First Mac - What spec for Photography?

[spraycansoul]

Hi! So I have made the decision to purchase the new 27” iMac 2019 over a 2018 MacBook Pro. I guess I don’t really need the portability and the reliability of MacBook laptops recently has made my decision a bit easier.

This will be my first Mac computer and looking for recommendations on spec.

I would class myself as an amateur photographer (looking to turn pro) who would mainly be using this machine for Lightroom and Photoshop.

With that in mind, my question is would it be wise to buy the baseline 27” iMac with SSD and 8th gen cpu (saving money) , or is it worth shelling out the extra cash for the higher end iMac to include the 9th gen cpu?

Any feedback is welcome!

 

[Steve121178]

Baseline is more than good enough as all iMacs come with highly capable CPU's. Just make sure you opt for SSD.

I'd personally opt for 512GB as that gives a healthy amount of local speedy storage.

 

[tomscott1988]

I would take the best you can afford.

Lightroom is CPU intensive and doesn't use the GPU a huge amount but may do in the future. Single core high clocks for adjustments, pushing 14mp at 60fps is very taxing and high clocks with short bursts is ideal. The i9 up to 5GHZ will ensure that moving the exposure slider while you have noise, sharpening and lens adjustments on more fluid.

Lightroom works really well with flat raw files making normal adjustments but once you add the computational adjustments like clarity, dehaze, sharpening, noise, lens adjustments and healing it makes the machine crawl. Usualy I will make my adjustments and add sharpening and noise at the end as it really makes a big difference to how the app performs while editing, whereas not long ago i would have these added to my import presets to save me time but the machine would be slow to make edits and be frustrating to use. Now I just make the amends when I finish I add another Sharpening and noise preset to all of them and export.

Any of the CPUs will be fine but I would go with the fastest clock CPU which would be the i9 I would take the 512 as a minimum and I would take the Vega 48 for future use.

The iMac is pretty good as you have 2 TB3 ports so expansion of fast storage or archive is easy to achieve.

At the end of the day its down to budget. For example I bought a base line 2017 (I found one really cheap) because the K processors throttle and the non K were roughly 5% difference in performance in real use and when the K versions throttled they were only about 10% quicker. Hyperthreading also isnt that beneficial for photographic workflows as the apps dont really support it until you get to export rendering.

Im a professional photographer and it mine runs ok but its not exactly fluid. On the other hand im yet to use a machine with my 50mp raws that is fluid in LR its just not that well optimised. Its not necessarily any of the machines fault its Adobe and their optimisation, same with premier.

I also found mine 10 months old with applecare and the trackpad for £1150 and saved £1000 off the bat. I found the iMac pro to give no real world benefit over the normal imac in the program itself (again its lightroom not the machine). In app speed is far more important to me that export. When I export I walk away and come back to send out.

In app performance is far more important. Say your shooting a wedding and you have 500 images to edit and when you zoom to 100% it takes 3 seconds to render that view your basically sat waiting for 25 minutes waiting for renders in your editing time, that's if you only zoom in once per image. Just one example but if your doing a lot of big jobs it might make more sense to buy more power to save time.

In all honesty the difference between the 2017 and 2019 for photographers is negligible as the programs arent optimised for the tech and export is the only time lightroom will use all the cores. Your probably talking 10s of seconds rather than 10s of minutes difference.

Like most photographers in time you will probably evolve into shooting some kind of video so worth baring that in mind, if its a long term machine 3-7 years then go all in. For £3600 you can have the i9 512 8gb vega 48 and add 32gbs of ram yourself and you have a machine that will outperform the base iMac pro for photography and depending on the codec video production too.

I stuck 32gbs of ram in mine, bought a Samsung X5 for 2000+mb/s read and write for boot and an OWC thunderbay 6 for redundancy and fast cache.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB36SRKIT0/

It has 6 bays for Raid5 which I use for archive and runs at around 400mb/s which is great, it also has an M.2 NVME slot for fast project files and caches. Whats nice is it has 2 TB3 ports so the X5 is attached to the second and still runs at full speed and it has a display port which I attach my 27" apple cinema display as a secondary. All through one cable so its very minimal on my desk on cable for power one TB3 cable for my storage.

For me I use about 4tb per year in data so having something you can expand is important. For wedding photography obviously you have a duty of care to ensure images are safe for clients.

The nice thing about this is if I want a new iMac I unplug one cable remove the machine and replace it with another and im up and running in exactly the same way.

Hope that helps.

 

[SkiHound2]

Hi! So I have made the decision to purchase the new 27” iMac 2019 over a 2018 MacBook Pro. I guess I don’t really need the portability and the reliability of MacBook laptops recently has made my decision a bit easier.

This will be my first Mac computer and looking for recommendations on spec.

I would class myself as an amateur photographer (looking to turn pro) who would mainly be using this machine for Lightroom and Photoshop.

With that in mind, my question is would it be wise to buy the baseline 27” iMac with SSD and 8th gen cpu (saving money) , or is it worth shelling out the extra cash for the higher end iMac to include the 9th gen cpu?

Any feedback is welcome!

Probably the most important things are fast storage and memory. I think you have your LR catalog, cache, and if possible working files on the internal SSD that will really help with a lot of the stuff that feels slow. I don't know what you're running on now but SSDs in the iMac are really fast and input/output is a big part of speeding workflow. PS likes memory, especially if you're editing several layers. You can upgrade memory yourself for much less than Apple. The 6 core i5 in the lowest tier iMac is faster than any of the 2017 iMacs with the exception of the i7, and even then it would be close and would vary depending on task. At this point neither LR nor PS is well optimized to take advantage of many cores, so, with the exception of exporting, # cores past about 6 has negligible benefit (LR does use more cores for exporting). And at this point neither places much burden on the gpu. Adobe just added an AI feature to LR that exploits the gpu. Also keep in mind that there are lots of professional photographers out there doing most of their editing on laptops that don't have near the power of the lowest tier iMac. I wouldn't consider the mid-tier version since as soon as you make any changes to storage options the price gets very close to the highest tier version. One thing to keep in mind, and it shouldn't be an issue is that Apple lists 32GB of memory as the maximum. Other World Computing is selling 128GB kits and say the iMacs support up to 128gb. You shouldn't have any trouble gong to 40 or even 64 on the low end. IMO, you have to go to the i9 to get much meaningful performance benefit. Many folks on these forums are enthusiasts and go for highest spec machines. So again, my view is for those tasks spend the money you can on the SSD and memory upgrades. BTW, storing raw files on a USD 3 is still pretty fast.

 

[nihil0]

Depends on what you will do. What will you do in Ps, what will you do in Lr?

For my workflow (I am wedding and portrait photographer) I need:

1. The more cores, the better. Although in Lr it is only reasonable to have 6 cores (because if you have more than 6, it will not speed up the performance at all), it is safe to future proof and go for 8 core i9. Cores will help you if you need to export large number of pictures from RAW to JPEG.
2. RAM is important when you will make large files in Photoshop. Will you do lot of compositions, heavy editing, lot of layers, lot of open files? Then you need lot of RAM. I have 24 GB RAM and when I use Ps and Luminar, I have around 16 GB full and 8 GB free. So at least 24 GB RAM if you will do retouching and stuff like that.
3. GPU is important only for Ps, Lr does not benefit at all from GPU. So again, for large photo projects, at least 4 GB VRAM but ideally 8 GB VRAM (don't need Vega 48 for that).
4. There is very little difference between having Fusion drive or SSD regarding the speed in Lr. However, for heavy Ps work you will also need to have large (and fast) scratch drive - 512 GB/1 TB SSD. If you need large storage because you shoot lof of photos, then 2 TB or 3 TB fusion drive will be enough.

I don't know what is your budget is but baseline iMac 27 is not for you. The best option is to buy i9 with 2 TB fusion drive (you can always buy external USB-C or TB3 SSD later) and R580X. Basic 8 GB RAM and then buy another 3rd party 16 GB RAM for 24 GB total.

But in the end - it really depends on what you will use Ps and Lr for, so think carefully. Maybe 6 core i5 will be enough for you.

 

[B.A.T]

There's some great advice here already but I'll pipe in. Buy the best that you can afford and it will last you a long time. I'm running a 2013 27" i7 with 24GB of ram and use the original Canon 6D. When I have photoshop and Lightroom open I use roughly 16GB of ram. My machine still flies like it's brand new and I hope to get two to three more years out of it. However, camera files get bigger and bigger each generation. If I was to upgrade my camera to a Sony A7RIII the files would be double the size they are now and performance would likely take a hit. Good luck.

 

[spraycansoul]

Thanks everyone for taking the time to provide such great feedback it’s much appreciated!

Ideally this will be a long term machine with the aim of running it into the ground. Based on all the advice given the 8 core i9 seems to be the way to go.

 

[Honumaui]

full time photographer here (over 20 years) wife is full time graphic design

we need two new machines for our studio

I have thought one could be a mac mini but the other most likely will be a iMac

I would go with the i9 as said already ditto again the 512 SSD and use external for everything else working files etc..
ram will put in 32 gigs from OWC (macsales) to bring total up to 40 which should do it for its purpose but for sure do at least that skip the getting 16 for a total of 24 IMHo that extra bit will be nice at times with larger PS files like 16 bit ones that can get large quickly

the GPU is the tricky part if money is there and you plan on keeping it insane long and can afford go for the upgrade not sure in PS how much it will help but will be some ? the other thing would be save that and put it toward a eGPU of some kind in say 1-2 years from now to breathe new life into the machine and support for higher end GPU will be out there and that might make a bigger difference to PS bu then we can only help

all on budget go for the better GPU and see where eGPUs are in 2 years to update your machine and give it a fun bump in performance etc..

 

[Bohemien]

all on budget go for the better GPU and see where eGPUs are in 2 years to update your machine and give it a fun bump in performance etc..

Not criticizing your post, just asking because that's one of the things I'm still pondering: sure, one can add an eGPU later, and Apple's asking price for the Vega is steep, but from what I've seen so far it seems you lose maybe 20% of the eGPU's processing power due to data transfer. So for an eGPU, one would at least update to the Vega 64, which in an external enclosure right now would cost around $900 (heard that in a video, didn't check the current price myself). Wouldn't it make more sense just to go with the Vega 48?

Sure, you could get even more powerful GPUs externally in the future and also add more than one to your system. I'm just wondering if for photography it might be easier just to go with the Vega now for max. performance in this iMac iteration and get the next GPU in your next system sometime down the road.

 

[tomscott1988]

Problem with an EGPU is that it routes through one cable from the machine and back to the display so the overhead is quite high, loosing on both ends to accelerate the internal display.

If your using it externally to accelerate exports etc it works at about 90% the problem is by the time you have spent £300 on the enclosure and £300 on the GPU £600 for a graphics card that when you accelerate the internal display your probably only getting 60% because of the overhead.

If your accelerating an external it makes more sense but the whole point of the iMac is the 5k display.

This upgrade it down the line is expensive and through TB3 isn’t really worth it if you want to accelerate the internal display.

In all honesty it makes more sense to pay the £450 as the internal vega 48 will perform better than an external vega 64 accelerating the internal display.

Add a 5k externally and use that as a main display then it makes more sense but really it might be better buying a headless non all in one machine like the Mac mini or upcoming Mac Pro if that’s the route you want to go down.

In all honesty lightroom has been around for nearly 15 years... progress is slow.

 

[Honumaui]

Not criticizing your post, just asking because that's one of the things I'm still pondering: sure, one can add an eGPU later, and Apple's asking price for the Vega is steep, but from what I've seen so far it seems you lose maybe 20% of the eGPU's processing power due to data transfer. So for an eGPU, one would at least update to the Vega 64, which in an external enclosure right now would cost around $900 (heard that in a video, didn't check the current price myself). Wouldn't it make more sense just to go with the Vega 48?

Sure, you could get even more powerful GPUs externally in the future and also add more than one to your system. I'm just wondering if for photography it might be easier just to go with the Vega now for max. performance in this iMac iteration and get the next GPU in your next system sometime down the road.

I hear ya we are in a tough spot $ choice wise
totally understand you are not criticizing me so no worries ! IMHO you have to question folks who post I hear see so much YIKES !!!! why I posted my URL earlier


I would say yes would be worth it if the budget is OK to go that route

think it was you mentioning C1 (capture one) it does use the GPU so if you are planning on using C1 for sure %100 I would say spend the coin now and get the vega cause it will help (this is from my testing with friends and that link in another thread )

only reason I say budget is some might be going I cant spend more then say $3k (US) so it has to be under that ! I would rather have the i9 and the slower GPU then a i5 and the faster was more my thinking of budget the two must haves are the SSD inside and the i9 IMHO those are MUSTS !!!! then the gpu


capture one will use it for the whole export and more important with a few layers and working with sliders etc.. which is here performance is hard to measure but needs to be !
same as LR folks measure import export ? I say who cares I can set import and do email or make lunch ! same as export ! where it counts is moving image to image and moving those sliders !!!!


I am buying a mac this month I have a insane PC for capture one already so this is my wifes
I plan the iMac will be the vega the i9 and a 512 SSD and 32gigs memory 3rd party total of 40)
if I go mac mini it will be a i7 and 512 SSD and 32GB mem (3rd party) and not sure what eGPU but will budget at least 1k I have multiple NEC PA series monitors and BenQ sw2700 already so we do not need a monitor and IMHO the iMac screen is very good but for serious work I prefer NEC or BenQ ( the adobe RGB models) but that i9 is fast and no thermal throttling of the mini and no growth issues with the eGPU that might be ironed out in a few years so I am leaning toward the iMac for her big time ? let the eGPU get mature over next couple years and apple figure out the thermal issues in the mini along with known bluetooth issues etc..


no matter what
every 1-2 years I look at more memory ? newer storage tech ? and GPU tech ? all those in single or combinations can help keep you feeling a bit current with your computer


sorry if this is long but sometimes I find hearing others method of thinking helpful

so our photo design studio we have a mac 3,1 and a 5,1 and a PC based on the intel 7820x and 1080 GPU
I hate windows so much hahahahaha I wont be going all PC as I had hopes to do and build ultimate PCs but that is another rabbit hole to go down

 

[macduke]

It depends—what camera are you using? What are you doing with your photos? For instance, I have a Sony a7R III which has a pretty big file size. If I'm trying to stack photos for astrophotography or merge a lot of landscape shots for a huge panorama, it's going to take a lot more processing power. Lightroom speeds things up when working with images because it mostly uses smart previews to show edits, but if you zoom in more, or if you export a large batch, that's when you'll notice the speed improvements. You'll notice SSD speed too if you have large RAW files. Also consider what you're not doing today but might want to do. Are you due for a camera upgrade in the next few years—if so, what does that look like on your brand path? Do you follow the camera rumor sites to see what specs are coming down the pipe? A few years ago Sony started pushing the industry to higher resolutions and greater dynamic range which means larger RAW files. Are you going to start getting into videography since many cameras support 4K video? If so you'll need fast GPU and CPU, but it also kinda depends on whether you fall into the Premiere Pro, FCPX, or some other software crowd as different software is optimized differently. Furthermore, are you going to stick with LR? Emerging players that are gaining in popularity are starting to utilize the GPU more. Also, how long do you expect to use this machine? When it comes to upgrading my Macs, I try to stretch them out and buy as much machine as I can at the start because I never know where my equipment will take me in a few years.

 

[Bohemien]

think it was you mentioning C1 (capture one) it does use the GPU so if you are planning on using C1 for sure %100 I would say spend the coin now and get the vega cause it will help (this is from my testing with friends and that link in another thread )

Yep, that was me. I did that test on my 2011 MBP (i7@2.2GHz, Radeon 6750M GPU) and it took 3:45minutes... I guess I'll be really happy with my new iMac! Although what was strange that CPU only, the export was faster, so maybe that GPU is just so old that C1 doesn't benefit from it at all.

I would rather have the i9 and the slower GPU then a i5 and the faster was more my thinking of budget the two must haves are the SSD inside and the i9 IMHO those are MUSTS !!!! then the gpu

Yesterday I shot an event-the final export took 15 minutes on my machine... that's why I'm leaning towards the i9/Vega configuration. This will make the iMac 30% more expensive than the i5/580X (with 1TB SSD), but I guess the performance gain should be around the same percentage, so it could be worth it.

 

[Honumaui]

yeah could be ? also make sure its on in the preferences under general
its a drop down box you have it on auto or never and it will say if its using it down below

well that thread on their forum I am sure you looked at some of those times and was like WOW some folks have insane speeds
also from that thread me testing some and my buddy we realized balance of GPU and CPU is key for C1 so th i9 with the better gpu makes sense and just guessing from pretty good spot of guessing you would see gains in C1

if you use C1 now do you ever use layers ? do you ever see slow down ? to me that is the one thing I do like is having a machine that I can do whatever and brushes never bog down etc..

Yep, that was me. I did that test on my 2011 MBP (i7@2.2GHz, Radeon 6750M GPU) and it took 3:45minutes... I guess I'll be really happy with my new iMac! Although what was strange that CPU only, the export was faster, so maybe that GPU is just so old that C1 doesn't benefit from it at all.



Yesterday I shot an event-the final export took 15 minutes on my machine... that's why I'm leaning towards the i9/Vega configuration. This will make the iMac 30% more expensive than the i5/580X (with 1TB SSD), but I guess the performance gain should be around the same percentage, so it could be worth it.

 

[Bohemien]

also make sure its on in the preferences under general
its a drop down box you have it on auto or never and it will say if its using it down below

Yep, did that. I guess the 6750 is just too old to have the instruction set C1 utilizes?

balance of GPU and CPU is key for C1 so th i9 with the better gpu makes sense and just guessing from pretty good spot of guessing you would see gains in C1

You're finally gonna sell me on that Vega... And for the price of one eGPU, I'll get both i9 and Vega...

if you use C1 now do you ever use layers ? do you ever see slow down ? to me that is the one thing I do like is having a machine that I can do whatever and brushes never bog down etc..

As soon as I use layers with brushes/masking, performance becomes sluggy. Not as bad as On1 though. I guess the biggest performance gain will be visible when exporting, but also during editing it's just not intuitive when the brushwork lags behind the hand movement. For an 8 year old machine, I guess it's not too bad how my MBP still works with the latest software, that's one thing I prefer Apple over Windows for. But it's time to upgrade, first of all for that gorgeous 5K screen, which alone requires some more processing power than I currently have, and to have something that will get me through the next 8 years. I guess that's a good reason to go with i9/Vega, with more companies using GPU-based instruction sets to add to CPU processing.

 

[dwig]

...
I would class myself as an amateur photographer (looking to turn pro) who would mainly be using this machine for Lightroom and Photoshop.

With that in mind, ...

It largely depends on EXACTLY what type of photography you are going to end up doing and how quickly you progress from a beginner to a working professional. As you can see from the comments so far, there are a wide range of usage and opinion.

For the vast range of amateur use, either "family happy snaps" or as expressive art, any current iMac with an SSD and a couple of USB 3.1 external drives will be fine. For real professional use, though, different choices for different uses come into play.

I've done computer imaging for well over 30 years and actually began film photography and darkroom work 60 years ago. For my personal photography (a mix of family documentation and personal art) a fairly basic computer (fast i7, 8gb RAM,modest GPU, and several reasonably fast HDDs serves very well.

My day job, on the other hand, it more demanding of hardware performance. I work as the "prime pixel pusher" for an art photographer so sells mostly large prints (we consider 20"x30" as moderately small) in his own gallery. The gallery does very well, but even so, replacing my primary workstation frequently is out of the question. My current setup it a full blown 2017 iMac (i7, 32gb RAM, 1Tb SSD, GPU...) with a second monitor, 13Gb in external drives plus 10Gb more to TM. Printing to the two 44" EPSON printers is off loaded to two other older Macs acting as print servers. On any one day, I typically work with only 3-4 images, but they are normally large files; 2-6Gb sizes are common and 10-12Gb are not uncommon. I work in Ps primarily, with Lr used for new image management and RAW conversion. Once the artist and I get to working up a new image the edits quickly get beyond the abilities of Lr so I only do basic conversion with it. This type of "professional" usage requires quite different hardware specs than, say, wedding and event work where individual image sizes (both filesize and print size) are vastly smaller but the quantity that needs to be handled in a short time is vastly greater.

The other point to seriously consider is over what time span will you progress from beginner to part-time pro to possibly full time heavy professional work. Don't buy a computer today targeting work you might be doing 2-3 years down the line. Consider buying a minimal machine today, investing in good software, and expect to do some upgrades (RAM, external HDDs/SSDs) before replacing the core machine a few years from now when your imaging work demands the higher performance.

 

[kxfrog]

Hi! So I have made the decision to purchase the new 27” iMac 2019 over a 2018 MacBook Pro. I guess I don’t really need the portability and the reliability of MacBook laptops recently has made my decision a bit easier.

This will be my first Mac computer and looking for recommendations on spec.

I would class myself as an amateur photographer (looking to turn pro) who would mainly be using this machine for Lightroom and Photoshop.

With that in mind, my question is would it be wise to buy the baseline 27” iMac with SSD and 8th gen cpu (saving money) , or is it worth shelling out the extra cash for the higher end iMac to include the 9th gen cpu?

Any feedback is welcome!

Look I just want to weigh in. I am very confused why everyone is recommending the i9, maybe they don’t live in the UK where everything is very expensive!! I am a professional photographer and I have just bought the base i5 27 inch 5k iMac. I will just say the screen is what you’re paying for and it is very good.

The fusion drive is painful. Very very slow. But the iMac has two thunderbolt three ports and 4 usb 3 ports. I am booting off an external usb c ssd with a further 1TB ssd. This solves the everyday storage capabilities.

I then have a further 7 TB in a usb C external enclosure and bought an additional 32gb RAM from amazon. This cost me In total around £1800 and is everything anyone could need to edit big RAW files, as I am, from Sony A7 IIIs.

 

[SkiHound2]

Look I just want to weigh in. I am very confused why everyone is recommending the i9, maybe they don’t live in the UK where everything is very expensive!! I am a professional photographer and I have just bought the base i5 27 inch 5k iMac. I will just say the screen is what you’re paying for and it is very good.

The fusion drive is painful. Very very slow. But the iMac has two thunderbolt three ports and 4 usb 3 ports. I am booting off an external usb c ssd with a further 1TB ssd. This solves the everyday storage capabilities.

I then have a further 7 TB in a usb C external enclosure and bought an additional 32gb RAM from amazon. This cost me In total around £1800 and is everything anyone could need to edit big RAW files, as I am, from Sony A7 IIIs.

Lots of folks on here are computer enthusiasts and want the best. And when you read these forums it's easy to get caught up in the excitement and think you really do need the best. I really debated between i9 and i5. In the end I decided that if being realistic, I didn't really need anything beyond the 6 core i5. It benchmarks faster than the top of the line i7 7700k in the 2017 model. I did add internal SSD.

 

[BlueTide]

It may help to observe what are the limiting factors in your current usage. As some have written already, people do different things in the area of photography and may also work differently. Thus they may value different things, and let alone, some are techies who want to justify the best. Some really need that too, but they know that already.

For me, while I am no pro but one that does rather high-end shoots, the limiting factor tends to be the human - me. Yes, it takes a while to render the previews. Yes, exporting may take some time. But those times are in the end rather minuscule compared to what it takes to make creative decisions and operate Photoshop. The computer is fast enough for Hasselblad and Nikon Z7 shots. I can start the auto-import after a shoot and go have a dinner while that's ready. I can deal with the save times of large files (~2GB) well enough, even on slow drives, since Photoshop lets me work during those and it seems stable enough. I can stitch an occasional panorama or whatnot and even if it takes time, it doesn't take that much in the end and I don't do those very often. This on a 2013 MacBook Pro.

Now, obviously, if someone does a lot of batch work and notices the creativity suffering from waiting the machine all the time, they want more power. But for Photoshop & Lightroom... the computers are pretty good these days for a lot of use cases. I get more value out of optimizing the rest of the workflow.

That said, I need a larger screen. Been waiting for a new iMac/Mac Pro, and now I wanna see if that Mac Pro materializes during the summer. That rumored 32" screen sounds cool and fitting for my hipster ego.