Editing ability

I would like to potentially upgrade my photo editing software, and recently tried a sample of Paintshop Pro. it slowed my computer down something fierce. Not sure if it was because it was a sample software, or if my computer sucks.

If I went for the gusto, say CS5, would my 3 year old Lenovo T61, with 4 GB Ram and Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 @ 2.25GHz be enough to run this software?

If not, what is the best upgrade from DPP I can run on this laptop, or what is the lowest set of specs (on a new laptop) I should run for this software upgrade.

Thanks in advance...

Photoshop will run well on that PC, Bridge will run ok. I run Win7, Core2Quad, 4GB RAM, and I process 20GB of wedding images through Bridge it easily enough - two SSDs though. Given you have a 7D the files are a bit bigger, so it won't be fast, but it will work.

I doubt anything will be much faster than DPP.

What volume of images do you process, and how often? Raw or jpeg?

Those specs look good to me. Also check your graphics card. This can slow you down if it doesn't have enough memory.

Thanks for the input everyone...

Video says NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M.

Volume depends on what I am shooting. It could be 20 or 30 shots from a trip to the park with our son, or it could be 300 shots from a car show...always full size RAW. If it is small amount and I am not editing extensively, I have been work off the CF card in DPP. If it is larger volume and I want to keep the RAW files I put them on laptop first and work from hard drive. HDD is small too - 150gb.

Working off a CF card can be pretty slow, though some laptops might have fast card readers. Your video card is irrelevant.

That volume of images is pretty small, anything will do it.

Full size raw files from a 7D, on a 3 year old laptop, editing several hundred at a time?

I hope you don't mind waiting for things to happen.


I have an i7 2600K based desktop, and an i5 2410 based laptop, and there is no way I would do anything buy basic edits on the laptop, it is just to slow.
Even large JPEG's from 1000D can slow it down more than I like when editing.

3 "yesses", and a "no..."

Shadow of a doubt blows...

Unless you are getting a 64bit OS system someday soon getting a 64bit PS will not really benefit more than older and MUCH cheaper 32bit PS ELEMENTS (the latest PS9 for $60 or so)

...64bit CS4 and CS5 will use more RAM than 32bit RAM limits of your laptop and THAT is the critical limitation
..later when you get that new laptop with a 64bit OS and 8gb RAM, Elements will run faster than it does on the 32bit OS...

As a learning upgrade Photoshop ELEMENTS will be a considerable upgrade for the money....

Elements will convert RAW files, but DPP is still as good as it gets for MOST people for doing basic conversion to PSE where more nuanced processing can take place...

I don't know how long it takes for your laptop to convert a 7D RAW file to a JPEG, but it took my PS4 (32bit OS with 2.5gb Ram) 15-18 seconds to convert/save a 40D/12mb file....my current i7-860 (came with 6gb in the 64bit OS), takes under 5 seconds to do it (it now has 8gb but I see no improvement in that timing)....about the time I would expect a 2nd generation i-series laptop to take to do that)...though I don't know that for sure....maybe someone can chime in with THAT timing....