13" rMBP Photo Editing/ Video Editing

tjgonzo said:

Hi, I am wondering if anyone has any expirence with the 13" rMBP (late 2013) in regards to performance when editing photos and video. I am looking at the 2.8ghz i7 with 512gb SSD and 16gb of ram. I currently use my early 2011 MBP which has the 6750m and 2.2ghz i7 and I am worred about the GPU failing/ I'm in the market for upgrading to newer machine. I really love the portability of the 13" rMBP but, am a little worried about the performance hit in the GPU side of things. I do intermediate editing with 1080p .mov files from my DSLR, I have no intentions of editing 4k footage in the near future. (if I get into it I will be in the market for a more powerful machine anyways)
If anyone can comment on this machine or a comparable one I would greatly appreciate it!

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my rmbp in my signature is just fine for elaborate photo editing with Lr and Ps.
The screensize might be limiting.

tjgonzo said:

Hi, I am wondering if anyone has any expirence with the 13" rMBP (late 2013) in regards to performance when editing photos and video. I am looking at the 2.8ghz i7 with 512gb SSD and 16gb of ram. I currently use my early 2011 MBP which has the 6750m and 2.2ghz i7 and I am worred about the GPU failing/ I'm in the market for upgrading to newer machine. I really love the portability of the 13" rMBP but, am a little worried about the performance hit in the GPU side of things. I do intermediate editing with 1080p .mov files from my DSLR, I have no intentions of editing 4k footage in the near future. (if I get into it I will be in the market for a more powerful machine anyways)
If anyone can comment on this machine or a comparable one I would greatly appreciate it!

Click to expand...

Meister said:

my rmbp in my signature is just fine for elaborate photo editing with Lr and Ps.
The screensize might be limiting.

Click to expand...

I've got the same stage rMBP as Meister and I've used it for video edit.
Been editing 720p50 video (shot with Canon 700D) with few video, cut & sounds effects. For the timeline I use the original clips but for rendering Apple prores. Rendering and exporting takes time and resources (but not as much as I thought of). And I'm running Spotify, Safari, Mail, Calendar and OneNote the same time, and could render or export the video same time I'm searching Facebook or news.

With Photoshop I've edited some 18MP raw photos (1-2 at a time) without problems. Also stitched few raw shot panoramas with it (there was a bit of lag, but not more than with 2011 entry level iMac).

Haven't yet missed the extra power 15" rMBP could give me. Maybe when moving from 1080p to 4K video edit (or to uncompressed videos). But that'll take some time. And most probably a desktop computer.
Haven't even missed the 8GBs of extra RAM (thx to Mavericks's most perfectly working memory compression!)

Maybe even for Photoshop, but for video edit I recommend the "More Space" option from Display settings, because at least for me FCPX looked a bit messed up and hard to use with the native/best option. If you're going to use effects on either video or photos, might be even better to install something like SwitchResX or Retina Display Menu to get more resolution options.
Haven't used the native/best option myself, but a non-HiDPI/non-scaled 1200p resolution runs much smoother than 1680x1050 in HiDPI -mode (= the "More Space" option). Especially when FCPX or Photoshop like heavy program running on background.

I've used a 2010 13" MBP for photoshop, performance was ok, but I found the screen size too limiting - at least for me. I think for visual apps like PS, a larger display is better - just my $.02

Performance wise, the 2013 rMBP is fine for video editing. I actually took one of my projects to the Apple Store to play with it and it absolutely blew my 2010 out of the water.

Screen size is not a big deal for me, but you can always hook up an external screen to it when you're at home.

tjgonzo said:

Interesting! Can you explain this more? I can set the resolution to say, 1680x1050 without the HiDPI and it would run better because the GPU doesn't have to do any scaling correct?

I have an external display that will be plugged in while at home, the 13" is plus for me because of the portability compared to my current 15" cMBP.

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Yes, it would run better because the computer wouldn't do the scaling. I've set the resolution of my screen to 1920x1200 with Retina Display Menu, and unlike with the 1680x1050 HiDPI mode the computer doesn't warm or start the fan so easily (and there's no UI lags). With the scaled HiDPI resolution, e.g. watching videos from youtube with HD or higher resolution made the computer to warm up and start the fan. And at least with FCPX and Avid Media Composer the extra space 1200p resolution gives is enjoyable.

But while reading PDFs or blogs or text in anyway those HiDPI resolutions can be handy when there's no noticeable softness around the characters.