PP on the Run

[Ed Rooney]

Now that Phillip has sadly left Alamy and the forum, maybe I can ask this question without the Flemish roof falling on me: How many of you do post procession on a laptop? And how many would consider using a Mac 11" Air laptop to do your PP? 

 

[Mihai Popa]

The screen is too small in my opinion.

[NYCat]

Ed, there used to be a greyscale gradient that you could use as your identity plate in Lightroom and it seems to not be available anymore -- unless someone else knows how to get it now. Anyway, it is very useful to make sure you have your screen tilted in a way that shows all the shades of dark and light. I imagine any greyscale chart could work if you put it in your Library and can consult it before you get started working. If you do that there aren't a lot of problems with working on a laptop. I think 11 inches is very small and not suitable for some detailed work in Photoshop. If you are only adjusting levels and doing simple spotting I should think it would be fine. I'm going to get one before my next trip and will definitely use it for sorting and keywording. I don't know about processing but hope that some global adjustments will be possible. You can play around a bit at an Apple store to see how it feels.

 

Paulette

[Colin Woods]

I have done some PP on a small laptop whilst travelling. Its OK but nowhere near as easy as on my full system at home. For me the two big issues were

 

1. The screen is very small so when you are zoomed in at 70-100% only a small part of the image is seen. This can lead to lots of zooming in and out which gets a bit tedious after w while. I found this with a 12MP camera on a 14 inch screen, so a 20MP file on an 11inch screen I think would get tiresome quite quickly. 

 

2. Variable screen lightness. Depending at which angle you view the screen it will appear lighter or darker. I have forgotten the techie stuff about screen types but make sure you check up first. There is a kind of screen (I think its IPS for In Plane Switching but I could be miles off) that doesn't do this. Check up as this is a real bug, my PC laptop screen was bad for this, I had to be always making sure that my line of vision was at right angles to the screen.

 

Overall,I found PP on a laptop is OK if you are away for a long time (we backpacked round the world for a year which is why we bought the laptop) but for shorter trips I just wait until I get back to my big screen.

Cheers
Col

[PatrioticAlien]

I have used friends Macbooks with 11" and 15". the 11 is just to small, retina is just a upscaled resolution, and i've herd and know of people not happy about lagging with the initial screen. If you can get the 15" that is just a better product all-round.  

 

I only use a laptop for everything (it's more powerful than 99.6% of desktops) But mine isn't an eleven inch screen.

[Ed Rooney]

I've been thinking about that 11" MacBook Air mostly for writing at the library or a cafe. I used to enjoy cafe writing when I lived in Europe. It's a good trade-off: less lonely when surrounded by people and strangers are not likely to interrupted me. I was just wondering if I might squeeze a little more use out it for photography.

 

When I did travel in the last decade, I had a laptop with me and saved the RAW files on it and backed them up on a portable HD. But I waited till I got home to do any editing. I have a mini iPad now, but it doesn't really serve any useful purpose. 

 

Thanks for your thoughts. 

[Matt Limb]

Tried once on a laptop about a thousand years ago and will never go there again!

 

Far to small a screen to have any sensible work place - every thing how in to the office and my EID (Electronic Image Desk)  with a colour balanced 26 inch monitor

[colin paterson]

Hi Ed.

Use the Air for everything but not P.P.

Love it!!!

Colin.

[Alex Todd]

I use a 13" macbook pro for everything but I'm covering news, sports and celebrity events and speed is essential to get the images out to newspapers.

[Betty LaRue]

I have a 13" macbook pro that I take on trips.  I did try pp with only a few images while away, but didn't upload them.  When I got home I transferred the Raws including that couple of tiffs to my iMac, and found the macbook pp wanting.  Best I remember, they were too contrasty and a bit too dark.  So I use it to download my cards every evening, and to check various websites and email.  When I get home, I put everything on a memory stick and move the images to the iMac.

I'm sure there is a way to move images from one mac to another, but this "non-techie" couldn't work it out.

 

Betty

[spacecadet]

Put both computers on a local network via your router then just drag across from the shared folder.

[Betty LaRue]

Put both computers on a local network via your router then just drag across from the shared folder.

 

[M.Chapman]

I regularly use a Notebook for PP. I agree that changes in contrast with screen angle is a problem so I put a couple of greyscale bars on my desktop wallpaper so I can set my screen angle easily. Example of my wallpaper is here. Unfortunately the jpg compression has messed up the scale a bit, the original is an uncompresssed bmp file which looks fine. 

 

I also have a 23" monitor and wireless keyboard so, when at home, I can simply close the Notebook lid, connect an HDMI cable from Notebook to monitor and carry on working. Windows even seems to handle swapping the monitor colour calibrations over.

[Imagery by Charly]

I'd never use my cheap windows laptop for any PP! Though when I get a Mac laptop and calibrate it, I'd probably use it when on the road/traveling. Kind of hard to walk away from my 27" iMac for PP, so majority of my work would be done on it.