It nearly does, I expected the mouse pointer to only be on one screen at a time! How is that going to work then?

Thanks Niko.

spraynpray said:
is it possible to use a smaller HD screen with a larger one as a pair?

Yes it's possible but just realize that if the monitors have different resolutions then your desktop area will be very awkward to use if you extend your desktop. For example if your main monitor is 1920x1200 and your secondary monitor's max resolution is only 1280X720 then the second monitor won't be able to give you the same "field of view". If you put your mouse at the bottom of monitor two, it won't be at the bottom of monitor one. Instead it'll be something like in the middle of the first monitor.

That can a bit disorientating until you get use to it. But you can put all of your toolbars on the lower-res screen and of course use the high-res for viewing/editing your photos. I hope that makes sense.

spraynpray said:
That's fabtastic news guys.

The machine I have 'en route' does have spare slots.

Tell me - does the photo you are working on display on one screen while the 'program' appears on the other? I don't understand how that all would work, but it would be pretty exciting if it does.

What it does is put the picture you currently have selected up on another monitor. The way I have it setup the picture is shown fully on my left screen, while the center screen (yes I have 3) has LR with all the editing controls showing. I get the full view to the left and have a smaller view on the console that I work on.

It also works nice with the library view where the LR panel shows all the pictures and the other monitor shows the full picture.

Hi Guys, spraynpray, something that has not been mentioned so far is the bit depth of a laptop screen or any LCD monitor. Nearly all Laptops have a 6 bit TN screen which is not good for digital imaging; have a read here:

http://compreviews.about.com/od/multimedia/a/LCDColor.htm

I have read good reports about Lenovo laptops, they have a range to suite your budget, here's a link to their UK site:
http://www.lenovo.com/uk/en/index.html

The Lenovo G550 is reduced from £1186 to £579 and has a reasonable spec being:

Intel Core 2 Duo processor T6600 ( 2.20GHz 800MHz 2MB )
· Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 32
· 15.6" WXGA LED Backlight TFT 1366x768
· NVIDIA GeForce G 210M 512MB
· 4 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz
· 500GB 5400
· DVD Recordable (Dual Layer)

If you do lot of editing consider also a usb keyboard as laptop keyboards have function keys for many commands, a reasonable one shouldn't cost very much I use a Sweex (very cheap).

If possible get a laptop with a dedicated graphics card as the shared types eat up loads of memory. Don't worry about hard drive size, use an external drive such as WD Elements, they are around £50 and it's not only more convenient but safer too to keep your photo's and other documents backed up on one. Think of the HD in the laptop as being small and fast and only install the minimum of programs you have to. RAM is cheap, I upgraded mine a year ago to 4GB. 2GB is the minimum you should be thinking of.

Lastly, digital imaging has different needs than playing games or watching movies, usually the slower ones actually use 8 bit displays whereas the fast ones have 6 bit as the standard.

Hope this helps, it's a difficult choice, Rich.

I've always been a big fan of the Dell Studio line of laptops. That's probably what I'd get if I were shopping for a windows laptop.

As for second monitors, it really is a shame that El Jobso didn't see fit to allow for video-in on the iPad. It's a bit small, but my images look better on it than any other monitor I own (probably owing to its higher pixel density).

Generally speaking, when it comes to monitors, you get what you pay for. Most of the sub-$300 ones are complete crap. The cheap end of the pro market will weigh in at around $800. Everything in-between is sort of a mixed bag. Spend your money on color fidelity and viewing angle, not refresh rates and other gaming related niceties.

I really hope somebody eventually figures out a good solution for pairing a tablet with a laptop. Imagine running lightroom with your image showing fullscreen on your main lap-top monitor and all of your controls and image library on the tablet (with touch screen functionality to boot :)

Portable and effective all at the same time.

It's more versatile than that, spraynpray, although what your saying is an option. Click the 'second window' button (a box with a 2 in it) just above the far left of the filmstrip (filmstrip is the bottom flyout) and you can get an idea of what can be done with it. Just imagine having the second window on your second monitor and you can see what you can do with it.

That's fabtastic news guys.

The machine I have 'en route' does have spare slots.

Tell me - does the photo you are working on display on one screen while the 'program' appears on the other? I don't understand how that all would work, but it would be pretty exciting if it does.

You can use it with two monitors, I don't think they have to be the same size. That's the way I use it. On a PC you might want to consider two video cards if your computer can handle it. The calibration applies to the card not to the monitor in Windows. If you plug them both into the same card only one can be calibrated, and even with identical models you can see some differences.

I have tried out LR2 with two monitors and liked it, but my wife thought it made the desk look too cluttered. Someday I'll do it again on a permanent basis. There is no problem using two screens with different resolutions or sizes. I think you can use the video output from your mainboard for one of the monitors (anyone know? It seems like that's what I did). You can also use two video cards simultaneously if you've got slots for them.

Well, our main PC is really struggling since I upgraded to Lr3 so I am having to buy a new 64-bit machine. I have found one at a marvelous price but it doesn't come with a monitor. This may be a good thing though as I have heard that two screens are better than one for photographic work, does anybody here have any experience of two screens with Lr3 and is it possible to use a smaller HD screen with a larger one as a pair?

I realise that I am likely to need a different graphics card with two outputs.

zhinsara said:
Avoid anything with Celeron on it like the plague. It's slow for most tasks. At the very least a pentium dual core or a Core i3 should be looked at.

So I suppose a Celeron Dual core 2.5Ghz E3300 is no good?

Well, as my budget is tiny and France is expensive, I am waiting until I next return to the UK to visit a repair shop that I know who will build me what I want economically.

I know desk tops are always cheaper, faster and more robust, but it has to be a laptop this time. My marriage is worth it!

@nivakon 是， 我用微软拼音输入法。 我不大会用其他方法。

我国马来西亚有华文报但我不大看， 必需买一份研究下。电影有时看看。 okay it's a pain to use the pinyin input method. last movie i watched was red cliff, but i kinda follow some serials with my girlfriend hah. ok we're off topic...gonna get the banhammer soon so we better pm! :p

@spraynpray : how did the shopping go?

So you are only 17 .. :-) needed Google translate for that ! hehe !

And yes I love watching Chinese movies .. some great ones lately..

zhinsara said:
Interesting to see that you are from the PRC! Your english is quite good. 你今年几岁呢？ 我从小学就开始学普通话但是还是说和写得不大好应为练习不足。

这个水平已经相当厉害了。您用的是微软拼音输入法吗?
建议你多看些中国电影,虽然和好莱坞的比差距还很大,但是学习中文总是要多听多看的。

我17。

Nivakon said:

actually if i do follow this book then i would never be able to talk with you guys!

I'm glad you have decided to join us here! :^)

@nivakon yes, spyder is a little expensive, but the pantone huey is much more affordable, around $90, that and the fact you can use it in the long run as well as sharing it over a few people doesn't make it as bad as it sounds. Over here we share ours. 4 people to one huey.

Interesting to see that you are from the PRC! Your english is quite good. 你今年几岁呢？ 我从小学就开始学普通话但是还是说和写得不大好应为练习不足。

NikoDoby said:
Your English is better than my Chinese Nivakon :^)

spraynpray said:
...and my French probably!

My textbook at school(↑). actually if i do follow this book then i would never be able to talk with you guys!

i do have a french course textbook too. learning french here is a little costy.

zhinsara said:
wait hold on praynspray, whats your budget like and what have you considered so far?

@nivakon, you don't need any special screen in particular, just get the thing color calibrated using spyder or pantone huey and you will get acceptable results. Learnt it the hard way. Any monitor requires calibration before using it for photo apps.

spyder costs...

however my Philips 190sw9 LCD does calibrate its color, but most laptop manufactors wont.

heartyfisher said:
I have a nice laptop but for photo editing a cheap desktop will more than triple the performance for the same price...

cant agree more.

I have a nice laptop but for photo editing a cheap desktop will more than triple the performance for the same price...

wait hold on praynspray, whats your budget like and what have you considered so far?

@nivakon, you don't need any special screen in particular, just get the thing color calibrated using spyder or pantone huey and you will get acceptable results. Learnt it the hard way. Any monitor requires calibration before using it for photo apps.

...and my French probably!

Your English is better than my Chinese Nivakon :^)

and you can test all of your softwares on another computer and check the usage of memory via TASKMGR.EXE(ctrl alt del)

hope that would give you a better idea on purchasing the laptop.

ignore my grammar mistakes, i m still a highschool student, and English is not my mother lang.

pre-loading, pre-calculating, pre-processing... all these interesting designs would kill your memory.

an btw i have never tried the LR, PS is all I'm on

yes i do open them(skimmed ofcourse) at the sametime and do sharpen ,resizing and noise reduction on nearly every of them!