What Mac boo pro for photo editing
- Thread starter sid-180
- Start date
Soldato
- Joined
- 8 Aug 2010
- Posts
- 6,453
- Location
- Oxfordshire
This puppy.
You could get the version without discrete GPU, however Lightroom 6 is rumoured to have big performance gains, and I'm wondering if that is because of more GPU utilisation so maybe it is worth considering.
If you can I would opt for a 1tb HDD, although Apple are clearly trying to rip people off with their SSD pricing.
However it would mean you could edit a large amount of pictures without having to use an external drive. When your internal drive begins to fill up, you can archive old projects that don't really need to be accessed very often to an external drive. I recently bought 2x Thunder2 Quads for external storage, and they work really well.
I'm assuming you actually want portability, but if that wasn't a big deal I would get a 5k imac if not budget limited. I have maxed out versions of both, and do all my editing on the imac due to the screen and CPU speed. You could plugin an external monitor to the macbook, but I would personally wait for thunderbolt 3 if that was the case.
With thunderbolt 3 Apple should release a 5k Thunderbolt Display. Thunderbolt 2 can't drive 5k retina screens, and 4k may not scale nicely. The current thunderbolt display works ok (I have one of those as well), but you are limited to 2560*1440 and thunderbolt 1 speeds ( which also limits everything you plugin to the monitor). Also oddly the thunderbolt display uses allot more power compared to the screen of the imac.
You could get the version without discrete GPU, however Lightroom 6 is rumoured to have big performance gains, and I'm wondering if that is because of more GPU utilisation so maybe it is worth considering.
If you can I would opt for a 1tb HDD, although Apple are clearly trying to rip people off with their SSD pricing.
However it would mean you could edit a large amount of pictures without having to use an external drive. When your internal drive begins to fill up, you can archive old projects that don't really need to be accessed very often to an external drive. I recently bought 2x Thunder2 Quads for external storage, and they work really well.
I'm assuming you actually want portability, but if that wasn't a big deal I would get a 5k imac if not budget limited. I have maxed out versions of both, and do all my editing on the imac due to the screen and CPU speed. You could plugin an external monitor to the macbook, but I would personally wait for thunderbolt 3 if that was the case.
With thunderbolt 3 Apple should release a 5k Thunderbolt Display. Thunderbolt 2 can't drive 5k retina screens, and 4k may not scale nicely. The current thunderbolt display works ok (I have one of those as well), but you are limited to 2560*1440 and thunderbolt 1 speeds ( which also limits everything you plugin to the monitor). Also oddly the thunderbolt display uses allot more power compared to the screen of the imac.
Soldato
- Joined
- 8 Aug 2010
- Posts
- 6,453
- Location
- Oxfordshire
For what you sacrifice in build quality, screen quality, thunderbolt and free operating system upgrades, are you really saving much?
I got a friend to quote up a "PC/laptop" the other day with a similar spec to the macbook as he keeps going on about how crappy the macbook hardware is and how drastically more expensive it is compared to a conventional laptop I did find it amusing when they went to try and match the spec and run into difficulty.
That being said, I do have a few gripes the ssd upgrades are pretty expensive, I miss inbuilt 3g modem, the ram is limited to 16gb, and the lack of an ethernet port can be frustrating when you've forgotten the thunderbolt adapter.
yes or you could get a pc with a Z87 mobo, windows 10 (free just like osx) and a 5k dell monitor so no you dont sacrifice anything and can you upgrade the gfx on imac , or the screen , or the motherboard or the cpu need i go on , oh and if one part blows you can swap just that part
not been a troll but you didnt look very hard MSI WS60 2OJ Core i7 16GB 1TB 256GB SSD 15.6 inch 4K IPS Windows 7 Pro Mobile Workstation oh and still £200 cheaper than the best macbook pro with retina 4k anyone ???
Soldato
- Joined
- 8 Aug 2010
- Posts
- 6,453
- Location
- Oxfordshire
I guess that laptop has only recently been released as it doesn't seem widely available. Nice spec's for the price, although W7 is outdated and I'm not sure how good it's HiDPI support is, especially when using 3rd party software. Apparently W8.1 is a little better supported with HiDPI but still has a few niggles. Probably best to wait for W10.
I'm guessing it's not going to be quite the same seamless experience as a rmbp.
I'm guessing it's not going to be quite the same seamless experience as a rmbp.
Last edited:
I have the MSI GS60 and run lightroom on it - it works really well.
As for Win7 - I would rather have Win7 than Win8.1 which words truly cannot describe quite how flipping awful it is.
Soldato
- Joined
- 8 Aug 2010
- Posts
- 6,453
- Location
- Oxfordshire
Is yours the 1080p version or the 4K? I'm sure both run well, however I remember when I got a rmbp (when they were first released).
Allot of the apps had trouble scaling to the high res. Basically if you didn't want blurry icons and text etc, you had to run the monitor at native resolution (rather than 'Best for Mac'), which meant you could barely read anything as text was tiny. These issues were fixed pretty quickly though, I guess because retina on mac was sure to become mainstream quickly rather than stay a niche.
I liked W7. W8 is what made me make the switch. I didn't want another repeat of being stuck on XP for donkeys years because Vista was a fail.
I run a 2014 dell xps 15 using photoshop cs6 to work on files from my D810 and D800. It copes equally as well as a top of the range rmbpro. I also use it for video editing using avid and conversions too. It even handles games at sensible resolutions and settings. Battery life is not far off a macbook too, I frequently manage to get over 6 hours. I will straight up admit that I don't like hidpi screens and run mine at 1920x1080. (This is only partly because of dodgy dpi scaling)
We use macbook pros in work and whilst I agree that they look smart, are fairly powerful and relatively tough, they are too expensive for what they are and the ability to upgrade bits later on is swiftly diminishing. I think applecare will be the big trump card as support from other manufacturers is not quite as good.
We use macbook pros in work and whilst I agree that they look smart, are fairly powerful and relatively tough, they are too expensive for what they are and the ability to upgrade bits later on is swiftly diminishing. I think applecare will be the big trump card as support from other manufacturers is not quite as good.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 8 Aug 2010
- Posts
- 6,453
- Location
- Oxfordshire
^^^
Other than RAM, SSD's and Wifi cards there isn't really anything you can upgrade I guess.
Tbh, if you want to upgrade your mac, you sell the whole unit and replace it.
Depending on how someone set's up there system, it's not a particularly big upheaval if storage is external. If I want to upgrade my imac in a few years, I unplug the thunderbolt cable, and replace the unit. Plug thunderbolt cable back in to new machine. Transfer apps/settings the whole shebang over from time machine (takes a minute or two). Then your ready to go again.
Other than RAM, SSD's and Wifi cards there isn't really anything you can upgrade I guess.
Tbh, if you want to upgrade your mac, you sell the whole unit and replace it.
Depending on how someone set's up there system, it's not a particularly big upheaval if storage is external. If I want to upgrade my imac in a few years, I unplug the thunderbolt cable, and replace the unit. Plug thunderbolt cable back in to new machine. Transfer apps/settings the whole shebang over from time machine (takes a minute or two). Then your ready to go again.
Last edited: