Art and Photography

Touch screen PC for photo editing ? Good ??

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  • Aug 28th, 2014 5:02 pm
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Deal Fanatic
Aug 29, 2006
7750 posts
1635 upvotes

Touch screen PC for photo editing ? Good ??

Well, wanted to pick up a laptop and would like to use it for family photo editing among many things, however is a touch screen a must now for that ??

Any of you had tried it with light room or PS ?? Does it add to the overall or just a replacement for a mouse ??

If it helps, thinking about the higher end 2-in-1 with a dedicated video card.

Thx.
The Devil made me buy it - RFD. :twisted:
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Deal Addict
Jan 19, 2008
1833 posts
360 upvotes
hdom wrote: Well, wanted to pick up a laptop and would like to use it for family photo editing among many things, however is a touch screen a must now for that ??

Any of you had tried it with light room or PS ?? Does it add to the overall or just a replacement for a mouse ??

If it helps, thinking about the higher end 2-in-1 with a dedicated video card.

Thx.
not sure how well a touch screen works for the sliders in LR and brushing in PS. Best way to go if you want to get involved is to get a cintiq. I can't link you to that and you'll have to google in case they think I work for Wacom...

:D
Wedding & Child Photographer ~ happily photographing
Deal Addict
Aug 1, 2010
1588 posts
1599 upvotes
Montreal
hdom wrote: Well, wanted to pick up a laptop and would like to use it for family photo editing among many things, however is a touch screen a must now for that ??

Any of you had tried it with light room or PS ?? Does it add to the overall or just a replacement for a mouse ??

If it helps, thinking about the higher end 2-in-1 with a dedicated video card.

Thx.
I have a touchscreen XPS 15 from Dell, the top end model. I have/will never use the touchscreen to edit my pictures on lightroom or photoshop.
Deal Fanatic
Feb 16, 2006
5264 posts
2270 upvotes
Vancouver
hdom wrote: Well, wanted to pick up a laptop and would like to use it for family photo editing among many things, however is a touch screen a must now for that ??
What's your budget? How big a screen do you want?

The biggest issue with most laptops is that the gamut coverage of the backlight is typically 50% to 70% of the sRGB color space. Viewing images on these may not show all colors at their most vibrant and trying to make color critical edits can be tricky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Colorspace.png


There are a handful of 13.3" and 14" ultrabooks and 15.5" laptops with screens that are reasonably color accurate. These usually cost between $950 and $1500. You can also buy a less expensive laptop with a kinda crappy screen but spend $150 and get a perfectly usable external monitor 22" 1920x1080 with an IPS panel and 97% coverage of the sRGB space that you can plug in at home to make those critical color edits.

Personally, I would never use a touch screen for editing images as the greasy fingerprints in mid screen distorting edge detail would drive me crazy.

What are you looking for?

.
Deal Fanatic
Aug 29, 2006
7750 posts
1635 upvotes
^Since I am not a pro, I am not as picky about resolution and color, plus this is not a discussion on best laptop for photo editing (been on RFD long enough).

The question is does the "Touch Screen" add to the overall experience of photo editing on a computer or not and it seems the answers from my research is either it is too new a thing to conclude or people haven't noticed a difference.

I do have an iPad air and tried using photo app on it and I found it made the process very easy, although the apps were more for fun and not the Adobe suite of apps, which I do plan to get for the PC.
The Devil made me buy it - RFD. :twisted:
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User avatar
Jul 29, 2006
2212 posts
460 upvotes
Guelph
In Lightroom, I could foresee some convenience in being able to touch the sliders for adjustments. But what all of the other features that would normally require mouse clicks? In the end, it's probably more of a novelty thing than is practical.
Deal Addict
Nov 28, 2008
1166 posts
134 upvotes
Toronto
By touch screen if you mean active digitizer (like in some Thinkpad tablets and Surface etc), yes it may help when you are doing fine selections, healing brush on photoshop. in lightroom similar areas can be useful with an 'active' digitizer pen. As for finger touch, it is almost useless in these 2 apps but may look 'sexy' when you are viewing images with flicks. The latter you can do with the touchpad and keyboard as well if I remember correctly.

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