How Adobe, AMD Ryzen™ CPUs fuel Travis Keyes’ creative flow

How Adobe, AMD Ryzen™ CPUs fuel Travis Keyes’ creative flow

Photographer Travis Keyes uses an HP ZBook Ultra with an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO CPU for faster, portable creative workflow, freeing him to focus on his art.

Pushing the boundaries of digital content creation requires a level of performance that can be hard to deliver if an artist wants to take their work on the road. Commercial photographer and Adobe Lightroom Advisory Board member Travis Keyes switched to an HP ZBook Ultra powered by an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO processor. He discovered the portable processor he needed to transform his creative vision into a real-world workflow.

Keyes began his photography journey in the age of chemical film, but it wasn’t until he started using digital cameras that working with images became his passion. “When I first tried Adobe Lightroom, I realized I loved it, and there was a Control Z,” he says, referring to the ability to undo actions and try something different, unlike in a traditional darkroom.

Keyes studied at the International Center of Photography, has worked in film and TV, and recently completed his first feature-length movie. But photography remains his central passion, with Adobe Lightroom and other Creative Cloud applications as his primary tools. “I credit two things to me being a photographer,” Keyes says. “One was when Sony came out with their Alpha cameras. Then there was Adobe, with Lightroom and Photoshop. Suddenly taking a photo and putting it into Lightroom was as much fun as taking the shot. It allowed me to be creative, it allowed me to have non-destructive editing, especially in Lightroom where I could play with brushes and masking. I fell in love with Lightroom.”

Faster image processing with AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO CPUs

Keyes’s relationship with Adobe deepened to the point where he now provides training and demonstrations for the company. “For me, photography was so incredible that I wanted to share everything,” he enthuses. “Being able to share my love of photography changed everything. I became president of American Photographic Artists. I started doing talks for Adobe. Then I became a community expert and one of their first advisory board members for Lightroom. Now I speak at most of the conventions and photo gatherings from WPPI to Photoville to Bild, being an anchor and presence on their stage, talking about what I use Lightroom for and how I make cinematic photography.”

Keyes employs a wide range of Adobe Creative software in the course of his work. “I use Premiere and a little After Effects, but Photoshop and Lightroom are my main applications,” he explains. Some of these applications can demand a significant amount of system horsepower, which is where Keyes found that AMD could offer desktop-equivalent performance while on the move.

Keyes encountered AMD CPUs through a trip to CES in early 2025 and thought they looked “fantastic.” He opted for an HP ZBook Ultra G1a with a 16-core AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 CPU, 128GB of memory and a 2TB SSD drive. Its 14-inch 2.8K screen is driven by potent AMD Radeon 8060S integrated graphics.

“The first thing I noticed on the HP [Zbook] was AI culling was much faster than my desktop,” Keyes notes. “Then I tried Adobe Premiere and Lightroom and started seeing this laptop exporting and importing faster.” Keyes also enjoys how the AMD Ryzen CPU’s greater performance enables him to embrace new AI-powered capabilities in Adobe software. “As creatives, less time spent delving into the technical allows us to flourish. The AI in Photoshop with Generative Expand means I can take an image and enlarge it to fulfill my imagination, instead of spending hours compositing.”

Desktop power in a compact portable package

The fact this performance comes in a mobile package particularly helps Keyes’ training activities for Adobe. “Up on stage we must always bring our own laptops, plug in and work on the fly. My 13-inch Apple was too small, but I didn't want to travel with anything over 15 inches because it was just too big to carry. This HP laptop has more ports than my MacBook 13. It has a full HDMI out and a 14-inch touchscreen, which looks great and is at that sweet spot.” The larger screen helped Keyes see his software interfaces more easily when demonstrating.

“The HP laptop has been a joy,” Keyes reports. “I can edit things on the fly, even if I’m travelling. It’s powerful for a live demo.” System performance can be a major challenge for digital photography work, but this wasn’t the case with an AMD Ryzen AI processor. “Photographers want to just plug in and go. We want a computer that just works. The HP laptop fulfils that. When we spend more time being technical than trying to get something done, it doesn't let us be so creative.”

Most telling for Keyes was when the SSD on his main desktop died while he had several major projects to complete. “I was able to plug in my HP and use it as a full desktop,” he says. “The performance on After Effects and export was faster. The HP laptop took the place of my desktop so quickly and didn’t skip a beat. I just plugged in my monitors and keyboard. It really blew me away that something so small could be so powerful.”

Indispensable creative performance on the move

The HP ZBook Ultra G1a can do everything from recreational video playback to creative work, as well as Keyes’ demos. “It covers all the bases,” Keyes says. “You can assign cores to different tasks and maximize what you’re doing. The battery life is also markedly improved over all the other laptops I’ve had. Performance laptops usually last 45 minutes to an hour and a half, but I'm getting four to five hours on this HP [system]. You also usually get a huge power brick, but this one is small and still charges in 30 to 40 minutes.”

All these capabilities have made his Adobe demos both easier and more compelling. “When you have a laptop that runs great while you're demonstrating techniques, people are inspired,” Keyes adds. “If we don't have equipment that works well, it seems like we've done something wrong. This laptop reduced my risk by doing everything I needed quickly. I'm not making money off trying to figure out how to make the computer work better. I'm making money from how to make my edits look better. If I can stop worrying about what the computer does, that's the greatest gift that anybody could have as a creator.”

“With the HP laptop powered by an AMD Ryzen processor, I can do things the way I want to, and that's so liberating,” concludes Keyes. “If you want to spend more time just on the creative and less time waiting on your hardware, get an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO processor. "We need to make smart decisions that allow us to enjoy what we're doing, be productive, and get the most out of the money we spend. The HP laptop was finally the right size. It was incredibly more powerful than I expected, and I could take it anywhere. It’s incredible that they were able to put so much performance in such a small form factor. This computer lets me be creative and express myself. It lets me tell my stories and connect with the community in ways that I wouldn't be able to do without it. It's an indispensable tool to me as a creative.”