What graphics card features are useful for photo editing?

[ajax]

I may need to replace the computer that I use for photo editing. My current monitor (Samsung S27C650) is pretty good but not great. Will want to upgrade eventually. My current monitor/computer is color calibrated. I've been using the Intel integrated graphics that's on the motherboard. However, I have no idea what features might be particularly desirable for graphics support. I sort of have the idea that color depth/gamut is something that most built in graphics cards can do without difficulty. What am I failing to understand? If speed matters I may not appreciate that having never experienced it. Is that desirable? What else?

I have noticed some references on this forum to minimal requirements for Photoshop. I'm currently using open source software (e.g., Rawtherapee, GIMP, etc.) as well as the Canon supplied software related to my cameras and photo printer. Relatives have Nikon cameras which means I might need to add that software. With that said, I'd probably like my computer to be capable of running Photoshop. Also, is it valid to think that what is good for Photoshop would also be good for other image editing software?

Is it possible that there is some reference documentation on this subject that I should know about? If so, referring me to that might be the really easy answer to my questions.

[Manfred M]

Photoshop is not a terribly resource hungry piece of software and there are a few functions that use some graphics acceleration, but not many. If you stick to the recommended specs, you should be fine for most software. More RAM (16GB minumum) and a Solid State Drive, versus conventional mechanical hard drive are likely the two most important areas to invest in.

The only exceptions are going to be some of the newer machine learning / AI plugins, some of which rely heavily on the stream processors in your graphics card (Topaz AI Sharpen, for instance) uses heavy graphics card resources. Discrete mid-range graphics cards are likely to give you the performance you are looking for if this is the direction you are going in.

[ajax]

Thanks! If I ever get to AI that will be another day and another computer. Today is just wanting to develop/edit photographs along with some pretty minor image editing (i.e., add text or borders to photos).

Have been doing SSD for some time now but limit that to data that is primarily read (i.e., OS and other software). Something I've really come to like about Windows verses Linux is portable apps. Most of my application software is stored on thumb drives. This allows new releases to be added without changing the old ones at all. In that, dropping back to the old one is quick and easy when the new one has undesired glitches.

Conventional hard drives are still desired for large capacity files (e.g., raw & 16bit uncompressed tif). Have been using both NAS & USB hard drives for archiving and backup.

You never have too much RAM. As prices have come down most of my computers are maxed out. Problem is that newer motherboards tend to limit the number of memory slots to 2 and may not come with memory cards of maximum capacity.

Thanks a lot! I take this to mean that expensive gaming capable graphics cards aren't needed for photography.

[Manfred M]

Thanks a lot! I take this to mean that expensive gaming capable graphics cards aren't needed for photography.

At a high level, no. Expensive graphic cards are primarily aimed at gamers with large resolution screens.

Video rendering, especially HD and 4K can also use graphics acceleration and faster cards can make sense there, depending on the editing software being used. Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects do use graphics processing capabilities, but I'm not sure about the other software, but this is the high end pro video stuff, so not something you are looking at.

The graphics card use in Photoshop is pretty limited and any card with at least 4GB of RAM should do quite nicely.

[Polar01]

I found some info from a computer maker on the west coast a Puget Sound Computers that have some interesting info on the high end custom jobs they built. Now this was about 8 months ago that I upgraded, they said that just for Photoshop/Lightroom that the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 was the best for your buck, you could go a higher model however the increase in performance was worth the extra dollar costs. Just a thought to pass along.

Cheers: Allan

[Manfred M]

Allan - the problem with the gForce cards, so far as I understand it, is that they do not support 10-bit mode graphics; only 8-bit. Something that is not important for gamers but critical for people using a wide gamut screen for photo editing work. nVidia wants people to buy their workstation Quadro cards to use that mode.

I don't think that is the case for AMD cards, but can't say for sure. I use a workstation level AMD Radeon Pro WX5100 in my machine that I run in 10-bit mode on a wide-gamut (Adobe RGB compliant) screen.

[tao2]

Hi folks,

Manfred, yer info's out of date.About a year ago, Nvidia update its cards to offer 30bit (10bits per channel) in Open GL, matching its Quadro cards...c: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce..._NVIDIA_Studio.

[tao2]

Hi folks,

Manfred, yer info's out of date.About a year ago, Nvidia update its cards to offer 30bit (10bits per channel) in Open GL, matching its Quadro cards...c: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce..._NVIDIA_Studio.

PS I use an old GeForce 770. I tried ,in the past, to enable 10 bit but the card always reverted but now runs 10 bit, using the new drivers.

[Manfred M]

Hi folks,

Manfred, yer info's out of date.About a year ago, Nvidia update its cards to offer 30bit (10bits per channel) in Open GL, matching its Quadro cards...c: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce..._NVIDIA_Studio.

Thanks - that's good news. It was well known that this was just a driver issue and a lot of people felt this was just a move to try to get people to buy the more expensive Quadro line.

The last time I had a hard look at this was a couple of years ago. I had updated my screen to a modern Adobe RGB compliant one and the video card did not have enough onboard RAM to meet the minimum Photoshop specs. I upgraded to an AMD card that was 10-bit capable.