photoshop & Air

bs0604 said:

will a top of the line macbook air be able to handle photoshop or do I need to get a macbook pro? The air would be preferable for travel purposes

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I use photoshop all the time on my 2013 Air with i7/8/512gb.

It not only works but works well!

Maxed out MacBook Air is a good idea.
8GB RAM for dealing with large pictures, multiple pictures, programs
i7 for boost in speed to get things done fast.
More disk space so you don't need to bring a external drive with you everywhere. Just get a thunderbolt 1TB drive and store all your finished files there.

joshlalonde said:

Maxed out MacBook Air is a good idea.
8GB RAM for dealing with large pictures, multiple pictures, programs
i7 for boost in speed to get things done fast.
More disk space so you don't need to bring a external drive with you everywhere. Just get a thunderbolt 1TB drive and store all your finished files there.

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I use Photoshop all the time with my base model 2014 11". Works fine. Depends on what size files you're working with, how many files, and what filters you're using.

motrek said:

I use Photoshop all the time with my base model 2014 11". Works fine. Depends on what size files you're working with, how many files, and what filters you're using.

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Ya, it's not necessary to have a maxed out Air. But I assume that if he's willing to pay for a Pro, then he'd be okay paying about the same price for a Air. And it's also going to perform noticeably better in some aspects. And he has the option to work with larger files if he needs to. Not saying you can't on a base Air (I'm an advocate for getting the base vs getting maxed), but I think this suits his workflow a bit better. You want the best tool possible for the job, right?

bs0604 said:

will a top of the line macbook air be able to handle photoshop or do I need to get a macbook pro? The air would be preferable for travel purposes

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You can run Photoshop on any Mac that is even a few years old just fine.

bs0604 said:

thanks for the replies. Makes me feel more secure about getting the air.
My photo files are up to about 120 MB
I use Topaz and Nik filters plug ins if that makes a difference.

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Hmm, I assume you mean your Photoshop files (with all the layers and whatnot) are 120MB and not the photos themselves... those would be some huge photos.

I don't have experience working with files that big but this site seems to indicate that it's a good idea to have 5-8x as much memory available as the file size itself. 120MB x 8 = ~1GB. So I think a machine with 4GB of RAM should be able to handle this fairly comfortably.

http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2115887&seqNum=2