# Travel with LR6 - which computer?



## rafikiphoto (Sep 10, 2015)

Earlyish in the new year  I shall be making the 'trip of my lifetime' to Namibia. I am taking a tour/photo workshop for a couple of weeks then a week on my own filling in places not covered on the tour. For the workshop I will need to take along a machine capable of running LR or other serious photo editing software. I have LR6 and run it at home on a high-end Thinkpad but that machine is rather bulky to be toting around southern Africa. I have always used Windows machines and would rather not have to learn Mac before I depart so I'm looking for recommendations for a lightweight Windows machine capable of running LR6 well, a good screen and USB 3 to link to my 1 TB 2.5" travel HDD in an enclosure. I am prepared to splash out for the right machine.

Your recommendations will be appreciated.


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## clee01l (Sep 10, 2015)

If you know how to use Windows, the OS X is a piece of cake. Just remember the Windows controls are on the left and not the right. 
If you want a Windows machine with the capability of a rMBP, then consider the Microsoft SP3 with 512SSD and 8GB of RAM.  
This spring I traveled for nearly a month in the Shetlands and Scotland with my 13" rMBP.  It worked fine.


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## Rob_Cullen (Sep 11, 2015)

In January I traveled Europe with a Windows Surface Pro 3 and a Type cover (keyboard).
It did everything I needed with Lightroom. I could not have been happier.
Small, compact, portable, powerful, Windows 8.1.
I also carried two external 1Tb portable drives to store backups of images and catalog in other family luggage.
Get the i7 with maximum RAM for best results.
Highly recommended.
(i have NO connection with any computer company!)


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## Replytoken (Sep 11, 2015)

You may want to consider HP's Spectre x360 series.  Reasonably powerful, not too heavy and a nice screen.

Good luck,

--Ken


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## Merlyn (Sep 11, 2015)

I travel with a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro (purchased June 2014).  It has an i7-4500U @1.8Ghz (2.4Ghz) processor, 8GB, with the 256GB SSD.  As a tablet its a bit heavy but as a laptop its awesome and light.  Great keyboard.  I still run a separate wireless mouse rather than use the touchpad.

Currently I still run LR5 but expect to upgrade to LR6 when I return from my current 3 month trip.  

I do long trips so I was looking for something that was more than a stop-gap when not working on a a full desktop system.

So when purchasing here are some things to watch out for: 
Screen size and resolution - the Yoga has a fantastic 4k screen (3200x1800) BUT it means the menus can be small - for me the size is fine but if the screen was any less than 13 inches I wonder whether my aged eyeballs would be able to read the small print in the menus/sliders/keywords etc.  I actually downloaded a memory stick with LR5 and installed it on the computers I was interested in at my local store (as a trial copy) to test screen usability.   The geeky store staff were equally interested to see how it worked.  

I also am doing a large key-wording back-capture project - specifically I scanned 20,000 slides in and am slowly keywording them and in some cases also editing them in Develop (scans are in RAW).  My photos are over 5TB on my home computer (about 60,000 photos).  I travel with a complete set of smart (and standard) previews and LRcat (and also I store my presets with LRcat).  So basically it looks just like my desktop at home with my whole library of photos.  This effectively allows me to do any keywording or developing I want on any of my photos in my library (and so I am slowly dealing with my backcapture project) on the laptop.  (OK, on my existing library, I can't delete (cos the photo is not really there, only the preview), or do really fine work at 1:1 or 2:1 zoom - any new photos I add I can do anything.)

I set up new, distinctly separate,  folders for the new photos I take on the trip - do all the keywording and editing nightly and then when I go back I copy back the whole LR folder (LRCat, smart previews, standard previews, presets - not the backups) along with the folders of new photos into the same locations in my folder hierarchy as they were on the LR folder hierarchy on the laptop.  Fire it up and and then do any folder consolidation etc that I need to do.  

The point is, that this all takes space and in hindsight I wish I had got the 512GB SSD (but only because the previews for 60,000 photos do take some space).  Having said that I do get away with the 256GB drive but need to manage it tightly.  

One more thing - you can never have too many backups.  When I get home the photos are on my original SD cards, my laptop, a portable 1TB drive which also has a back up of the LR stuff (all those nights spent working in LR are worth quite a bit as well as the photos) and where possible I also put full backups onto friends' laptops (or their portable drives) and I try and make sure that each of those things travels separately - so my external disk I try to have traveling with someone else.  (I also send back SD cards by post or friends when possible).  Just trying to avoid having the "car with all my stuff in it stolen" problem.

Hope this is helpful.  (And, if you were trying to follow the fine detail, it sort of assumes you have your head all round how LR manages its folders etc.) Any questions feel free to ask.  And happy for any other folks to amplify (or wildly disagree) with any of the stuff I have suggested.

Good luck


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## clee01l (Sep 11, 2015)

Merlyn said:


> .... you can never have too many backups.  When I get home the photos are on my original SD cards, my laptop, a portable 1TB drive which also has a back up of the LR stuff...


It does not take too many SD cards to equal in cost a 1TB portable USB drive.  I only rotate 2-3 Camera Cards through my camera and carry a second EHD  That way I have a master copy on the laptop and a backup on each EHD  Camera cards are small and easily misplaced.


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## rafikiphoto (Sep 11, 2015)

Thanks for the input so far. Very helpful.

It looks to me as if the Surface Pro 3 does not have an SD card reader... Is that right? A *micro*SD card reader is mentioned!


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## clee01l (Sep 11, 2015)

That is correct, It does come with a USB3 port. So you can add any Card reader that you like including one for CF cards.


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## Replytoken (Sep 11, 2015)

I believe the Spectre has an SD slot, and the models with the HD screen have extremely long battery life, somewhere upwards of 11 hours in some cases.

--Ken


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## rafikiphoto (Sep 11, 2015)

Ah, thank you. I haven't needed one of those for a while. I'm sure I could find one if I decided to go that route.


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## mcasan (Sep 13, 2015)

The wife and I head back to Africa in November for 3 weeks in Kenya.  We both take our Retina Macbook Pros and a couple TBs of external drives for both data storage and backup.  Our gameplay is not to try to do serious editing in the field on any laptop screen, even a Retina one.   We same editing for serious sized calibrated monitors in the our office.   On a given day of safari wildlife shooting you can have easily over 100GB of raw files.   We put the cards into our rMBPs and run Perfect Photo Suite Browser.   It opens the jpg previews embedded in raw files.  So we can quickly look through a day's shoot, pick the images worth keeping (minority) and drag and drop them onto LR CC.  The import presets know where to put the files and which Develop presets to invoke.  Then we run Time Machine to make sure we a valid backup.  The card(s are put back into the camera bodies and reformatted.   

BTW, the On1 Software company will release the new version of Perfect Photo Suite at the end of October.  They have renamed it On1 Photo 10.


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## wtlloyd (Sep 13, 2015)

Hi Brian - I enjoyed looking at your images, lots of post-processing there, for sure!
I too, will be traveling for a couple weeks to Namibia, in April next year. 
I currently use a Lenovo W530 as my all around machine. I am eagerly looking forward to purchasing a Lenovo P50, the workstation successor to the W series machines, once they become available next month. About a pound lighter, wish it was more. But I will not trade processing power for portability, especially with the large 5DSr files I am just now making.
So, maybe not what you are looking for, but better than what you have now I am sure...

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo...ands-On/td-p/2164261&PUBNAME=Skimlinks&NID=CJ

https://www.thinkworkstations.com/products/p50/


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## rafikiphoto (Sep 14, 2015)

What a coincidence! I shall be on a two week photo tour/workshop with Christoph Fischer then a few days privately on the Skeleton Coast.

That P50 is a powerful machine and has incredible configurations possibilities but, having only purchased my Thinkpad earlier this year, I am not looking for a replacement at the moment. However I do lack an on-the-go solution. My flights up the Skeleton Cost have very meagre luggage allowances and after my photo gear I shall be lucky to be able to pack a toothbrush   so weight will be a big issue at least for that part of the trip.


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## tspear (Sep 14, 2015)

rafikiphoto said:


> What a coincidence! I shall be on a two week photo tour/workshop with Christoph Fischer then a few days privately on the Skeleton Coast.
> 
> That P50 is a powerful machine and has incredible configurations possibilities but, having only purchased my Thinkpad earlier this year, I am not looking for a replacement at the moment. However I do lack an on-the-go solution. My flights up the Skeleton Cost have very meagre luggage allowances and after my photo gear I shall be lucky to be able to pack a toothbrush   so weight will be a big issue at least for that part of the trip.



I have played with Lr on Surface Pro 3 (the i5 chip one). Worked great to import, save and play around some. Screen was too small for me bother with the develop module.
So this would be a slightly pricey solution; but would be very light and portable. The Surface has a microSD card reader and a USB port. Between the two, you should be able to read everything off the camera (may need a USB card reader depending on the camera media).

Tim


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