robertneger

I am planning to buy a new computer primarily for Photoshop. I plan to buy a ninth generation i7 CPU desktop however I don't know how much RAM is enough? I have been told 16 Gs however others tell me I need 32 Gs?
Do I need a discrete video card or is the onboard UHD enough? Any suggestions on monitors would be greatly appreciated.
For all of you who answered questions on non-Cannon ink for a Pro 9000 Mark II printer and your opinons on whether to give up my darkroom, I am in your debt. (I decided to keep the darkroom to tank develop 6 x 6 negatives and tray develop and contact print 8 x 10s).
Thanks again,
Bob Neger or Ace
still locked up Burlingame California

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Get ready for opinions all over the board.

As far as RAM, on a desktop, I believe the minimum is 32 Gb, with an expansion slot mounted video card.
Photoshop and Lightroom are memory and process-intensive, so get the fastest system you can. Something with dual or multiple monitor outputs, in case you want to go to multiple screens.

I have always had excellent results with Dell Ultrasharp, and I favor the narrow-wide format, which lets me put 2 windows side by side on the screen.

Also, get a hardware color calibrator like an X-Rite (dual screens) or Spyder Pro.

SSD instead of a HD, which is pretty much standard these days.

Merlin1300 Loc: New England, But Now & Forever SoTX

Or - you can build one like I did 5 years ago - - Overkill on everything - but there you go.
PS seems perfectly happy with my 16GB RAM - (should be fine for a single user - I never exceed 80% RAM use)
Some of the image processing may be offloaded to my 3 NVidia video cards - no way to tell how much.
The cost of 32 GB RAM may be much more affordable today than 5 years ago - so choose wisely.
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-496767-1.html
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It seems nobody uses SLI or Crossfire much any more - although NVidia does still support SLI in their drivers.

bleirer

A pretty good article, a few years old but still applicable. I'd go for a half terabyte solid state drive to hold the operating system and program files and the lightroom catalog. 16 g of ram at least, at least i7, 2 terabyte hard drive, a graphics card that is on Adobe's tested list. A display that is 100% of Adobe rgb or close.

https://blog.breathingcolor.com/computer-for-image-editing/

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/system-requirements.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/system-requirements.html

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

32GB should do you well. I am an Apple Guy Bob. Made the switch 5 years ago and never looked back. Have Apple Desk top and laptops.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1468595-REG/apple_z0vq_mrqy2_14_27_imac_with_retina.html

chulster

Overkill is virtually always the right move. Photo file sizes go up, and computing requirements go up as the square of those—or so it feels. Even if you never upgrade your camera, software updates will do your hardware in before long. Too soon, too much is not enough.

MW

The biggest bottle neck is the hard drive. Be sure to use a solid state drive (SSD) since the other upgrades won’t help much if you bogged down by the reading and witting image files. As for video, so far I‘ve found the Intel GPU on many motherboards is usually fast enough although you may get a little bit of a speed up with an add-in video card. I don’t think the card needs to be a hardcore gaming card however.

lmTrying Loc: WV Northern Panhandle

I've been digging my way through this for the last year. A gen 8 i5 Intel will run basically as fast as an i7 to process photos. The photo processing programs will not make use of of all those cores, so save your money. Get the dedicated video card and 16gb of RAM. Unless you're using a 50MP camera, 16gb should serve you well. Get as much M.2 SSD memory as you can afford, 512 gig or 1TB. You can always add external drives. I'm trying to figure the AMD equivalent of the i5. From there everything else is just niceties. Just my 2 cents.

Merlin1300 Loc: New England, But Now & Forever SoTX

Pair Intel with NVidia, AMD with Radeon. AMD/Radeon will likely cost a bit less - but you will need to be cognizant of potential software incompatibilities.
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Neither can I speak to using an M.2 SSD card vs a plain 2.5" SSD: they both use up a PCI lane. My MoBo has 40 lanes - and between the 3 video cards and all of my HDD/SSD (see my post above), all lanes are spoken for.
My system drive uses 2 x 500GB SSD in RAID1 - I don't think an M.2 card would offer any speed advantage - and of course a single M.2 card has no redundancy.
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Regarding Winblows vs Crapple: IF you need to add hardware or change stuff inside your computer, Winblows is the only way to go. IF you DON'T want to worry about stuff working, internal software compatibilities, or differences in program interfaces - then go with crapple (IMHO at a $50% increase in price for the same capabilities).

chulster

Photoshop eats GPUs for breakfast. You'll want a dedicated graphics card for best performance. The better it is for gaming, the better it will be for PS.

warzone

Most responses seem to be talking about the computer. I have a 15 in Mac Book Pro but I wanted a bigger monitor for photo editing. Any suggestions on that?

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Check out BenQ monitors like the SW240 (or larger) - 99% Adobe RGB, 14bit 3D LUT, hardware calibrated.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Everything you need to know about the computer build is here:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/content_creation/photo.php

You'll notice that the requirements for Photoshop, which is processor clock and RAM intensive are different from what is needed for Lightroom, which requires less ram, but faster disks and multiple cores on the cpu. This is because when you are editing, you are editing a small preview image, and the only time you really use up system resources is when you are merging HDR or Panoramas, and of course when you are exporting a file - since rendering uses up both ram disk speed/bandwidth.

As far as your specific questions:

1) 16 gb ram is minimal, 32 better, with the option to easily install another 32 is best
2) Discrete video card is a given. Otherwise the memory for graphics display is "borrowed" from the operating system and program execution
3) At the low end, an 8 bit display with a 12 bit LUT is a decent choice - a better display will be a native 10 bit display. the low end costs $300- $600, the better displays >$1300 but they also usually include profiling tools and software to keep the color accurate. All monitors "drift" and age and require regular fine tuning - regardless of whether it cost $150 or $1500.

I'd be suspicious of these guys who "made the change and never looked back" because clearly they are not up to date on the current state of things. In computer time 5 years can be 3-4 generations.

Systems with m.2 NVMe PCIe drives will boot and execute a little faster than m.2 SATA - and you will see more a performance improvement with large files. Does anyone who does photo editing have small files?.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

Not necessarily so. Some gaming cards sacrifice color accuracy for speed. And to really take advantage of the GPU make sure you go into “preferences” and check the performance settings.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

There is no advantage to using multiple GPU’s for Photoshop. Multiple cards can cause problems, so unless you need them for some other purpose stick with one. And if you need more than one, make sure they’re identical.