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Which Mac Do You Use to PP?

B

Binford

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 15, 2007
95
0
Boston, MA
What Mac do you guys use to Post process your photos? I've found that while it's acceptable, the general performance of my mac book pro hasn't been satisfactory, especially for raw files. I primarily use CS3 and Nikon Capture NX. I do plan to begin using Aperture 2 once I get my hands on it, but considering a hardware upgrade before that. I figured that desktops are always faster than laptops in numerous ways... would a move to a 2.4ghz imac or mac pro be a very significant increase in workflow speed? Would it be worth the money?


Thank you very much, and best regards.
 
MBP. See specs in my signature :). Works like a charm although I'm thinking of upgrading to 4gb ram.
 
I currently have a MBP, 2.0Ghz CoreDuo with 2Gb of RAM. Aperture/Photoshop CS3 are OK on it as long as nothing else is running (especially Safari).

I will be buying a Mac Pro with 8Gb of RAM in the next couple of months... :D
 
My iMac G5 1.8 with 17" and 1.5 gigs of RAM is more than enough for photo processing.

I use Lightroom, with some PS. I shoot 6 mp RAW on a Pentax *ist DL. Lightroom flies through these files as though they were low-res JPEGS.

I love the screen on my iMac -- it's definitely up to the task. I calibrate it with the Spyder 2.
 
24 inch 2.16 Ghz Intel iMac (the model just before the aluminum iMac came out.)
It does well enough running CS3 on DSLR sized images but the larger images that I have (some scans from medium format film can be 300MB files) take a long time to load and save but once loaded the CS3 tools work fast enough. Photoshop CS3 is not really a very demanding program.
 
Mac Pro with 9 Gb of ram and a 30" dell calibrated every two weeks with a Spyder 2 Pro .. :cool:

Software: Photoshop CS3 extended and Lightroom.
Other hardware: Scanner that scans negs and slides (up to 10" x 8" @ 4800 ppi optical resolution)
 
MacBook (1st gen) with 2GHz and 2GB Ram attached to a Dell 2005fpw (20": 1680x1050).

I use Lightroom for most PP stuff. It works absolutely great with the 6MP RAW and JPEG files the D40 produces.

The only limiting factor was the 60GB harddisk which I replaced with a 250GB one.
 
I use my Mac Pro (8 core, 16 GB), but my MacBook Pro (C2D, 4 GB) does a great job as well. There is a difference in speed between the two, of course, but less than I would have guessed. With rendering HD video, though, the difference is huge.

Just for fun, I put a bunch of raw images (from my D70) on a MacBook Air, with CS3. It was painful (although I quickly add that the MBA does pretty good on most graphical tasks so far, better than expected).
 
As it says in the sig 2.4Ghz 17" MBP High Resolution with 4GB of ram being used by Aperture 2.0 (as of yesterday) and Photoshop CS3...
 
Binford said:
What Mac do you guys use to Post process your photos? I've found that while it's acceptable, the general performance of my mac book pro hasn't been satisfactory, especially for raw files. I primarily use CS3 and Nikon Capture NX. I do plan to begin using Aperture 2 once I get my hands on it, but considering a hardware upgrade before that. I figured that desktops are always faster than laptops in numerous ways... would a move to a 2.4ghz imac or mac pro be a very significant increase in workflow speed? Would it be worth the money?


Thank you very much, and best regards.
Click to expand...

Looking at the hardware requirments for A2, I'd say you'll be disappointed with anything but a Mac Pro (others however, might be fine with your MBP & A2).

Your sig line doesn't specify OS version. 2GB is clearly not much if running Leopard & anything else, deficient for sure w/A2.

Your older C2D MBP will recognize up to 3GB RAM, RAM for your MBP is not that expensive...recommend you max the RAM. 2.16Ghz MBP shipped with single 1GB module installed, 1 empty slot. That alone may make a significant difference, being constrained as you are with limited RAM.

Next, since we can't tell from your description what you feel is lacking in the workflow speed, I'll assume you have either the original 120GB 5.4k rpm HD installed? Or worse the 200GB 4.2k optional HD?

It's more money, but you might get significantly faster performance in load/save times for RAW images (seeing your sig again, and assuming you are capturing/using NX for that purpose w/D300) if you upgrade the HD to a 7.2k rpm Hitachi 7k200 200GB drive, which is now down to $170 from newegg or zoomfly.

Try those two things, and if you still don't like the performance of the MBP, before upgrading to a MP, if you can wait until early summer (May for Intel) when Apple should have released the Monteviña MBP's, which promises slightly more speed from a faster front side bus memory system, slightly faster CPU as compared to what you have now, and either longer battery life from the CPU which will use less power than current Penryn models to be announced any day now, or higher performing GPU's that should be in those models by summer. Look for 2nd gen., better LED bl screens too. All good stuff coming to the MBP's if you can wait ;).

Still won't have as much performance as MP, but will likely outclass any iMac on sale currently.
 
Butthead said:
Your sig line doesn't specify OS version. 2GB is clearly not much if running Leopard & anything else, deficient for sure w/A2.
Click to expand...

Does A2 really use that much more RAM than A1? Because I'm using Aperture 1 right now and almost never uses more than 500mb of RAM. In fact, it's usually around 300mb most of the time, only when editing images does it use 500mb.
 
I just picked up a Mac Pro (the 2.8Ghz 8 core model) with 6GB RAM. I can't decide if it's faster than it is pretty or prettier than it is fast. ;)
 
30" ACD and 2.8 Octo with 8GB. Can't wait to start exploring Aperture 2. I have been waiting for vignetting for a long time (and hammering the Apple site with requests for it).

Of course, without my Leicas, the above would be useless.
 
I'm on a G5 Powermac ... a 1st Gen with only a 1.8GHz single processor, but it has 3.5GB of RAM, so with CS2, it does okay for 8MP RAW's.

I've been doing some more scans of 35mm slides at around 24MP (200MB photoshop file sizes), which gets tedious, as the import takes ~2 minutes, saves take awhile, etc.


-hh
 
Up till 2 weeks ago, a 1.5 GHz Powermac G4 with a 17" ACD + Lightroom + CS3. Now a 2.8 Quad Mac Pro with the same software and peripherals.
 
MacPro 2.66 quad core with 12 gigs ram, three 500 gig hard drives, ATIX1900XT video card, 20" Apple Cinema Display, 20" Wacom Cintiq as a secondary display/graphic tablet. Epson V-750 Scanner, Canon iPF5000 wide format printer, Xerox Phaser 8550DP.
 
Mac Pro 3.0 GHz Quad core with 8 GB RAM and 30" ACD. I also occasionally will use the 17" MBP for a quick-and-dirty one-off or when traveling, the 15" MBP. Now that I've got the MBA I'll be trying that out as well for the occasional one-off.

Just picked up Aperture 2.0 upgrade tonight and will be installing that tomorrow. Have been using Aperture 1.5 and CS3, with Photo Mechanic for a quick review and sorting of images prior to taking them into Aperture.
 
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