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Which M2 Mac Mini for Photoshop work?
- Thread starter Clidsy
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Thanks. I have a large external SSD so don't really need a larger internal. I can afford both specs above, so just wondering which is better suited for Photoshop - is the 16GB enough? Also a saving of £150 is nice, but if I get another year or two out of an M2 Pro (over the M2), then it's a small price to pay I suppose.
Don’t know what you use right now. I have a mini M1 512/16, I don’t use regularly very large - multilayered psd’s but it’s perfectly adequate to handle them. So I think both will do.
M1 is already much better then 2018 i7 265/8 we use at school.
M1 is already much better then 2018 i7 265/8 we use at school.
Thanks. My current mac is a late 2015 4ghx i7, 24gb RAM with a M395x 4gb, so I'd imagine any will be quite a step up! I'm not too bothered about multiple monitors - the one I'll be using is a 32 inch and I have limited desk space for another.
Regarding the choice of processor, either the M2 or the M2 Pro is going to fly through Photoshop work. I wouldn‘t sweat the difference there.
The real bottleneck with heavy Photoshop work is RAM. Even there, these machines handle things pretty darn well when pressed, but I think going with the standard M2 and upping to 24GB has a better chance of making a meaningful difference to your workflow vs. upping to the M2 Pro, as long as you can live with fewer ports & the monitor limitations – although honestly, both are probably going to do a pretty great job for you.
Here’s an article from a professional photographer I respect on exactly this: https://bythom.com/reviews--books/recommended-mac-hardware.html
The real bottleneck with heavy Photoshop work is RAM. Even there, these machines handle things pretty darn well when pressed, but I think going with the standard M2 and upping to 24GB has a better chance of making a meaningful difference to your workflow vs. upping to the M2 Pro, as long as you can live with fewer ports & the monitor limitations – although honestly, both are probably going to do a pretty great job for you.
Here’s an article from a professional photographer I respect on exactly this: https://bythom.com/reviews--books/recommended-mac-hardware.html
Wow, that Costco Studio price is even better than the US Apple education discount! Decisions, decisions...
Yep, you can just pay £15 for an online membership. Costco usually has student pricing across many Apple products. Sometimes even better, e.g. £150 off MacBook Airs and £699 for the Apple Watch Ultra.
Photoshop loves RAM. I’d choose more RAM on a M2 over the M2 Pro with less. Photoshop invented the term ‘scratch disc’.
Everything Adobe touches uses way too much memory and storage.
I switched to Affinity Suite and DaVinci Resolve and I'm amazed at how small file footprints are along with resource management.
I had to make a mock-up of a sign recently and the client only wanted .PSD files. I was suprised to see a simple file in Affinity go from 80KB (yes KB) to almost 13MB after converting it.