One of Apples major marketing claims is that the RMBP is great for photographers, something I see being parroted over and over again on other sites and in this forum.
If you take a look around professional photography websites you will find a distinctly muted response. As a professional photographer myself I have my views on why this is.
Please note that in the following I am not challenging the claim here that photos look great on a retina display (ie saturated and sharp). Indeed, the best case that I can see being made for the usefulness of the retina screen to professional photographers at the moment is that it is great for portfolio display to clients.
Is my workflow of preparing photos for the web or for print really going to massively benefit from being able to "see fine details and textures like never before". I can see what I need for my purposes of fine details by zooming in on them on a normal screen.
Do I need to be able to "see which photos are in focus just by looking at the thumbnails". I don't have any photos that are not in focus in Lightroom, they were removed when I ingested the photos in Photo Mechanic.
More real screen estate is what matters to me. 1920 * 1200 on a 17" screen is not the same as 1920 * 1200 on a 15" screen. Sure, in a retina enabled photography app, with decent scaling of the UI elements everything will look very nice and crisp but it will still look minuscule to my ageing eyes at that resolution.
As any professional photographer will tell you a matte screen is mandatory for editing photographs. Glossy screens are hard to colour calibrate accurately but equally as important is that they make up for their deficiencies by being excessively bright. To accurately print preview photos needs a setting of around 90 candelas per square metre, not the 200 typical of a glossy screen. Apple claim to have reduced glare by 70% but a glossy screen is a glossy screen.
Professional photographers will also be concerned about how long it takes Photo Mechanic, Lightroom, Photoshop, OnOne, Nik, Topaz and many many more plugins to be retina enabled.
Apart from these workflow issues professional photographers are only just starting to wake up to the fact that their websites, quite possibly more than anybody else's, look poor on a retina display and are going to need updating. However, updating them will require uploading images at four times the resolution and implementing device sensitive code. Quite apart from the bandwidth issues this will bring images within the range at which they can be usefully printed leading to further copyright and theft issues.
The need to update software and websites is the price of progress I guess but some software and the majority of websites probably never will be updated. High DPI displays are no doubt the future but it will be a while, I suspect, before many professionals move their workflow to them.
On a more positive note however the release of the RMBP does have its benefits. Less than a week ago a 2.5GHz 17" MBP was the finest Apple notebook a professional photographer could buy. In my humble opinion it still is, but it can now be picked up in the refurb store for a massive discount.
Please note that I am questioning Apple's marketing claims here and it is not my intention to insult anybody who has bought, or is in the process of buying, a RMBP for whatever reason suits them.
If you take a look around professional photography websites you will find a distinctly muted response. As a professional photographer myself I have my views on why this is.
Please note that in the following I am not challenging the claim here that photos look great on a retina display (ie saturated and sharp). Indeed, the best case that I can see being made for the usefulness of the retina screen to professional photographers at the moment is that it is great for portfolio display to clients.
Is my workflow of preparing photos for the web or for print really going to massively benefit from being able to "see fine details and textures like never before". I can see what I need for my purposes of fine details by zooming in on them on a normal screen.
Do I need to be able to "see which photos are in focus just by looking at the thumbnails". I don't have any photos that are not in focus in Lightroom, they were removed when I ingested the photos in Photo Mechanic.
More real screen estate is what matters to me. 1920 * 1200 on a 17" screen is not the same as 1920 * 1200 on a 15" screen. Sure, in a retina enabled photography app, with decent scaling of the UI elements everything will look very nice and crisp but it will still look minuscule to my ageing eyes at that resolution.
As any professional photographer will tell you a matte screen is mandatory for editing photographs. Glossy screens are hard to colour calibrate accurately but equally as important is that they make up for their deficiencies by being excessively bright. To accurately print preview photos needs a setting of around 90 candelas per square metre, not the 200 typical of a glossy screen. Apple claim to have reduced glare by 70% but a glossy screen is a glossy screen.
Professional photographers will also be concerned about how long it takes Photo Mechanic, Lightroom, Photoshop, OnOne, Nik, Topaz and many many more plugins to be retina enabled.
Apart from these workflow issues professional photographers are only just starting to wake up to the fact that their websites, quite possibly more than anybody else's, look poor on a retina display and are going to need updating. However, updating them will require uploading images at four times the resolution and implementing device sensitive code. Quite apart from the bandwidth issues this will bring images within the range at which they can be usefully printed leading to further copyright and theft issues.
The need to update software and websites is the price of progress I guess but some software and the majority of websites probably never will be updated. High DPI displays are no doubt the future but it will be a while, I suspect, before many professionals move their workflow to them.
On a more positive note however the release of the RMBP does have its benefits. Less than a week ago a 2.5GHz 17" MBP was the finest Apple notebook a professional photographer could buy. In my humble opinion it still is, but it can now be picked up in the refurb store for a massive discount.
Please note that I am questioning Apple's marketing claims here and it is not my intention to insult anybody who has bought, or is in the process of buying, a RMBP for whatever reason suits them.
