Macbook Pro Retina 13 vs 15 for lightroom

[soboyle]

Can anyone comment on the speed difference in real world Lightroom/Photoshop use between the Macbook Pro Retina 13 vs the 15?
I have a 4 year old 13" Air, and am looking for a replacement, but one that can be used as a desktop replacement when connected to an external monitor.

I guess the biggest difference will be seen with the better graphics processor in the 15, the 13 has the Intel Iris Graphics 6100, while the 15 has Intel Iris Pro Graphics.

[graeme]

I bought a 13" Macbook Pro last August. It was an interim replacement for my 2007 Mac Pro  (2 x 2.66GHZ, 12GB RAM, 4 hard drives ). I specced the macbook with a 256GB SSD & 16 GB RAM. My Lightroom catalogue was on an external Thunderbolt SSD Raid ( 500GB ). Files were mostly stored on external USB 3 hard drives. I used the macbook with the same display that I'd used with my Mac Pro.

My none scientific impression was that Lightroom 4 & PS CS5 felt about the same on both setups & that in 2015 I'd like something a little faster if this was my permanent work setup.

Don't get me wrong, the macbook setup was perfectly useable. It actually drove 2 displays quite well for PS use - not that I tried 2 displays with lightroom.

I've since bought another desktop mac but if I had to rely solely on a laptop I'd definitely go for the 15" Macbook.

Graeme

[jjj]

Don't get me wrong, the macbook setup was perfectly useable. It actually drove 2 displays quite well for PS use - not that I tried 2 displays with lightroom.

What did you use to connect two displays to a laptop? Last time I looked it was a bit faffy as it seems Apple aren't really interested in multiple monitors and don't seem to have ever used them judging by how poorly they implement them. I've avoided Mavericks and Yosemite because of that.

[jnewell]

Screen size will be a big plus for the 15" (or would be for me).

Most edits would probably be close enough that you wouldn't notice.

Major file ops are going to be a good bit faster on the i7 quad.  I did a comparison between my 2.4 i7 quad Mini and a 2.4 i5 rMBP doing both a large batch export and a large 100% preview creation (approx 200 files at 20mp).  The rMBP took approximately 150% of the time taken by the Mini.

If you buy the dGPU version of the 15" you could expect additional improvement from LR6 (not 5 or earlier).

[graeme]

What did you use to connect two displays to a laptop? Last time I looked it was a bit faffy as it seems Apple aren't really interested in multiple monitors and don't seem to have ever used them judging by how poorly they implement them. I've avoided Mavericks and Yosemite because of that.

Thunderbolt to Displayport lead from an Elgato thunderbolt dock for the main NEC monitor. The 2nd display was an old Apple 20" Cinema display plugged into the MacBook's HDMI port via an HDMI to DVI connector. ( The laptop was in 'clamshell' mode ).

The laptop was occasionally fussy about recognising the 2nd display when starting up but unplugging the HDMI & then plugging it back in seemed to give it the necessary kick up the arse.

If I happened to move the laptop slightly the rather loosely fitting HDMI lead would disconnect & this would cause the whole set up to have a royal freak out.

But it was a useable setup.

[Hans Kruse]

Can anyone comment on the speed difference in real world Lightroom/Photoshop use between the Macbook Pro Retina 13 vs the 15?
I have a 4 year old 13" Air, and am looking for a replacement, but one that can be used as a desktop replacement when connected to an external monitor.

I guess the biggest difference will be seen with the better graphics processor in the 15, the 13 has the Intel Iris Graphics 6100, while the 15 has Intel Iris Pro Graphics.

Go for the 15"! It is a quad core machine and the graphics with the separate graphics card makes the operation much more smooth. Also the new 15" mid 2015 with the new AMD Radeon R9 M370X graphics card will support not only a single stream 4K display but also a 5K display (although requiring a two display ports). See here https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202856

Take the model with the 1TB SSD and you have a real desktop replacement as well using an external 4K (or 5K) display. The 4K display is supported single stream and 60Hz via one of the display/thunderbolt ports.

[Ken Bennett]

I asked our Mac tech, and his advice is the same as Hans -- get the 15 inch, with the i7 processors and the separate graphics processor. The i7 processors do hyperthreading, which is beyond my small brain but he says it's faster, and the separate GPU is faster for both graphics and apps that use the GPU like Lightroom. Yes, it's $400 more for the separate GPU, and he suggests paying the extra $200 for the upgraded processor speed (2.8gHz) especially if this will replace a desktop.

I would get the 500GB drive simply because all my photos are stored on a server -- I've been using a 256 and it's been mostly fine, 500GB would be plenty. (And let's face it, 1TB isn't enough to store any sort of photo collection anyway in the long run. Maybe if you do a LOT of traveling.)

If you really want the 13 inch for size, upgrade to the fastest i7 processor and get the 16GB of RAM.

[graeme]

If you really want the 13 inch for size, upgrade to the fastest i7 processor and get the 16GB of RAM.

Trouble is that by the time you're speccing an i7 & 16GB RAM the 13" becomes as expensive as the 15". The size difference doesn't seem great & it's only a pound lighter.

[Hans Kruse]

I asked our Mac tech, and his advice is the same as Hans -- get the 15 inch, with the i7 processors and the separate graphics processor. The i7 processors do hyperthreading, which is beyond my small brain but he says it's faster, and the separate GPU is faster for both graphics and apps that use the GPU like Lightroom. Yes, it's $400 more for the separate GPU, and he suggests paying the extra $200 for the upgraded processor speed (2.8gHz) especially if this will replace a desktop.

I would get the 500GB drive simply because all my photos are stored on a server -- I've been using a 256 and it's been mostly fine, 500GB would be plenty. (And let's face it, 1TB isn't enough to store any sort of photo collection anyway in the long run. Maybe if you do a LOT of traveling.)

If you really want the 13 inch for size, upgrade to the fastest i7 processor and get the 16GB of RAM.

The i7 not only does hyper threading but also it has twice as many cores as the 13". Lightroom does use 4 cores easily and does speed up the machine a lot compared to the dual core 13". The 2.8Ghz version is only marginally faster although I did choose this one this time around.

The 500GB might or might not be the right solution. A couple of factors to consider:

1) If the machine is a desktop replacement as well, then how many documents, e-mail etc. do you want to have on the internal drive which you would have on the road as well. Some things are just so much easier to have on the internal drive than to have on external drives.

2) If you fill up an SSD too much then the speed goes down dramatically For a 500GB drive I would recommend to keep at least 80-100GB free.

3) When you are on the road and shoot a lot you might get 100-200GB of RAW files and what else is perhaps edited.

4) How many of previous shoots would you like to have on the internal drive to edit in free time on the couch without having an external drive hanging off the machine?

So yes, one can do with less but I'm not suggesting that an entire photo collection would be on the internal drive. In my office I have a Thunderbolt LaCie RAID-1 drive for the re4st of my photo collection. I like to keep the most recent photo folders on the internal drive. I do travel a lot and needs vary, but at least it is worth considering these things as the SSD cannot be upgraded! Typically it takes a couple of years before 3rd party SSD drives are available for upgrades. External drives is nice to avoid unless you sit a a desk in an office, just my opinion.