Mac Mini for Digital Image Editing & iMovie ?

[mjoshi123]

I've been waiting for iMac for a while like many others. My current usage is Digital image editing using Lightroom4 + CS6 & occassional slideshow making / video editing with iMovie and Aperture. My current hardware is MBP mid-2010 with 2.4GHZ Core2Duo processor + 8GB RAM + 256GB SSD connected to Dell U23 IPS panel and it works relatively okay but seems to be not fast enough.
I want to know if going with 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 base model would be good choice or not for my purpose ?
I will definetly upgrade RAM to 16GB & swap out HDD for 512GB SSD on my own.
How easy it is to uprade HDD to SSD + RAM in Macmini 2012 ?

Will going from 2.3GHz to 2.6GHz make a difference in terms of performance ?

[snoylekim]

Originally Posted by mjoshi123

I've been waiting for iMac for a while like many others. My current usage is Digital image editing using Lightroom4 + CS6 & occassional slideshow making / video editing with iMovie and Aperture. My current hardware is MBP mid-2010 with 2.4GHZ Core2Duo processor + 8GB RAM + 256GB SSD connected to Dell U23 IPS panel and it works relatively okay but seems to be not fast enough.
I want to know if going with 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 base model would be good choice or not for my purpose ?
I will definetly upgrade RAM to 16GB & swap out HDD for 512GB SSD on my own.
How easy it is to uprade HDD to SSD + RAM in Macmini 2012 ?

Will going from 2.3GHz to 2.6GHz make a difference in terms of performance ?

Well, I use FCP, Aperture, Canon Digital Professional Pro, Compressor, and Handbrake on a mini with an i5 2.5 Processor and 8 Gig of memory .. that does fine .. With an I7 and 16 G, you'll be OK ...

[mjoshi123]

Originally Posted by snoylekim

Well, I use FCP, Aperture, Canon Digital Professional Pro, Compressor, and Handbrake on a mini with an i5 2.5 Processor and 8 Gig of memory .. that does fine .. With an I7 and 16 G, you'll be OK ...

Thank you for validation, that definetly helps.

[Toraen]

I just purchased Lightroom 4 (4.2) the other night on my new Mini (quad 2.3 w/ssd/16gb ram) and I was a little disappointed at the speed.

Unfortunately I haven't used LR 4 before so I can't compare what the problem is but I found the effects rendering rather slowly (a feeling of "lag"). 20mb RAW image file was used... but in Aperture 3.x it never seemed to be this slow.

Wish I had run it on my old MB Air before I sold it, then I'd at least have a reference point. Probably going to install it on my first gen i5 windows machine to get at least a point of reference.

[mjoshi123]

Originally Posted by Toraen

I just purchased Lightroom 4 (4.2) the other night on my new Mini (quad 2.3 w/ssd/16gb ram) and I was a little disappointed at the speed.

Unfortunately I haven't used LR 4 before so I can't compare what the problem is but I found the effects rendering rather slowly (a feeling of "lag"). 20mb RAW image file was used... but in Aperture 3.x it never seemed to be this slow.

Wish I had run it on my old MB Air before I sold it, then I'd at least have a reference point. Probably going to install it on my first gen i5 windows machine to get at least a point of reference.

That is really intersting, I started with Aperture and quickly moved to LR after couple of weeks as I found Aperture to be rather slow on my MBP. Since last 1 year I'm doing all my work solely in LR3/4 and CS6. Initial rendering of files do take some time after you import to LR but once everything is rendered and ready to go it was more faster for me compared to Aperture. Try doing rendering standard preview before hand instead of as you move from file to file.
Here is what I do when I import files from my 5Dmkii to MBP at that time after import is completed (normally for wedding shoot I'm looking at roughly 1500-2000 raw files to go thru from whole day of shoot),
I select all files under Library and simply do render standard preview before I even start culling thru files to decide which one is keeper and which one I'm not going to touch.
After rendering is completed, normally it takes roughly 60-90 minutes on my MBP to go thru all 2000 files. I start rating files on scale of 1 to 5 to make sure which one I'm going to edit. So all files that I'm going to edit and give it to client I mark them 5 rest I dont bother to rate. As files are already rendered it makes it easier to go one by one in loupe view in Library mode.

[Toraen]

Originally Posted by mjoshi123

That is really intersting, I started with Aperture and quickly moved to LR after couple of weeks as I found Aperture to be rather slow on my MBP. Since last 1 year I'm doing all my work solely in LR3/4 and CS6. Initial rendering of files do take some time after you import to LR but once everything is rendered and ready to go it was more faster for me compared to Aperture. Try doing rendering standard preview before hand instead of as you move from file to file.
Here is what I do when I import files from my 5Dmkii to MBP at that time after import is completed (normally for wedding shoot I'm looking at roughly 1500-2000 raw files to go thru from whole day of shoot),
I select all files under Library and simply do render standard preview before I even start culling thru files to decide which one is keeper and which one I'm not going to touch.
After rendering is completed, normally it takes roughly 60-90 minutes on my MBP to go thru all 2000 files. I start rating files on scale of 1 to 5 to make sure which one I'm going to edit. So all files that I'm going to edit and give it to client I mark them 5 rest I dont bother to rate. As files are already rendered it makes it easier to go one by one in loupe view in Library mode.

Thanks I'll try that out!