What computer requirements are necessary for photo editing?

Answer 1

Using the Photoshop CC as the basis (other programs are available, but won't be used for this example):

Windows

• Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor (2GHz or faster)
• Microsoft® Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1 or Windows 8
• 1GB of RAM
• 2.5GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on removable flash storage devices)
• 1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended) with OpenGL® 2.0, 16-bit color, and 512MB of VRAM (1GB recommended)*
• internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, membership validation, and access to online services.†

Mac OS

• Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support
• Mac OS X v10.7 or v10.8
• 1GB of RAM
• 3.2GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash storage devices)
• 1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended) with OpenGL 2.0, 16-bit color, and 512MB of VRAM (1GB recommended)*
• Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, membership validation, and access to online services.

Keep in mind that regardless of what type of computer you get, if you plan on doing more than simple family and friends photo editing,getting a lot of RAM memory for your computer is more important than the processor, as photo editing software is usually very memory intensive.

As you can see from the requirements above, you can get away with using about 1 GB of RAM and a video card (that's not much), but if you intend to do intensive photo editing work, I would personally recommend getting at least 8 GB of RAM to start with.

Answer 2

The system requirements for a computer to run Adobe Photoshop depend on whether it's a PC or a Mac. Generally, higher-end systems will be able to run the program without lag.