Laptop suggestions under $1000 - USA

If you want to budget a bit, maybe look into something like the Lenovo Ideapad 700 for $600. It meets all your needs pretty well with a lightish weight (for a 15.6'') good specs, and a good keyboard. It comes with a new kabylake i7 processor (dual core), 8gb of ram, 1TB HDD and a GTX 940MX dedicated GPU. It should work well for pretty heavy excel work or for adobe use, and it has a 1080p IPS display which should be color accurate for photo editing. It also isn't too heavy at 4.8 lbs, and has a backlit keyboard.

See my more full list of suggestions here if you are looking for something with a bit more power (specifically with a quad core processor). It will come in at a greater weight though (typically 5.3 lbs or more).

/r/SuggestALaptop Thread