How bad is the iMac 5K with Lightroom ?

Jase · 25 Mar 2015 at 22:01

I've been thinking of getting an iMac 5K since christmas and I finally decided to go for it and I was going to order one this week.

That was until I read all the horror stories about how poor Lightroom ran with it. Lightroom & Photoshop will be the main things I use so hearing (and seeing on youtube) that Lightroom is pretty poor has now but doubts in my mind.

Has there been any update recently that has improved performance? or is it just not as bad as people say.

I know it's hoped that LR6 will be better but that's not confirmed.

I don't really want to spend 3K+ on a Mac Pro unless I have to as I still have to buy a new monitor.

An Exception · 25 Mar 2015 at 22:19

^^^
If you use a hi res screen, a mac pro won't be any faster anyway.

PU7E · 25 Mar 2015 at 22:33

Slightly off topic, but how you finding the 5k iMac, I'm looking at picking one up for a work computer and wanted to know how it's performs for things like Photoshop?

Jase · 25 Mar 2015 at 22:36

I'd probably go for the Apple Thunderbolt display if I went down the Pro route, but the iMac 5K ticked all the boxes.

I'm trying to make the move from PC to Mac for all my photo/video stuff as at the moment I'm using a Desktop PC and a Macbook Pro. I find the performance with the Macbook Pro to be really good and I know I could just get the Thunderbolt display and use the Macbook on it but I'd rather keep to a desktop and macbook.

The_Abyss · 25 Mar 2015 at 22:46

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18660913

Absolutely zero issues with mine, i5 with 16 GB RAM. Faster than the iMac it replaced.

Jase · 25 Mar 2015 at 23:18

The_Abyss said:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18660913

Absolutely zero issues with mine, i5 with 16 GB RAM. Faster than the iMac it replaced.

I'd seen (and forgot) about that thread but An Exception does say that he opens LR in low res mode when he needs to make fast adjustments which would indicate that there is an issue.

I was actually hoping LR6 would be out by now as it was rumoured for March, the sensible thing would be to wait I guess but I had decided to change this week so waiting will be a killer

An Exception · 26 Mar 2015 at 11:11

Jase said:
I'd probably go for the Apple Thunderbolt display if I went down the Pro route, but the iMac 5K ticked all the boxes.

I'm trying to make the move from PC to Mac for all my photo/video stuff as at the moment I'm using a Desktop PC and a Macbook Pro. I find the performance with the Macbook Pro to be really good and I know I could just get the Thunderbolt display and use the Macbook on it but I'd rather keep to a desktop and macbook.

No point getting a mac pro and thunderbolt display. 5K imac in low res mode is the same as a thunderbolt display at native res. I've viewed them side by side.

Below is the performance of my max'd iMac.

Jase · 26 Mar 2015 at 12:46

An Exception said:
No point getting a mac pro and thunderbolt display. 5K imac in low res mode is the same as a thunderbolt display at native res. I've viewed them side by side.

Below is the performance of my max'd iMac.

Many thanks for that, much appreciated.

The delay was quiet noticeable when you first adjusted the exposure with the slider and then speeded up a little bit. The crop wasn't as smooth when running in 5K but that's not a killer really.

I just did the same tests on my MacBook Pro and it was silky smooth and super quick and that's really what I was wanting on the desktop version.

Taking this into consideration and I know it would drive me mad, I think I'll wait a little longer and see if there is a performance increase with LR6. I just hope it's released soon!

An Exception · 26 Mar 2015 at 20:35

Jase said:
Many thanks for that, much appreciated.

The delay was quiet noticeable when you first adjusted the exposure with the slider and then speeded up a little bit.

That big delay isn't the norm from my experience. This test did have a bit of CPU overhead as it was recording 5K at 30fps, so maybe that had something to do with it.

Jase · 5 Apr 2015 at 15:32

Having been working off my MacBook Pro for the past couple of days I've decided to just go for the iMac 5K. My initial thought is to go for the Flash drive option over the Fusion as I just love the speed on the MacBook. As I've not tried the Fusion drive is the Flash drive worth the extra?

Also with regards to external storage for photo's etc what's a good fast option, I'm looking at the G-Thechnology stuff at the moment?

The_Abyss · 6 Apr 2015 at 00:50

I can't comment on the 5K flash option, but I own the fusion 5K iMac and an SSD rMPB. There's not a great deal of difference between the two but, in fairness, I have very limited apps installed on the iMac so I guess all the important stuff is running off the SSD partition.