MBP 2018 for Photoshop

[sarah1985]

I currently have the 13inch early 2011 MBP. I upgraded the RAM to 8GB but it has really begun to slow down.

I use Photoshop regularly (amateur not professional) and it will handle minor edits well but as soon as I want to open more than 5 photos at a time it becomes quite sluggish. It also slows down when working with several layers. I would like to speed up this productivity.

I intend to upgrade to the 2018 MBP with touchbar. I am happy to buy the machine that I require but don't want to buy the absolute best machine if I don't need it. I know the 'best machine' will be the high spec 15 inch but if a 13 inch will do what's needed then I am happy to get the 'lesser' model.

A few questions:
1. Will 8GB suffice or will I need to upgrade to 16GB when buying instead?
2. Will I notice much difference between the 13inch 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 vs 15inch 2.2GHz 6-core Intel Core i7?
3. Any hobby photographers out there- what would be your best value for money approach to a 2018 MBP?

 

[GoldfishRT]

How long have you had your 2011?

If you plan on keeping the new machine for 3+ years I'd probably upgrade the ram. I don't think it would be that limiting of a factor for you but it certainly doesn't hurt.

In your particular application, I think you won't notice much of a difference. If 5 photos is about what you cap out at, I'd save your money and buy a nice monitor to go with it or something.

Objectively the best performance-per-dollar MacBook Pro is the quad core 13". If you're rolling without a monitor though I'd recommend one for the 13" - it's a tiny screen for that sort of work.

 

[SDColorado]

Along the lines of what GoldfishRT just said, if you are going to use this as your sole editing computer (no desktop) I would either opt for the 15" display or recommend what GoldfishRT mentioned and add an external monitor to the costs of the 13". The 13" offers more portability, but I think that works best if you also have a desktop or plan to use an external monitor when editing.

 

[cruisin]

8 GB will suffice, but if you plan on keeping this one as long as the old one the 16 GB upgrade could be worth it in my opinion (you cannot do it yourself nowadays).

Any CPU upgrade is really for long tasks (like exporting a video) and for short tasks (like photo editing) the difference is not noticeable. And certain tasks in Photoshop cannot take advantage of many cores, so the 4 core i5 with a higher speed may be faster. See: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-625/ and there are other photoshop benchmarks available.

 

[sarah1985]

This will be my only machine, I do not intend to buy an additional screen.

From what I can gather then, the 15inch will be the way to go. Now just need to decide whether 256GB SSD will suffice rather than 512. I tend to back up to various cloud providers and am happy to use an external hard drive in addition.
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How long have you had your 2011?

If you plan on keeping the new machine for 3+ years I'd probably upgrade the ram. I don't think it would be that limiting of a factor for you but it certainly doesn't hurt.

In your particular application, I think you won't notice much of a difference. If 5 photos is about what you cap out at, I'd save your money and buy a nice monitor to go with it or something.

Objectively the best performance-per-dollar MacBook Pro is the quad core 13". If you're rolling without a monitor though I'd recommend one for the 13" - it's a tiny screen for that sort of work.

In answer to your question- I've had it since new! So I'm quite happy to keep the next one for 3 years+ too

 

[jerryk]

This will be my only machine, I do not intend to buy an additional screen.

From what I can gather then, the 15inch will be the way to go. Now just need to decide whether 256GB SSD will suffice rather than 512. I tend to back up to various cloud providers and am happy to use an external hard drive in addition.

My preference would be for the 512GB. But honestly it depends on your workflow and other use of the machine.

256 will work as long as you don't have too much space used up for non-PS related data. Photoshop uses scratch drives to store intermediate results so you want to ensure there is a reasonable amount of free space on your drive. And the internal SSD on a MacBook Pro will be many times faster than most common external drives, so you want to store what you use frequently on the internal drive.