Hey
@AstroGuy - welcome to CF.
Generally speaking - if a laptop comes with a built in GPU the manufacutrer / marketing info tends to shout about it as 'by default' laptops tend to have basic, built in graphics, so if it's not mentioned then it's unlikely the laptop will have a discreet/built in GPU with much horsepower for graphical work.
Lenovo vs HP... after owning both over the years my personal opinion would be Lenovo every time. If you can, go for a ThinkPad - solidly built machines, albiet like most things in life the build quality on the newest models isn't what it used to be.
AMD vs Intel - whatever has the most 'bang for buck' is the best deal. It can be hard to compare CPUs, I tend to go by CPU Benchmark scores:
PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - Over 1 million CPUs and 1,000 models benchmarked and compared in graph form, updated daily!
www.cpubenchmark.net
Search the advertised CPU and get the 'score' to help compare.
Hopefully this helps somewhat - let us know what machine you end up going for!