Typical software
Adobe Photoshop Retouching, compositing
Adobe Lightroom Classic Catalog, batch export
Capture One Tethered, RAW- Stable Diffusion Generative fill
DaVinci Resolve Editing, color, Fusion
Adobe Premiere Pro Editing
Adobe After Effects Motion graphics
Foundry Nuke Compositing
What matters
- Graphics
- Critical
Resolve leans on the GPU for effects, noise reduction and smooth playback. Photo work needs only a mid-range card with enough video memory. - Processor
- Critical
Fast cores speed up Photoshop filters, Lightroom exports and the video timeline. Intel Core Ultra adds Quick Sync hardware decoding for H.264 and H.265. - Memory
- Important
64 GB is a sensible start for 4K video. Large panoramas and layered photo files also fill memory quickly. - Storage
- Critical
Fast NVMe drives for media, catalog and cache, plus a larger drive for the archive. Slow storage causes dropped frames.