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Help Needed i7 and 8gb enough for photoshop and lightroom?

TheDrift-

TheDrift-

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 8, 2010
879
1,400
I have a 2010 MBP, i5 with 4gb Ram....Its really slooow when using Photoshop with lightroom open.

The 15inch form factor is perfect for me and I use my laptop for work as well as pictures.

I'm thinking about upgrading to the 15 inch i7 2.6ghz with 8gb of ram, (not retina but will get the antiglare) will that be enough for photoshop and lightroom for the next couple of years?

I need 500gb min really for storage which means if I got a retina MBP i'd need the top end one, and with the 16gb ram its a bit more than I want to pay.

Does anyone have an i7 mbp with 8gb and does it run ok with photoshup and lightroom witha few layers stacked up?

Any help appreciated
 
You could bump the memory in your current system, for relatively very little money, and see if that gives you what you need. If it were me, I'd try that before buying a new system. My "late 2009" model is maxed on memory and does just fine on LR and PS.
 
Kurwenal said:
You could bump the memory in your current system, for relatively very little money, and see if that gives you what you need. If it were me, I'd try that before buying a new system. My "late 2009" model is maxed on memory and does just fine on LR and PS.
Click to expand...

Thanks I had thought about that but I'm not very keen on taking my mac apart, though can they do it in the apple store?
 
Yah, I know how you feel. But it is really very easy to do. Check this out (your model may vary, of course).

I don't know if a Genius will do it for you -- I suspect not, but I don't know. Someone else will come along who does know. Pretty sure Best Buy (Geek Squad) would do it for you.
 
I have a 2010 17" i5 2.53ghz with 8gigs of ram.

I dont use Lightroom, but it's certainly no slouch with Photoshop and Aperture.

It's ram that these programs love, so I would just get the most memory you can put in your current machine. Or get a new one! Either way fill it with as much ram as you can! It is very simple to do it yourself.
 
Thanks

I think the max memory my mbp can handle is 8gb so I cant get 16 :(

I watched the video, it looks pretty straightforward. I remember watching a video to replace the hard drive and it looked a lot more difficult.

I have ordered some and hopefully it will keep me going to next year and I'll maybe get a new mbp then. Its only photoshop that drags it down
 
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I have a 2012 MBP 15" with the same specs. While I can tell you for a fact that this MBP runs Lightroom smoothly, I have no input on Photoshop as I don't own it. Also, I upgraded from a 2008 Unibody Macbook. So the performance increase will probably seem greater than to you, perhaps.

Like others have suggested, non-retina MBP will allow you to expand the RAM and may be swap the HDD with a SDD as well. I don't think you'll have any speed issues either way.
 
runlsd said:
I have a 2012 MBP 15" with the same specs. While I can tell you for a fact that this MBP runs Lightroom smoothly, I have no input on Photoshop as I don't own it. Also, I upgraded from a 2008 Unibody Macbook. So the performance increase will probably seem greater than to you, perhaps.

Like others have suggested, non-retina MBP will allow you to expand the RAM and may be swap the HDD with a SDD as well. I don't think you'll have any speed issues either way.
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I can run, lightroom no probs, photoshop is fine (some of the higher functions can be slow e.g. 16bit surface blurs) its running them together thats starts to slow down, esp if i have something else open e.g. iTunes or safari..

prob is on the non retinas the max ram you get from the store is 8gb..while the retinas its 16gb,...

As people have suggested going to try upping the ram in my machine and see if that helps, and maybe upgrade next year...if not well than i'm not sure.
 
You should be able to fit 8GB of ram in that machine. Click About This Mac / More Info and check the model number, then look at the link below.

MBP Models Compatible with 8GB ram (Other World Computing)

I maxed my late 08 MBP with the 2.5 Ghz C2D processor up to 6GB ram and it helped with PhotoShop cs3 and Aperture quite a bit.

Edit: The 2011 and 2012 machines with the standard displays will hold 16GB of ram as well. Check Here with OWC

Dale
 
Yes it works

My 2012 MBP running 2.6 with 8GB of ram runs both LR and Photoshop CS5 plus plug ins just fine. I upgraded from a 2008 2.4 Duo with 4GB ram and it's a big improvement. No more spinning beach ball.

The 2012 zips through things without delay. I haven't had it long enough to run LR, PS and safari at the same time but so far LR and PS is no problem. On my old MBP plug-ins like Nik Silver Pro 2 were VERY SLOW and now it just works.

Still dreaming of a Mac Pro when they do a Real update, but for now I'm liking my 2012 2.6 8GB ram with anti glare display.
 
RAM is your likely offender. The change between the i5 and i7 will be minimal (not counting any increase in megahertz). When I built my desktop system I went with the i5 as Photoshop really doesn't take advantage of the i7.

The i5 with 16GB of RAM handles 36MP files in Photoshop with ease. I even had one file weigh in around 1.5GB alone and it wasn't a problem. On the MBP I also have 16GB RAM and it handles Photoshop with ease. I don't use Lightroom on that Mac but I generally have many other applications open, including Parallels and Windows 7.

4GB is really pushing the lower limits if you are trying to run both PS and Lightroom concurrently. I suspect 8GB will give you a huge performance increase but I can't really say how much. That depends on your use case. I suspect you would be happy with the performance but that is subjective.
 
Thanks for the advice, I've ordered some more ram and will let you know how that works out.

It's good to know the mac I was looking the 2012 non retina Mbp will take 16 Gb of ram.

One of my main concerns about that model was would 8gb be ok in 2/3 years. As I plan on upgrading every 3 years or so.

I just hope apple move away from this sacrifice features for slimness thing that's going on with the mbp's. We already have the air for that.

Should I still keep my photoshop to take 70% of ram (or what ever he default is?)

Thanks
 
Many thanks for the advice, this has solved 90% of the problem..i now have 8gb :D

It still could be a bit quicker opening and closing but i can run photoshop fine with LR open and another couple of apps.:D:D

Now maybe time to invest the saving in glass :D:D
 
TheDrift- said:
Many thanks for the advice, this has solved 90% of the problem..i now have 8gb :D

It still could be a bit quicker opening and closing but i can run photoshop fine with LR open and another couple of apps.:D:D

Now maybe time to invest the saving in glass :D:D
Click to expand...

Good to hear. :)

The way to speed up loading files is with an SSD but that's another thread entirely. ;) I would get the glass. :D
 
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