Photoshop running on Macbook Air

You could run photoshop, but I would not do it. Photoshop uses the hard drive a lot and the MBA hard drive is rather slow at 4,200 RPM. also the processor at 1.8 GHz is not optimal for Photoshop and the memory is not upgradable. you get 2GB and thats it.

I do have a MBA and I love it, but I use it for web surfing and email + Office 2008 use... that IMO is a perfect usage scenario.

For Photoshop I suggest the Macbook pro (if a laptop is a must, if not an iMac is way better)... if she want to work on heavy files (RAW images or big files) the slow disk will kill the performance.

Even a Macbook White with 4GB RAM is $200 cheaper than the MBA and the 4GB RAm will do wonders for PS performance... and that would compensate for the slow graphic card and slow drive. I am a heavy user of photoshop and I would never run it in a disk slower that 7,200 RPM and a graphic card with less than 512MB... 2GB RAm is ok... but that puts you in the MB pro range... if money is the issue, go with the Macbook white and upgrade the RAM....

No problem at all. I am constantly using photoshop, plus have InDesign open, and the 2 GB RAM is more than sufficient. A typicall picture opened in PS from my camera has about 40 MB, and even with 10 layers attached I am not exceeding 400 MB. So what should the problem be? Never realized, that PS swopped files to the HD.

But I agree: I use more often my iMac 24" to do PS.

Guess, that your sister will only do some basics with PS and the MBA. Showing pictures and doing some basic enhancements will work perfectly with the MBA.

Best regards
Klaus

I had no issues with photoshop when I tried an Air for two weeks. I'd had preferred more RAM, but for most photoshop jobs 2GB suffices. Contrary to belief photoshop does not require an amazing amount of graphics power to run well, just RAM and processor. 2GB works well, unless you're running a lot of background apps with photoshop, which will still run okay just slower (obviously). The 1.6 Core 2 Duo did a very admirable job at most tasks, including photoshop.

Personally the bright screen was perfect for photo's, but the RAM limitation was an issue. If a MacBook Pro is too big consider a MacBook, which can be stuffed with a lot of RAM and has plenty of processor power and even a 7200 rpm drive can be added easily for that added bit of performance in big photoshop jobs.

I run PS all the time on my MBA and it works fine. But I'm usually doing either web design or photo editing. If she's doing huge print pieces, then maybe it wouldn't be the best choice, although the MBA would certainly do the job. She can always get a small, fast, external USB hard drive for work related stuff if she really wants the MBA.

I am using cs3 and have had no issues at all, I have the 1.8 ghz mba with the ssd.

Works for me. I'm using a 1.8/80.