I want to buy a new laptop which I can devote entirely to photo sorting, grading, editing (with Lightroom and Photoshop), storing and uploading for printing and sharing. In addition to photo use, I will also take this laptop on vacations and other trips and use the Wi-Fi capability for email and occasional web browsing. I tend to shoot a lot of photos and I rarely discard a shot unless it is clearly out of focus, poorly exposed, or has some other glaring problem making it unusable. I tend to be a packrat in that regard. This will be a totally new system, purpose built from the ground up. What I have now is a total mess of stuff on memory cards, memory sticks, hard drives, DVDs, and CDs. I want an organized system with everything in one place with an offsite backup either in the cloud or on a good quality portable drive.

I want to keep costs under $2500 if possible and I am more familiar with the Windows environment than the IOS system, though I do have both an iPhone and iPad, so I'm not ruling out Apple. I would really like to have your suggestions about both hardware and software.

Thanks!

I tend to go the custom build route. Very few of the standard brands offer much in this area. With your budget, after you get done adding external drives, you won't be able to afford a Mac anything, unless you get a low end, entry level system. I have similar needs and habits (can't ever seem to find the delete key), though I need to support 2 external displays at my home office.

I am about to pull the trigger on this system for myself:

16.1" display
i7-9750H 6 core 12 thread
NVidia RTX2060 with 6 gb Vram
32 gb ram (user upgradeable to 64 gb)
1 TB m.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (boot drive)
1 TB m.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (second drive)
2 TB 2.5" SATA III SSD

Total price is $2317

A similarly configured 16" Macbook Pro would cost $4199. It would have 4 TB of storage, like the Windows machine, but it would be entirely on one drive, which is less desirable. For almost half the cost you get the same level of performance and storage, and you can stay within your budget.

Another way to look at this is what could you put together for the cost of this 16" Macbook Pro ($4200)

17.3" display 4K
i9-9750H 8 core 16 thread
NVidia RTX2070 with 8 gb Vram
32 gb ram (user upgradeable to 64 gb)
1 TB m.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (boot drive)
1 TB m.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (second drive)
4 TB 2.5" SATA III SSD (in Bay 1)
4 TB 2.5" SATA III SSD (in Bay 2)

Total price $4058. So, for the price of the Macbook Pro described above you can get a system with an 8 core, 16 thread CPU, a slightly larger display, and a whopping 10 TB of internal SSD storage. There is no economic or performance reason that could be used to justify an Apple purchase. But there are the emotional, status, aesthetic and other non-technical reasons that are perfectly valid for Mac fans, and are totally meaningless to people who are trying to get the most bang for their buck. I am not a fan of using external drives for everything. It makes the computer less portable.

Money is hard enough to come by these days - you can't go wrong with the Windows custom built system.

https://xoticpc.com/

I've been sending people to this custom integrator since 2012, and have had no complaints. My son spent a few $$$ on an engineering-class workstation to do 3D structural analysis and design, and to run his CNC routers for his design/fabrication business a couple of years ago and it is still doing fine - or was until the pandemic basically stopped his business in its tracks.