Macbook pro 13 VS 15 for photography

[adnoh]

Go with the 15

 

[ERIC4mac]

Hello!

I am photographer fresh out of school, and i went from the 13" to the 15", and i can say the 13" is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too small for you, i'd get the 15" plus the matte screen, which offers highler resolution and matte, which doesn't give out annoying reflections and represents colors that are closer to real life.

the 6750m is definitive the card for you if you're into gaming or 3d intensive stuff, i don't think it'll make a huge difference in photography, however, the 2.0 to 2.2 might make when editing tons of photos on LR catalog. The ssd on the 2.2 model is 100$ cheaper(the 128gb one), i have it installed on mine, for once the mac boots up in 20 seconds with adium already open, which is nothing short of awesomeness, programs launch instantaneously. Recently worked with 3 meter long files which had 60 houses cut into it (i can link you if you wish to see it), full 21mp raw files which were inserted has smart layers and the psd file was has big has 18 gb before i dumbed it down. the ssd definitive improved scatch disk speed, however if you want to enjoy faster editing you'll have to import photos to your ssd then move them away to the HDD, like the G-TECH mini i have which has firewire 800 and is sold on apple's website.

http://macperformanceguide.com/ has some tests with photoshop of the new 6750m one with the apple's ssd, and OWC counterparts, ofcourse OWC has faster ssd's but when considering the price of the ssd being 100$ and even counting they're going to swap the drive it still is a good deal, but if you go with the low end, the upgrade is 200$ so i wouldn't get it at that price, also i'd recomend checking his guides to configuring photoshop cs5, or you might suffer performance issues due to bad configuration.

also, you might benefit from having 8gb of ram instead of 4, i say might because it depends how many layers you work with, apple's ram is still way to expensive, i'd get a pair of crucial or counterpart ram (some have been putting 1660mhz ram into macs, and i doubt the average human would notice it but the price diference is so small... why not), mine costed 81€ and it is extremely easy to replace, you should check out some youtube videos.

to be honest, i'd go for the low end if i were you, perhaps the 2.2 upgrade might be good for you, but i don't think the faster ati graphics will help you much.

ofcourse you don't have to buy all of this at once, i'd worry about the matte screen, and PERHAPS the ssd and the 2.2 might be a good choice!

edit: i thought you could upgrade the cpu on the 2.0 model but since you can't i wouldn't really worry about it, the 2.0 should be more than fast enough.

hope i helped.

Thx a lot for ur detailed suggestion, I think I will go the 15 base with screen upgrades. The upgrades of RAM and SSD may be put off and done myself.

 

[FOX160]

If its raw power you need and no games then go for the basic 13 inch
its all you need.

I have the basic 13 inch model and use an external 1TB gig rugged hard drive
and a 23 inch Samsung 233HD external TV/monitor.
I bought Aperture 3 off Apple's web store for £ 45.00p sterling pounds.

I use mine for videoing Downhill mountain biking using a Contour 1080 HD
for video and Photography my trusty Canon G12 and film format my Mamiya
C33.

If I bought this before the update I would have had to buy the base 15 inch
model at £ 1,549 sterling pounds and have to carry around a tomb stone
where ever I went.

I did look at the Mac Air maxed out, fast start times but slow between
programs and MUST be due an update very soon.

 

[SilverOnemi]

Thx a lot for ur detailed suggestion, I think I will go the 15 base with screen upgrades. The upgrades of RAM and SSD may be put off and done myself.

yes i don't believe the 2.2 will make such a difference because it'll still have to wait for the disk to read on LR jobs, also unless you're running allot of filters that require high process times i don't think it'll be worth it. also i didn't say this but also remember that the 15" carry i7 QUAD cores instead of core duo's. and if you need less cores and more power, turbo boost will turn off some cores and speed one or two.

here's another tip , when you're extracting stuff of lightroom, it's faster to do 4 jobs at once than 1, because it'll load more CPU cores.

and also, to see if you REALLY need 8 gb of memory, i'd either use activity monitor or istat pro widget and on the memory tab you should see SWAP, if you have allot of it, say 2 gb's or more, you'd benefit from the extra ram. swap occurs when you don't have enough ram, so it writes the contents on the hard drive, this is significantly slower.