What I miss is a use case. I really do not know how GPU and CPU-intensive Photoshop, Lightroom, Camera Raw, etc., is, or when the 20 GPU cores more between the Pro and Max make a difference for Premiere Pro or any other video editing tool. I use an M1 Max in a MacBook Pro for photo and video editing. This could be an M4 Pro with lots of memory, but when would I need a Max?
Because there are different choices now, I have no clue.
While this might seem off-topic to your question, it comes aroud to where I can give you my suggestion based on my actual current use projected into the latest M4 specs, plus a little past experience with some programs that you mentioned.
Here's a comparison that actually sheds a little light on actual use cases with a couple of programs that, while not exactly late-model Intel chips, shows the graphics improvements in the M series architecture.
1: Daz Studio: (CGI Modeling and rendering) M series wins hands-down. Previous testing with then-current Win 10 machines (Same or better specs) vs the then-new Intel late 2015 iMac 17 inch 5K showed a small advantage on Apple - about 10% - for identical work. Enter the M2Max Studio that I replaced the iMac with .... render times decreased 60%, and it no longer redlines the fans.
2: Affinity Photo (Think Photoshop, but not as much of a resource hog!) on the 4 core I-7 iMac with 48 GB, you opened it and waited almost a minute to get it fully loaded. M2-96GB opens with no issues, just normal splash screen time. I have yet to see a beachball loading graphics files, and I commonly work with some pretty big ones.
3: Graphic (Autocad Light, basically - same thing, not as much of a resource hog,): This one really stresses a system, as I commonly am working on architectural drawings with lots of layers. The M2 Max takes the drawings in stride, whereas before I could grab a drink while waiting for the drawings to load in a few cases.
4: Logic (Talk about a demanding program!) While I do hobby work, one of my friends is actually a sound engineer, so I'll give his experience. He bought one of the final Intel Mac Pros, decked out pretty heavily. Some of his projects were so large that he would still choke the system with them. Switched to a maxed-out M2 Studio, and he has yet to discover the limit on tracks and plugins.
5: Sims4 (animated output on steroids!) This one shocked me ... in all the years I've played, PC or MAC, no matter how much I built up the system, I would have to turn down options to get acceptable framerates. Put it on the M2 Max, and it runs like a scared rabbit with every possible setting maxed out.
Now, for my opinion on your software use questions. I went to Affinity because of how resource intensive Adobe products can be. Their graphics products will use every bit of CPU, GPU, and memory that you give them; that's not knocking them, it's a common thing for pro-level programs. If you think your M1 is fast, the M4 Max will run circles around it - just the bump in memory bandwidth alone will make a huge difference, and then once loaded it will be smoother and even more responsive - especially on things using lots of layers and effects.
Video editing? Same basic thing - the faster the memory, the more cores that you have, the higher the framerate and the higher the resolution that you can achieve. With what I've seen, unless you are running a movie studio you could easily get away with a M4 Max and run it until there are no more OS updates for it with no issues. If you have fairly large movies, use a Mac Mini or wait for the M4 Studio - the extra available ram in the desktops might be necessary down the line. The MacBook Pro will handle a lot, but there's a slight edge being given to the Mini at the moment.
Your ultimate goal with most programs at the level that you are using them is to keep the machine from using swap space on your internal drive to supplement the system memory. Swapping, even as efficiently as the M series does it, can and does cause glitches in video, audio, and CGI. In some cases (Logic and Daz are good examples), it can totally corrupt the output file to the point of not being recoverable. The Max not only gives you the options to configure it to handle that kind of workload, but it also gives you Thunderbolt 5, which will bring external drive interfaces to near-internal speeds if you have them in a TB-5 enclosure. That gives you the option to work with external files, reducing the need for the upper end sizes of internal storage (Personally, I still go with a 2 TB internal - just to give breathing room for apps that refuse to use data files or plugins from an external source. Check your apps, and allow at least double what they are taking up!)
With the Max having double the encode engines for video (2 in Max, 1 in M4 and M4 Pro) plus the highest memory speed, it gives you a system that will easily be able to meet your needs for a long time.
