I am looking to replace my old laptop and I am looking at an Apple. I take high school sports photos for our local paper and on some occasions I need to upload/FTP photos some after the sports event ends. Sometimes the paper wants some photos at half time. Which laptop should I look at?

What sort of Internet access will you have at these events?

Will you need to use WiFi or cell phone backbone?

How much security do you need?

How much bandwidth do you need?

What image sizes?

How do you intend to get the images to the computer? (Runner and card, WiFi?)

Will you be processing the images before the send? (I highly recommend at least cropping and basic exposure adjustments, as well as adding pertinent IPTC data.)

What screen size do you need? What screen type? (Glossy vs matt finish, resolution, IPS, ...?)

Will you have access to AC power or do you need to rely on batteries? If batteries, how much run time do you need?

Environmental concerns? (Weather and dust, mostly, for outdoor events.)

Durability concerns? Does this need to be rugged?

Redundancy? (What happens if the primary system fails?)

Who is bankrolling the system purchase?

Originally Posted by ziggy53 What sort of Internet access will you have at these events? Hotspot from iPhone Will you need to use WiFi or cell phone backbone? Both How much security do you need? Password protected How much bandwidth do you need? Must be able to upload /FTP images What image sizes? 3MB How do you intend to get the images to the computer? (Runner and card, WiFi?) I'll use CF reader Will you be processing the images before the send? (I highly recommend at least cropping and basic exposure adjustments, as well as adding pertinent IPTC data.). Yes. I caption with Photo Mechanic and then crop and sent correct exposure using Elements 10. What screen size do you need? What screen type? (Glossy vs matt finish, resolution, IPS, ...?) 15 inch, glossy Will you have access to AC power or do you need to rely on batteries? If batteries, how much run time do you need? I'll use battery Environmental concerns? (Weather and dust, mostly, for outdoor events.) both Durability concerns? Does this need to be rugged? no Redundancy? (What happens if the primary system fails?) I'll wait until I get home to Use MAC. Who is bankrolling the system purchase?

Me.

This is great information and I'm glad to see you put some effort into the plan.

Basically, I don't see anything too special about either Photo Mechanic or Photoshop Elements 10 in terms of Mac system requirements.

An easy recommendation would be a 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro. (I don't personally think that you need the Retina display, especially depending on battery power.)

A good specification (IMO):

15-inch: 2.6 GHz

2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
8GB 1600MHz memory
750GB 5400-rpm hard drive (The 7200rpm drive might be a worthy upgrade.)
Intel HD Graphics 4000
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
Built-in battery (7 hours)(Figure 2-3 hours actual use time.)
802.11n Wi-Fi wireless
$2,199.00

Thanks Ziggy!

I know this is nearly a religious battle, between Macs and PCs. I own both (desktops and laptops) and to be perfectly honest, don't think it matters one way or the other. Last year I was working on a Dell 17" laptop that I bought for mobile video editing use. In April, I bought the hottest 15" MBPro money could buy. I run Lightroom 4.1 on both, PhotoMechanic 5 on both, GIMP on both, and a few other programs.

I prefer the 15" system as it's quite a bit more portable, but if I have to do a longer session, I like more screen real estate. At home, I am generally working on my twin 27" screen iMac. I don't need that system really for the sports stuff, but for my portrait work and retouching, it's a godsend.

Like I said, I know you'll get a ton of opinions about this system or that system being better. Whatever. I'm back and forth on both every day. I sure as heck can't see it.

I just replaced my Dell with a MacBook Pro with Retina display, and for the most part I love it. I am not a big fan of Apple products in general; I started programming on mainframes back in the day, and have used PCs ever since. Macs are just too damn expensive for what you get, and it galls me to pay so much for a machine that offers at best a more pleasing user experience.

That said, I was interested in the best display I could get. I need to edit on-site and live, so having a really good display makes more of a difference in IQ than having the latest and greatest camera or lens. When I compared the IQ of various screens, the Retina display was the best for photo editing. Funny thing, though...many web-based images are actually not as good with the Retina display. I think this has to do with the required up-rezzing to work on the Retina display. At first, I was a bit dismayed, until I realised that an actual jpeg IQ was really much better than on lesser displays. I can tell if the shot is tack-sharp without having to zoom; the color is wonderful and well-balanced; and perhaps most importantly, the intensity gradients are much smoother on a Retina display. For example, if you have very light areas in the image, you can easily tell whether you've captured the subtleties or if it is blown..

I recommend testing the various options with your own photos; not online, but with actual jpegs that you bring with you. You may not notice the difference if you just go to your website to look, and the IQ may even be worse.

Aside from IQ, this is a fast machine with good battery life. I shot three hours of MLB the other day, edited ~1500 shots, captioned the keepers, and FTPed them off, all on a single charge and with about 40% of the battery left at the end. Programs like PS or LR open in a couple of seconds, and memory cards download to the SSD much more quickly than on a conventional HD. Since this is often the slowest part of my workflow, I am very pleased to have the extra speed of an SSD. (Then again, for $2800 it ought to work spectacularly!)

My overall take is that the main reason to get a MacBook Pro with Retina display is for the screen quality. Everything else you can get in a much cheaper PC version, and some of these PCs probably have faster performance (though my MacBook Pro is plenty fast for me).

Just a quick addendum to my last post, specifically regarding IQ of web photos. I discovered that there are several screen resolution settings that one can use for the Retina display, which basically revert it to conventional resolutions and thus much better IQ for many web-based photos. (I should have thought to look for this before!) This being the case, I use the full 2880 resolution for photo editing, but knock it down for web browsing. The results are really quite good, and I am more impressed with the IQ of this display. It's a lot of extra $$, but it really helps for on-site photo editing and browsing other people's galleries.