I
recommend just getting the cheapest
graphics card that can drive the
monitors that you have do not pay extra
for one of those Quadro graphics cards
they will not noticeably improve your
performance basically here's where
you're save your money you get a cheap
graphics card you're doing video editing
you don't have that choice you want a
big graphics card this is a 780ti but if
you're doing photo editing get the
cheapest card possible and a laptop if
they give you different options the
integrated graphics card is probably
going to be fine you don't need to spend
extra to get the discreet graphics card
again you'll be missing out on that GPU
offloading but you probably won't ever
notice put that extra money towards a
faster drive a bigger drive or memory
maker of processors I want to briefly
mention the network a lot of people I
know use a wireless network connection
even though their computer is within a
couple of feet of say their cable modem
or their outgoing connection
whenever possible use a wired Ethernet
connection not only is it reliable but
it's always faster than your wireless
it's confusing because the wireless
connections will advertise being you
know 860 megabits or something like that
but that's almost never the case
in fact typical Wireless throughput is
more like 30 to 60 megabits a second
even with the latest technologies though
it depends on a lot of different factors
a wired Gigabit Ethernet connect
internet connection is always faster if
you work in a team as we do and you're
constantly exporting files between
different computers that wired Ethernet
connection is going to make all the
difference it's also just more stable
and reliable now this particular desktop
also has a wireless connection this is
the antenna for it and I use that as a
backup so with my smart phone I have the
option for tethering and this is the
case with just about any Android phone
or iPhone though you might have to make
a special service agreement with your
wireless provider I can turn on
tethering here and then connect my
computer to the Internet through my
phone using up my data plan this is my
backup plan for when my internet
connection fails because if you're like
me you have deadlines you have work to
do you need to get the pictures to the
client you can't afford to not get your
work done just because your cable modem
provider failed for a little bit so this
is my back-up plan
a wireless adapter in my desktop and
then phone with tethering I'll talk a
little bit more about why I chose this
computer specifically this is not an
off-the-shelf asus or Dell or HP it is a
custom-built computer it allowed me to
choose a case I wanted the largest case
possible so you can see I got a huge
case and that's because I have a lot of
drives to store a lot of people will
instead choose to use USB 3 external
drives and as they add more pictures
they'll just keep adding more and more
and more the USB 3 connection is
noticeably slower the faster drives also
require an external power supply so then
you end up with all these separate power
connections coming in it ends up being
very cluttery
and the cables can come loose and might
get tangled up and I just much prefer to
have internal drives so one
guess that had plenty of space I've also
run out of PCI slots before because in
the future I might be adding more
interface cards to support say a raid
array more additional drives I might
even add a second graphics card in order
to process those big 4k video files a
little faster so this computer leaves me
room to grow the large case also makes
it much easier to work with if you look
at the motherboard here it has enough
SATA ports to support a ton of drives
those are si t3 ports a previous
computer I had an SSD in it but the
computer itself only supported SATA 2
and that meant it didn't take advantage
of the drives put full performance
instead of being 500 megabytes a second
it was running at about 200 megabytes a
second and I tried adding an SATA 3
internal card to it but at that point it
became bottlenecked by the speed of the
bus itself so it didn't actually improve
performance any to get the full
performance out of an SSD drive
I had to upgrade basically the
motherboard so I decided just to buy a
whole new computer I do want to show off
the back of the computer here because
this has been an important feature for
me as you can imagine with having 8
drives inside the computer the cable
management can be really difficult the
back of this computer has a lot of pass
throughs that allow me to pass the
cables through and run them down the
back here channeling it to the actual
drives so that means the interior the
drive here is not incredibly cluttered
with cables most computers are much more
cluttered said all that clutter is in
the back here there can be a little more
organized and you can see I've done
things like use cable wraps and cable
ties to keep the cables together and
I've upgraded as since I've gotten and
not all of that is extremely tidy but
the tidiness that is there makes things
much easier particular computer is also
designed for ventilation so the top vent
here comes out for cleaning because it's
going to gather hair just about all of
the computer can be turned into a vent
there are a couple of nice features for
system builders to people who are
tweaking and rebooting your computer
like there are buttons inside of here
that allow me to
easily reboot it without having to move
my body physically outside the computer
you do the sort of tweaking you know
you're inside your computer quite a bit
so in a nutshell this is not for the
faint of heart
this was an expensive and custom-built
setup and it's more than most people
need but it's not necessarily more than
I need and in fact I'm still constantly
wishing I had some kind of faster
computer by room 6
bragged about performance improvements
but ultimately so many tasks in
Lightroom are still extremely extremely
slow you're making a panorama or even
just comparing multiple pictures and
opening up I find myself all the time
just frustrated that it's taking so long
I've done everything I can got in the
fastest computer you can possibly build
and I know a lot about computer
performance - some things are just slow
when it comes to 4k video editing still
not uncommon for one of our longer
videos to take for six or eight hours to
render little changes are little things
like adding like warp stabilization so
kind of make the computer unusable and
it means I simply have to wait for it so
this is not overkill it's under Cole I
would get a bigger faster computer if
possible and it would save us time and
make us more productive but in the
meantime this is about the biggest
computer you can possibly get without
going to more larger like multiprocessor
type computers where you're looking at
you know well over $10,000 for the
computer so if you have any questions
add a comment down below I bet you have
some ideas - you're nerds write a
comment with your suggestion and take it
into account I hope this helps you build
a good computer to recap SSD drives
absolutely must the bigger the better
fastest processor you can get and for
simple things like Lightroom 4 gigabytes
a memory might be enough but it wouldn't
hurt have a gigabytes or even 16
gigabytes but save yourself some money
and get a cheap graphics card
