13 inch or 15 inch - Photo editing

[NFXFSX]

My main courses next semester in college consists of digital photo editing and I have been wondering if the 13 inch MBP would work for editing. I have somewhat of a tight budget and I would like something I can carry around without much of a problem.

I was playing around with the customization and got the lower end 13 inch to the same specs (minus the CPU of course) for a lower price than the higher end, but for the hi-end is it worth the extra for the CPU boost or should I just look at the low-end 15 inch?

 

[Zadiek]

As far as the quality, the new 13inch would be fine for editing. Do consider if you are going to be doing heavy editing the extra screen real estate would come in handy.

 

[NFXFSX]

Should I go for the higher end 13 or is the low end fine?

 

[Zadiek]

I would get the cheaper one. The slight bump is processing power won't make a huge difference if any at all. The larger hard drive might benefit you with taking lots of photos, but you can always upgrade that yourself for a lot cheaper. Same with ram.

 

[AreYouIn?]

I have a 13in white macbook and photoshop on it is a pain in the bum! The screen is never big enough for what I want to do. But if this is just for one class then I would go for the 13 you save money and you only have to deal with it for one semester.

Just to add about the processor. My macbook is only 2.0 from 2007 and it works just fine. I run cs3 on it. So the lower one would be fine.

 

[RKpro]

The base 13" should be fine, if you press Option+Command+D to hide the dock, you should have a decent working space. But the extra resolution of the 15"would come in handy, and 4GB of RAM if you have several hi res images open at the same time.

 

[BigJohno]

What about if you hook the 13" with the 30". Is it going to be fast enough to edit? I mean I have some lag with my current computer with cs4. Is it worth extra for the 15" and the extra video card?

 

[marioman38]

I would get the cheaper one. The slight bump is processing power won't make a huge difference if any at all. The larger hard drive might benefit you with taking lots of photos, but you can always upgrade that yourself for a lot cheaper. Same with ram.

Yup. Do that


I'm doing the same next week, I'll be using Lightroom and Photoshop quite a bit.

I recommend this. Excellent reviews

 

[theKitch]

I'm doing lots of Lightroom work on my new MBP and am very happy with the speed. Screen realestate for lightroom is more than adequate for me. I also have a 20" external display I have hooked up as well. Plenty of speed for this work. I've not done any photoshop work with it, but I would imagine it would be more than adequate.

 

[ecstasy]

I would get the cheaper one. The slight bump is processing power won't make a huge difference if any at all. The larger hard drive might benefit you with taking lots of photos, but you can always upgrade that yourself for a lot cheaper. Same with ram.

You're convincing me more and more to do the same.

About to pull the trigger on the 2.26GHz 13" MBP.

 

[mikethebigo]

For you, I think the 13 inch would be a great idea.

 

[Zadiek]

You're convincing me more and more to do the same.

About to pull the trigger on the 2.26GHz 13" MBP.

Go ahead and do so. You will be happy. It really is an awesome little computer. I am loving mine. Posting this in bed in the dark and the backlit keyboard looks sweet.