iMac purchase

[amyjo415]

I will be upgrading from a Late 2014 Retina to 2019 27 inch. I am trying to determine best build for my needs. Budget is $3,100 including tax. it will be used primarily for photography editing through Photoshop and daily internet use. I use VPN and work remotely through another computer, so the drain is in the connection, not a lot of other software running. It seems I am best to upgrade RAM on my own after purchase. AppleCare+ seems the way to go for protection. Does anyone have any recommendations?

 

[Zdigital2015]

I will be upgrading from a Late 2014 Retina to 2019 27 inch. I am trying to determine best build for my needs. Budget is $1,000 including tax. it will be used primarily for photography editing through Photoshop and daily internet use. I use VPN and work remotely through another computer, so the drain is in the connection, not a lot of other software running. It seems I am best to upgrade RAM on my own after purchase. AppleCare+ seems the way to go for protection. Does anyone have any recommendations?

The 2019 27" 5K iMac starts at $1799 and the 21.5" 4K iMac starts at $1299, so you will either need to up your budget or continue using your current iMac. You may be able to sell your 2014 model to help up the budget, but you might be better off simply adding RAM and/or an SSD to give you a few more years from your current iMac. Good luck.

 

[amyjo415]

The 2019 27" 5K iMac starts at $1799 and the 21.5" 4K iMac starts at $1299, so you will either need to up your budget or continue using your current iMac. You may be able to sell your 2014 model to help up the budget, but you might be better off simply adding RAM and/or an SSD to give you a few more years from your current iMac. Good luck.

Sorry, I edited the original post. That was a typos on my part. Budget is $3,100.

 

[lclev]

Are you aware of the starting price on a 27" 2019 iMac? $1000 will only get you started.

Edit: Just saw your re-post. $3100 is much better. Will get back to you!

Lisa

 

[amyjo415]

Are you aware of the starting price on a 27" 2019 iMac? $1000 will only get you started.

Lisa

Original post was edited for the typo.

 

[lclev]

I would go for the i5, 8GB since you plan to upgrade it yourself later, a 1TB SSD (I do not like fusion drives - I have read of too many issues.) . Brings the cost in at $2799 before AppleCare+ and tax.

Lisa

 

[russofris]

It will be used primarily for photography editing through Photoshop and daily internet use.

Circle one:

I am a professional photographer, pre-press, or printer that needs to prepare numerous/complicated images for publication.

I like to edit the pictures I take on my iPhone.

This will give us a better idea of what to recommend.

Personally, my stock recommendation is:

Get a base model. Upgrade to 512GB SSD for $300. Buy a big/dumb/inexpensive storage device (NAS/SAN/whatever) that features some sort of redundancy. Buy a 32GB upgrade kit for $200 and bring your RAM up to 40GB.

 

[nutmac]

I will be upgrading from a Late 2014 Retina to 2019 27 inch. I am trying to determine best build for my needs. Budget is $3,100 including tax. it will be used primarily for photography editing through Photoshop and daily internet use. I use VPN and work remotely through another computer, so the drain is in the connection, not a lot of other software running. It seems I am best to upgrade RAM on my own after purchase. AppleCare+ seems the way to go for protection. Does anyone have any recommendations?

For $3100 budget and photography needs, I would get $1799 iMac build to order as:

• 512GB SSD Storage ($300)
• Magic Trackpad 2 ($50)

That's $2149 total for the iMac, more if you want AppleCare+.

Then head toward OWC and get 32GB RAM (16GB x 2) upgrade ($219.99). You can get more later since this kit uses only 2 slots out of 4 total.

For storage, I would get Samsung T5 2TB for $330, maybe with Twelve South's Backpack ($34.99) to maintain minimalist look. If your storage need is higher, get a RAID enclosure (e.g., OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini ($79.99)) and add a pair of Samsung SSDs.

That comes to $2733.98 total before taxes and AppleCare+.

 

[Honumaui]

full time photographer and retoucher
our studio has a older mac pro 3,1 and a 5,1 and a high end PC for tether with Capture one mostly and some PS work on large files (over 2GB usually)
we have to get two new machines 🙂
we do fine for most editing on the older macs depending on what we are doing

PS does not take adv of the GPU very well and only for a few filters blurs and liquify etc.. so very small use for most
CPU speed is what helps more than number of cores BUT the cores can help with other programs

IMHO pick the highest base imac and make it a i9 and choose a 512gig SSD and use external storage and get 32 gig upgrade kit from macsales
might squeak a touch over $3100 though ? but would be fast for everything but most likely over kill 🙂

the others that are saying less of a base iMac are just as correct because again depending on what you are doing in PS and size of files etc.. light retouching a couple layers a lower model will do you just fine


I might say look at a mac mini i7 with 512 ssd and aftermarket ram is about $1699 with ram from macsales .com and a benq SW2700 monitor will be way better for color accuracy then the iMac monitor which is a great monitor for daily use but its not a good photo editing monitor IMHO to glossy fake contrast edge to edge etc.. the BenQ is about $600

you are then left over with some money to buy some storage IF you needed a bit more GPU some of the new external easy to use ones start at $399 sonnet puck 560 could help some with that need for certain PS filters

comparing my intel 7820x build with a 1080 gpu nVME drives etc.. to my old mac 5,1 updated with better gpu standard SSD etc.. most edits are the same while only a few large 16 bit files in the 1GB and larger size are really quicker on the more high end computer
so I just feel adobe is more the problem then the computer and a less computer then state of the art is needed with

I am a fan of a proper monitor though once you use a nice monitor you should see the why many say this 🙂

 

[macduke]

I will be upgrading from a Late 2014 Retina to 2019 27 inch. I am trying to determine best build for my needs. Budget is $3,100 including tax. it will be used primarily for photography editing through Photoshop and daily internet use. I use VPN and work remotely through another computer, so the drain is in the connection, not a lot of other software running. It seems I am best to upgrade RAM on my own after purchase. AppleCare+ seems the way to go for protection. Does anyone have any recommendations?

So you edit photography remotely on another computer?

Why do you need a new computer then?

 

[amyjo415]

Circle one:

I am a professional photographer, pre-press, or printer that needs to prepare numerous/complicated images for publication.

I like to edit the pictures I take on my iPhone.

This will give us a better idea of what to recommend.

Personally, my stock recommendation is:

Get a base model. Upgrade to 512GB SSD for $300. Buy a big/dumb/inexpensive storage device (NAS/SAN/whatever) that features some sort of redundancy. Buy a 32GB upgrade kit for $200 and bring your RAM up to 40GB.

Somewhere in between. I have good gear and know my way around Photoshop, I do primarily wildlife and animal photography and it is a hobby so not a full time job. Shooting with a z6 and D500 to give you an idea of file size.
[doublepost=1555020536][/doublepost]

So you edit photography remotely on another computer?

Why do you need a new computer then?

I work remotely for my full time job. Photography is separate from that.

 

[macduke]

Somewhere in between. I have good gear and know my way around Photoshop, I do primarily wildlife and animal photography and it is a hobby so not a full time job. Shooting with a z6 and D500 to give you an idea of file size.
[doublepost=1555020536][/doublepost]
I work remotely for my full time job. Photography is separate from that.

Oh, lol.

Also you'd be surprised at how many people don't think there is a middle ground in photography. I feel like I am higher middle ground? I do some stuff for work, I shoot the occasional wedding, but I mostly do personal projects, photos of my kids, travel photos, grab a press pass sometimes to shoot some SEC football, etc. I have a minor in photography which is also middle ground, lol.

Sometimes you still need a pretty powerful computer to work with these images. When I upgraded my gear a while back to a Sony a7R III, the 42MP RAW images were killing my old MBP. Trying to stitch together panoramas or astrophotography stacks is also really tough on a computer. The resolution can really slow down a computer, even if doing middle ground work where you're not often editing thousands of photos but maybe hundreds every few weeks and it's a side gig or hobby. You still don't want it to slow down that much because that's just annoying while working and takes extra time.

I think you're better off going for CPU upgrades for photography. If you get the 27" model you can upgrade the RAM yourself and it takes just a few minutes to pop them in. I can send you a link to what to order and you can order the 8GB config and grab two 8GB sticks for about $90-100 on Amazon. A smaller SSD for the system drive will also be useful for overall system responsiveness and longevity, along with some SSDs for your current Lightroom catalog and some cheaper, bigger drives to archive things to. What I personally use might be overkill for your use, but I keep my Lightroom catalog on a 2TB Samsung T5 SSD, have a 6TB external spinning drive that is sectioned into a 2TB and 4TB partition. The 2TB partition is for time machine backups of my 2TB internal SSD, while the 4TB is for archiving data. Then I have an additional 4TB external spinning drive that archives the 4TB partition using Carbon Copy Cloner. So I have one backup of my system drive, and one backup of my media archive, which also includes a full image of my Lightroom catalog so it's backed up three times. Then I put a copy of my best and most important photos in Dropbox in case my house burns down. Though I built my studio in the basement and insulated the walls on all sides and bought thick ceiling tiles that are fire resistant (I did this mostly for noise dampening, though), so hopefully all my photos are spared. When I worked in banking in college I had some clients who would bring in hard drive backups to put in safety deposit boxes and rotate them monthly, so maybe I'll do that someday, lol.