One of the most important spec I am looking for in my next laptop is screen resolution greater than 1366x768. My current Lenovo Y470 has that resolution and it is too small to do any multitasking. I am considering getting a post graduate degree next year which is the reason for a possible new laptop. The laptop will have a mobile Intel Haswell generation CPU which will be released next year.
Low resolution limits the number of windows you have have open for any practical use. So I am looking for 1920x1080 resolution which allows me to have several windows open on screen at the same time so that I can easily cross reference information. This would be quite useful for doing assignments. And it can also be useful for editing video and photo especially if they are high resolution.
The downside of having a large resolution screen is if you want to play games you need a real powerful graphic card to play games at 1920x1080 resolution. However, you can play games at lower resolution and have the graphics stretched to fill the screen. Consoles games are only rendered at 720p (roughly 1366x768), but when played on a HDTV with 1920x1080 resolution, the graphics are stretched to fill the screen.
I will likely opt for a powerful dual core Haswell CPU rather than a quad core. Unless the price difference is not too great between dual core and quad core running at the same clockspeed (I'm pretty sure the price difference will be $200+ though). Not taking in Turbo Boost into account, I would want something that is at least 2.5GHz. Too early to say what the performance difference between ivy Bridge Core i3/i5/i7 and the mobile Haswell CPUs. For your purposes you need to determine if it is worth the price going from a dual core Ivy Bridge i5/i7 CPU to a quad core Ivy Bridge i7 CPU.
The reason why I am considering a quad core Haswell CPU is because video encoding is very CPU intensive. So the higher the clockspeed and the more cores it has, the faster the encoding process. The vast majority of games only use 2 cores. Few games can actually use 4 cores and the number of games released each year that can use 4 cores is very, very small.
As stated before, if you are going to play games on the laptop especially with a 1920x1080 resolution screen, then you need a very powerful graphics card. This means the laptop will be very expensive. But if you are okay with playing at lower resolution, then getting a laptop with a modest graphics card to play games at 1366x768 resolution, then something like a nVidia GT 640m should be fine for medium quality graphics in most games.
I'll probably just go with whatever integrated graphics Intel's Haswell CPU comes with. Some people say it is rumored to be 3x faster than Intel's HD 4000 graphic core in the Ivy Bridge CPUs. If true, then that could mean that Haswell's graphic core will be about equal to a nVidia GT 630m. If true, then that would be impressive.
Knowing what I will do with my future laptop, I think 4GB of RAM would be sufficient. As for you, depending on what you are doing while editing pictures you may benefit from having 8GB of RAM. Games will not be affected by 4GB or 8GB.
If you are going to be carrying your laptop around with you, then weight would be an important consideration. Weight is basically determined by the size of the screen, the larger the screen, the larger the laptop so... the heavier it will be. Personally, since I am considering a 14" or 15.6" laptop I would want something that is relatively light for a laptop, but the laptop must have a traditional hard drive (SSD capacity is too low for me) and I want my laptop to have a DVD drive. So weight wise, I would like a 14" laptop to be less than 4lbs. and a 15.6" laptop to be less than 4.5lbs.