Minimum spec for acceptable photoshop and other photo manipulation software

IWANTBLUE · 19 Jan 2020 at 13:58

Hi, maybe slightly O/T here but I figured there must be some budding photography fans currently running minimum spec pc's for their craft.

Asked to build a new Home computer for Basic office tasks, so the usual suspects, with Email, Web Browsing and the absolute minimum of Games playing, that onboard graphics is more than capable for.
But the other requirement is basic newbie/learning/basic photoshop and or other photo manipulation software, purely for home/personal dabbling with DSLR footage.

I've read that Single core Clock speed seems to be more important currently than cores/threads, but with an interest in trying to keep the costs down I was considering maybe a
B450 Mortar Max or Tomahawk Max, with a Ryzen 3400G to get the Vega 11 onboard graphics solution to negate the requirement for a graphics card, Is this viable or does Photoshop 'et al' require a graphics card even if only a basic one ??

I'd planned a 1TB or 500Gb (if I have to spend more to get a graphics card), SSD (M2) or Sata, and probably a 7200 2Tb HDD for file storage.16Gb 3600 Patriot Viper Ram for fit and forget whilst prices are still reasonable.

is the vega 11 enough graphics capability for just dabbling in photoshop of is GPU really a necessity?
If so would Rx570-Rx590 be sufficient or even overkill?

I know Intel generally Clocks higher but the overall more rounded performance of the Ryzen solutions seems to be far better VFM in general.

Given that gaming per se, is NOT the priority does this seem reasonable? or would one of the none APU chips give much better performance, whilst necessitating a graphics card?
also need to add wifi and a card reader and budget isn't totally capped if I have a genuine reason for specific parts and price hike

any 5.25" Card reader options that people can actually vouch for gratefully received (SD and XD, if I recall, are the current requirements)

Oh and a BR/RW or DVDRW for archiving too, again recommendations gratefully received.

sorry its a bit "War & Peace" :rolleyes:

Cheers

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 19 Jan 2020 at 22:03

It depends - a Ryzen 5 3400G is probably good enough for most casual usage. I was using a Xeon E3 1230 V2/Core i7 3770 with a D600 myself and it was mostly fine. I upgraded to a Ryzen 5 2600 and it was noticeably faster,so a Ryzen 5 1600/2600/3600 and an RX570 would have more grunt,but then again it depends on exactly what you are doing. The advantage of AM4 is that you can start with a Ryzen 5 3400G for now,and if you want a faster CPU,it will be a drop in upgrade to a Ryzen 5 3600 or Ryzen 7 3700X. You have the right idea about the motherboard and RAM BTW - something like a SSD for boot and scratch files is useful. Unlike video editing,photo editing won't push an SSD as much from what I have seen,so a SATA SSD should be enough or an entry level NVME drive,even if a a higher end NVME drive would be faster. A good middle point might be a WD Blue SN550,which is around £100 for 1TB. Faster alternatives are the Adata SX8200 PRO which is around £130 for the same capacity.

stuman · 20 Jan 2020 at 08:21

iPad and pencil.

it’s more about usability than outright speed.

IWANTBLUE · 20 Jan 2020 at 11:54

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
It depends - a Ryzen 5 3400G is probably

good enough for most casual usage. I was using a Xeon E3 1230 V2/Core i7 3770 with a D600 myself and it was mostly fine. I upgraded to a Ryzen 5 2600 and it was noticeably faster,so a Ryzen 5 1600/2600/3600 and an RX570 would have more grunt,but then again it depends on exactly what you are doing. The advantage of AM4 is that you can start with a Ryzen 5 3400G for now,and if you want a faster CPU,it will be a drop in upgrade to a Ryzen 5 3600 or Ryzen 7 3700X. You have the right idea about the motherboard and RAM BTW - something like a SSD for boot and scratch files is useful. Unlike video editing,photo editing won't push an SSD as much from what I have seen,so a SATA SSD should be enough or an entry level NVME drive,even if a a higher end NVME drive would be faster. A good middle point might be a WD Blue SN550,which is around £100 for 1TB. Faster alternatives are the Adata SX8200 PRO which is around £130 for

the same capacity.

Cheers Cat , much appreciated :cool:

stuman said:
iPad and pencil.

it’s more about usability than outright speed.

Keh??

The_Abyss · 20 Jan 2020 at 23:17

stuman said:
iPad and pencil.

it’s more about usability than outright speed.

I still do most of my editing on my iMac at home, but last year I ditched my MacBook in favour of an iPad Pro. For the vast majority of editing, the iPad is fantastic, and very friendly to use and carry on the go. Hugely powerful, too.

IWANTBLUE · 20 Jan 2020 at 23:57

stuman said:
iPad and pencil.

it’s more about usability than outright speed.

sorry I see now you were suggesting ipad'n'pen instead... but he wants a computer anyway and whilst he has an android Tablet he's not a huge fan of , but thanks for the input....

The_Abyss said:
I still do most of my editing on my iMac at home, but last year I ditched my MacBook in favour of an iPad Pro. For the vast majority of editing, the iPad is fantastic, and very friendly to use and carry on the go. Hugely powerful, too.

thanks for the advice, but as above he really wants a computer and would only be dabbling in photoshop to see if it appeals.

kevcampbell · 21 Jan 2020 at 12:22

Built my computer a couple of years ago I have a Ryzen 1600 with 16gb ram and a Nvidia 6gb 1060 and it handles photoshop and premiere pro easily, I know that is not much help but I hope it gives you an idea of the kind of spec you need to run photoshop, you do not need a monster and to spend thousands, you could just build a computer with similar specs to my one but with the latest components like the 3600 instead of the 1600 and the B450 tomahawk would be a good to put with that, hope that I was able to help

stuman · 21 Jan 2020 at 20:05

honestly, photoshop and lightroom are not that tough to run and if he is just playing around with it, then it might be more beneficial to put the money into lenses or other bits and bobs that come up.

Honestly, knowing what I know now, I would have not built a PC for Photo editing duties (was a good excuse to build a gaming PC without the wife knowing it was mostly for gaming!

)

The Ipad is what I use 95% of the time. Honestly, tell him to give it a go. It really is quite a powerful tool.

Otherwise, any reasonably modern PC will be able to run PS and LR to a level where he will be happy. so pick another use to focus on.

ethan · 21 Jan 2020 at 20:28

Any 2600k standard cpu with 16 gig of ram and a GTX980 can handle Photoshop & After effects quite admirably with plenty of storage. This is my backup system for those apps. A complete system went for £150.00 on the Members Market bar the GPU recently.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 24 Jan 2020 at 00:57

I wouldn't spend £100s on an iPad to run photo editing - it will be great if you are on the move or already have one,but a desktop PC will easily last 5 to 6 years,and you can have a big screen too. The system can also be upgraded if the requirements increase. Some software like DxO can use all the cores on a machine(well at least upto 12/16 cores) so can be taxing.

IWANTBLUE said:
Cheers Cat , much appreciated

No problem!

IWANTBLUE · 25 Jan 2020 at 10:21

Thanks for all the input guys, I've been sick as a dog for the last few days

All very helpful, :cool:

but all have a graphics card, that's the bit I'm querying really? :confused:

Whether it's necessary for dabbling in photoshop, etc...
He hasn't had a graphics card previously, has no interest in propper games, hence me trying to give him the most up to date kit I can with the 3400 for the vega 11,(allowing for cpu upgrade in the future) whilst not having to have a graphics card, on the other hand, if this is going to make even dabbling in PS, etc a chore then I'd rather he has to pay a bit more and get a system that will cope to give him a good experience.
There's an argument to say the level he'll be at, the computer will often probably be waiting for him to catch up rather than the other way around, however as I have zero PS experience, I have no idea where any GPU acceleration would improve the experience.

I'll check out if there are some minimum specs suggested but was hoping for some real-world review of someone who either uses it without GPU or maybe on an old or second machine that doesn't sport a GPU machine.
Thanks for all your efforts, however.

pc-guy · 29 Jan 2020 at 03:50

My pc is nearly 7yrs old. It has a haswell i7 with 32GB ram and a positively ancient K2000 quadro card.

for LR and Photoshop no issues. I can do lots of exposure stacks in photoshop without hitting ram limit.

Premier is a different story tho.

One thing to note, before the haswell I was using dual core Athlon for photo edits and that was fine also. Only snare I hit was the processing time for using with DXO software. I use DXO for distortion and noise correction. It is very heavy on processing. But the haswell worked well.

So in short - photo edits you can get away with a machine that’s 10yr old. Just make sure you have decent amount of RAM. I would go for 32GB as 6 photos open in photoshop will eat up a decent chunk of it especially if you have multiple stacks.

For video you need some more horse power on the graphic card side.

IWANTBLUE · 29 Jan 2020 at 17:32

pc-guy said:
My pc is nearly 7yrs old. It has a haswell i7 with 32GB ram and a positively ancient K2000 quadro card.

for LR and Photoshop no issues. I can do lots of exposure stacks in photoshop without hitting ram limit.

Premier is a different story tho.

One thing to note, before the haswell I was using dual core Athlon for photo edits and that was fine also. Only snare I hit was the processing time for using with DXO software. I use DXO for distortion and noise correction. It is very heavy on processing. But the haswell worked well.

So in short - photo edits you can get away with a machine that’s 10yr old. Just make sure you have a decent amount of RAM. I would go for 32GB as 6 photos open in photoshop will eat up a decent chunk of it especially if you have multiple stacks.

For video, you need some more horsepower on the graphics card side.

Cheers Yeah I'm happy pretty much any of the CPU's would suffice, it's really whether the Onboard Vega 11 is sufficient? or it needs a GPU as well? hence I'm looking at 3400G on its own, Or the obvious better CPUs, which are a little more, but necessitate the GPU purchase. Obviously there's potential to use the 3400, then upgrade by adding a GPU if required, but if that ended up being the case I'd be annoyed that I hadn't gone with a better CPU.
If Vega 11 is sufficient, then obviously the 3400G is the cheapest route, then there are obviously a plethora of CPU options if I'm going GPU as well, and if GPU is the minimum spec of a GTX1050 I think it said so the cheapest route would probably be an RX570 at around £110 but if going that far would a £200 RX590 be a better all-around buy?

Whilst he doesn't need a great GPU for gaming once going that route throwing a little more at it could make it a much better more rounded machine I think I'll throw together some spec lists with the different price points and let him choose, just really wanted to know if GPU was a necessity or a nice to have.

ethan · 29 Jan 2020 at 18:11

Go for what your maximum budget allows so you won't regret it later.

pc-guy · 29 Jan 2020 at 19:20

IWANTBLUE said:
Cheers Yeah I'm happy pretty much any of the CPU's would suffice, it's really whether the Onboard Vega 11 is sufficient? or it needs a GPU as well? hence I'm looking at 3400G on its own, Or the obvious better CPUs, which are a little more, but necessitate the GPU purchase. Obviously there's potential to use the 3400, then upgrade by adding a GPU if required, but if that ended up being the case I'd be annoyed that I hadn't gone with a better CPU.
If Vega 11 is sufficient, then obviously the 3400G is the cheapest route, then there are obviously a plethora of CPU options if I'm going GPU as well, and if GPU is the minimum spec of a GTX1050 I think it said so the cheapest route would probably be an RX570 at around £110 but if going that far would a £200 RX590 be a better all-around buy?

Whilst he doesn't need a great GPU for gaming once going that route throwing a little more at it could make it a much better more rounded machine I think I'll throw together some spec lists with the different price points and let him choose, just really wanted to know if GPU was a necessity or a nice to have.

I went for the quadro because it supports 10bit workflow and works with photoshop with no additional fiddling required. You don’t really need a decent graphics card for photo editing. Middle of the road is more than enough. My quadro only has 2GB ram onboard so even the lowest gfx on the current market would be sufficient.