Macbook specification for editing

[i-sidd]

I am planning on getting a new13" macbook pro soon. I will have lightroom and silver efex pro2 and color efex.

What specification do you suggest for these programs to run fast and smooth?

I have heard that silver efex pro 2 is slow, on various forums. Is this to do with underpowered computers or the program itself no matter how fast the computer.

Kindly suggest

 

[adversus]

I use Aperture, so not sure if Lightroom uses GPU acceleration or not. I do quite a bit of editing on my 15" Macbook with the following specs:

2.53GHz Core 2 Duo
4GB RAM
250gb HDD (Hitachi)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M

It works well, I do get some slow-downs when I get doing really heavy editing in Aperture (saying 20-30 brushstrokes deep in a Re-Touch), but overall it runs fine.

 

[Nostromo]

Max out the ram - under $100 at Crucial.com - and you should be fine.

 

[varunsanthanam]

I use lightroom quite regularly and these specs work just fine for me. It's very snappy and rarely lags.

2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo
8GB DDR3 RAM @ 1066 MHz
320GB HD @ 5400 RPM (Hitachi)
Nvidia 320M (256 MB VRAM)

Get as much memory as possible. 8GB was the max when I bought it.

 

[Nostromo]

I'd spend the extra $100 and get the 750 Gb hard drive.

 

[c1phr]

I'd spend the extra $100 and get the 750 Gb hard drive.

^^ This

The way Lightroom works, it uses lots of drive writes. The only slowdown I notice with my 2010 MBP is my drive's super slow read/write times. If you feel confident enough to upgrade your own or have a friend that can do it for you, you may want to go that route rather than pay the marked-up Apple upgrade price.

Get something big to store all your photos and fast for Lightroom performance.