CS6 Questions

[Havok]

My wife is looking to buy a new laptop to run CS6 on.
Primarily Photoshop and InDesign

Questions:
What platform is the best to run it on? Windows or Apple.

What is the best computer to run it on for Windows? (i.e. Dell, Sony, etc.)

What is the cheapest build that will still run it smoothly and effectively?

Any other info is appreciated.

[Mr Bean]

CS6 is the name for Adobes entire product line could you be more specific, because the requirements for Photoshop is far different than for Premiere Pro.

Unless there's another CS6 out there, which considering computers is not only likely but guaranteed.

[Havok]

Edited in the info Bean.

[General Zod]

I don't think the OS really matters with CS6 all that much. I'm using a couple of products across Windows & OSX thanks to trials and they're pretty much identical, so just get whatever she's comfy with. I'm running Photoshop on a 2010 Macbook Air though, and it isn't exactly struggling with anything. (A new MBA will run about $1000.)

[The Kernel]

Ok, there are too many variables here given the information you have provided. Even a mid-level machine can RUN Photoshop and InDesign just fine...the question is what are you going to do with it? Let's start with a few simple questions:

1) What are the resolution of images you plan to work with?
2) Do you plan to work with RAW images?
3) How many images simultaneously?
4) What sorts of operations are you going to perform? Simple crops, color tweaks, etc? Complex layers, Smart Art (vector) and 3D?
5) Laptop or desktop?

I'm going to suspect that since you are asking such elementary questions though that your wife is not going to be a serious user. As such I will make some general points:

• Photoshop loves RAM and there is no reason not to get a lot of it since RAM is cheap. Go for 16GB just for the hell of it.
• Photoshop also likes fast I/O so get a good SSD instead of a spinning drive.
• Don't go crazy on the CPU. You really don't need more than a four core machine (so forget about overpriced workstations and Xeon CPUs) and just get a decent mid-range Ivy Bridge.
• You may have heard that GPU acceleration via OpenCL is in CS6. That's true, but it shouldn't factor into your decision making as a high speed GPU really isn't going to change much. Don't go for an upgraded GPU although a dedicated GPU from nVidia or AMD is a good idea (stay low end and don't spend much on it).
• For OS get whatever you are most comfortable with, it doesn't really matter since if you are buying a machine dedicated for this they will function mostly the same (although window management is superior in OSX due to Expose in my opinion).

For specific machine recommendations, I'd probably consider a 27" iMac as a good option since you'll get a very high caliber display (for prosumers anyway) along with the right combination of hardware, just make sure you spec an SSD and enough memory (you can add it aftermarket for a lot cheaper via Other World Computing upgrades). I wouldn't recommend a Retina Macbook right now since CS6 has not been upgraded to support it and Adobe is silent on when this will happen.

If you want a PC, there are tons of options, just get one with the hardware you like and avoid anything that is a workstation as they are overpriced in the extreme.

Also if you are purchasing two or more Adobe products consider a Creative Cloud subscription instead of purchasing the software. They are pretty reasonably priced options and give you access to all the Adobe products should you need them (also gives you "free" updates to CS7, 8, etc).

[Terralthra]

Whoops, never mind. Laptop. Bleh.

[Mr Bean]

Kernel was speccing out desktops rather than a laptop but lots of his details hold true despite it being a Laptop

First off RAM, RAM and more RAM
Photoshop loves RAM, you love RAM we all love RAM. Start at 8 gigs and work your way to 16 gigs if your budget can afford it

Now to your questions
1. The OS is personal preference in my opinion but I'd match what I'm familiar with, use Apple at work use Apple at home, PC's at work PC's at home ect... ect... However if you do get an Windows PC make doubly sure it's a Windows 7 64 bit version.

2. The Best computer to run it on is the best combination deal you can find. Unless your buying a three year replacement deal from IBM, every other computer company out there is a crap shoot as far as warranties go. For every three Dell horror stories I've heard three Sony horror stories. As far as companies without tons of support (Like Asus or MSI) they trade this for not having personalized custom drivers and being very user friendly in the maintenance department. After HP gets their hands on a laptop it's almost not a Windows machine based on the amount of extra crap they tack on and it's all on their backup disks they give you. But all of it can be removed with a little effort.

So the maker should be the perfect mix of features and price, care less about support unless you NEED support in which case go get an IBM laptop.

3. Cheapest be most any laptop with a dedicated GPU, take a look at notebook check and see if your laptop of choice has something in the mid range or high end range
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Gra ... 844.0.html
You won't need high end range, aim for middle of the road, you want features not speed, so more shaders over faster sharders, more ram over faster ram. Just look up each laptop make sure it has a dedicated gpu of AMD or Nvidia heritage look up the rest of the laptop features then come back look up the GPU in question and see how it's ranked.

Please note notebook graphics cards are deliberately designed to be as confusing as fuck, while the desktop side it's mostly Gen number (4xxx, 5xxx or 6xxx) then the XXX's to determine which one is faster, in the mobile market they will just lie, so a Gen 4 card will get labeled as a Gen 5 just because it's got slightly faster core frequency but it's not even the same die size.

[xthetenth]

I'd like to pop in to recommend that whatever you do, don't skimp on the display, both resolution and quality. There's little point to getting a nice laptop that can play with big images well and all that jazz if you don't have enough screen to see much of the image and don't have the fidelity to see the colors properly. I can't think of much that'd compete with a Vaio S and its 1080p screen while in the same county for price (the Retina Macbook is of course ridiculously impressive in that regard but very expensive). Unfortunately I can't tell whether or not the customizable version is IPS and that's the best option by far for pricing.

[phongn]

If you can fit it in your budget (and it is pricey) the ThinkPad W530 with the 'Full HD' screen option* is an excellent machine in pretty much any configuration. There's a firm selling highly-specced and fully-warrantied machines on eBay here for pretty good prices.

HP's EliteBook line is also very good.

* 1920x1080 IPS display, which should be excellent for photo work. EDIT: Not sure if it's an IPS display but it's a pretty good one.

[Melchior]

I wouldn't recommend a Retina Macbook right now since CS6 has not been upgraded to support it and Adobe is silent on when this will happen.

I have one; Photoshop is barely usable in HiDPI mode, Adobe should really hurry up on this. If she has extremely good eyesight she might use it at native 2880x1800, but even if mine is better than average I don't find that comfortable.

Assuming serious usage, get at least 8gb of RAM, better 16gb, it's cheap anyway. A SSD is going to help a lot, as a decent discrete graphic card (there are laptops with Quadros, but it's not really cost effective).

[The Kernel]

(the Retina Macbook is of course ridiculously impressive in that regard but very expensive).

Actually when you consider the specs it's not all that expensive. Remember it's a high end computer so naturally it's going to cost more but its fairly aggressively priced in the entry level models and if you can get by with a 256GB SSD then the base model with a 16GB RAM upgrade is a ridiculously fast machine with no real competition given the awesome screen.

The problem is as I said before that CS6 doesn't have Retina compatible apps yet so everything is fuzzy. They WORK but when you pay good money for a display like that you want to be able to use it at full brilliance. I hope that Adobe solves this problem soon but given their past history combined with a lot of custom UI frameworks that CS6 uses I'm not really expecting it for at least a few more months.

[The Kernel]

I wouldn't recommend a Retina Macbook right now since CS6 has not been upgraded to support it and Adobe is silent on when this will happen.

I have one; Photoshop is barely usable in HiDPI mode, Adobe should really hurry up on this. If she has extremely good eyesight she might use it at native 2880x1800, but even if mine is better than average I don't find that comfortable.

You are overstating the problem, I have one too and its totally usable in Retina mode it just makes you angry because you shouldn't be looking at fuzzy edges on UI controls on a machine like this.

[The Kernel]

If you can fit it in your budget (and it is pricey) the ThinkPad W530 with the 'Full HD' screen option* is an excellent machine in pretty much any configuration. There's a firm selling highly-specced and fully-warrantied machines on eBay here for pretty good prices.

HP's EliteBook line is also very good.

* 1920x1080 IPS display, which should be excellent for photo work. EDIT: Not sure if it's an IPS display but it's a pretty good one.

Problem is when you add the SSD option its just as pricy as the Retina Macbooks, although a bit higher spec for the money. Personally it's hard for me to recommend a PC laptop for a graphics artist right now even with the CS6 optimization problems just because the display is of critical importance and no PC has anything that comes close.

[xthetenth]

I'd tend to agree there. Nowhere did I say the Retina was overpriced. It's excellent. However, different people have different price ranges, so being able to get a 1080p IPS for half the price of a Retina is quite possibly worth consideration.

[Tolya]

Careful with Retina. The pixel density on the screen is about 4 times bigger, to the programs which are not optimized for retina may look blurry. I've seen reports of fuzzy UI, but probably Adobe will fix this pretty soon (or not at all, depends on which side of "care" retina is for them).

Personally, I wouldn't risk running a Retina. In Indesign CS5 they introduced a whole lot of problems with speed, so that even 16GB machines were very slow in bigger documents, like books. I actually started putting together a book in CS5, but when I reached page 100 (out of 300!) the whole thing just stopped responding. I had to switch back to CS4, which luckily was still stashed away. Lots of people reported this very serious problem and Adobe did not budge to fix it. So I am not an optimist when it comes to their support and the chances of making their shit retina friendly.

Right now my wife is doing some of her design work on a Dell XPS l702x, with an i7 and 6GB ram. Both photoshop and indesign run quite smoothly. I guess an i5 would be sufficient, but at least 8GB's of ram is recommended.