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Author Topic: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom  (Read 9667 times)

jrp

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13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« on: October 30, 2016, 02:42:32 pm »

Now that the new MacBook Pros are lighter than before, the thought of carrying the 15" version around for on the hoof triage / editing is not outlandish, as a replacement for my 13" version.  Of course, I welcome the weight reduction of the new 13" version, but before pulling the trigger, I wonder whether others have used the two sizes and would care to relate how they compare in real life.

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CoyoteButtes

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2016, 04:44:18 pm »

I love my 15" early 2015 Retina MacBook Pro. When I replace it I'll certainly stick to the 15".

Plus there is some interesting info on the display capability of the new MBP on Lloyd Chamber's website: https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2016/20161030_1118-Apple2016MacBookPro-display.html

Good luck.
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westfreeman

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2016, 11:38:28 pm »

15" has quad core processors - a much better way to go with images. Also 4 ports  - so more the merrier.


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George Marinos

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #3 on: November 02, 2016, 05:13:20 am »

And maybe the 15" monitor is more appropriate for photo editing...
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Ranger Rick

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #4 on: November 02, 2016, 11:24:46 pm »

I have been using a late 2013 13" Retina MBP, and have found it a bot too small for my liking.  I am going to bite the bullet and go with a 15".
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Christopher

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #5 on: November 03, 2016, 07:36:34 am »

I'm leaning the other way. I find the 15 just to big and heavy. I mean it depends but even the 15 is way to slow for any serious editing. So for just sorting on the road I think the 23 will do as well.


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Christopher Hauser
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James R

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #6 on: November 05, 2016, 08:44:04 pm »

 I regretted my decision to buy the 13" four years ago--needs more screen space.  So, I've ordered the 15" with 1tb drive and upgraded video card.  It is quite pricey when you add Apple Care, pushing 4K. 
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Wayne Fox

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #7 on: November 06, 2016, 12:18:06 am »

I'm leaning the other way. I find the 15 just to big and heavy. I mean it depends but even the 15 is way to slow for any serious editing.
I shoot MFDB, both 80 and 100mp, and find the current 15" MacBook Pro is pretty functional and not as slow as one might think.
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rdonson

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #8 on: November 06, 2016, 11:21:02 am »

I'm leaning the other way. I find the 15 just to big and heavy. I mean it depends but even the 15 is way to slow for any serious editing. So for just sorting on the road I think the 23 will do as well.


Big and heavy are relative terms and are personal preference.  Choose what works best for you.

I guess it depends on what kind of editing and tools for editing you're using.  I find it difficult to think of a quad core 15" MBP with SSD and 16GB RAM being too slow for PS and LR.  If it's your only computer perhaps that might be the case.  I use my 15" MBP for road trips and final editing is done on my iMac.

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Christopher

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #9 on: November 12, 2016, 05:05:19 pm »

Sure it is. As I said I'm talking from quite a powerful desktop workstation. Compared to that the new macs or windows are just plain slow. However, I'm also talking about big files. No problem with smaller ones, but here I think the 15in model is just to big and heavy. Would never by it again. That why I tend to the 13 model next year after a decent refresh.


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Christopher Hauser
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jrp

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #10 on: November 12, 2016, 06:16:01 pm »

Well we'll see whether the new touch strip MacBook pros are any faster than the 2015 models. The 13" model without touch strip is not. Well the cpu is not much even if the SSD is much faster.

It's really the weight / bulk that gives me pause, and here the jury seems split.
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jrp

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #11 on: November 20, 2016, 07:03:21 am »

I've now read that the new 15" MacBook Pro does not work well with Lightroom.  The GPU is slower than using the CPU + integrated graphics alone.  This means that there is no point in upgrading, with all the port limitations.
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CatOne

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #12 on: November 22, 2016, 06:12:24 pm »

I've now read that the new 15" MacBook Pro does not work well with Lightroom.  The GPU is slower than using the CPU + integrated graphics alone.  This means that there is no point in upgrading, with all the port limitations.

This sounds like something Adobe could optimize, rather than say there is "no point in upgrading."
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Phil Indeblanc

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #13 on: November 23, 2016, 12:29:37 am »

I use a 15" MAcBookPro for general tethering to some light editing to offload online and such, but not LR. I am having enough trouble with it on my Win desktop, not sure how Mac handles it on the ProBook and 42mpixel raw files.  But, if I were to go smaller than 15" I'd just use a tablet of some sort. There certainly are travel reasons for a 13, and that maybe indispensable, But for someone who might not mind it in a backpack or something at times, 15" would be my choice.
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john beardsworth

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #14 on: November 23, 2016, 12:26:46 pm »

I've now read that the new 15" MacBook Pro does not work well with Lightroom.  The GPU is slower than using the CPU + integrated graphics alone.  This means that there is no point in upgrading, with all the port limitations.

You read it where??? The only place I've seen anything like that is here, and in that case even Apple admitted it was a hardware problem.
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jrp

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #15 on: November 23, 2016, 02:58:35 pm »

Yes, that was subsequently thought to be a hardware issue (although it is not yet clear whether it was specific to that MacBook Pro, or a general problem).  More generally, digloyd's benchmarks and those on arstechnica don't show much of an improvement in performance.  The most positive aspect of the new MacBooks is the screen, which is brighter and has a wider gamut.
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john beardsworth

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #16 on: November 23, 2016, 03:31:58 pm »

Yes, that was subsequently thought to be a hardware issue (although it is not yet clear whether it was specific to that MacBook Pro, or a general problem).

And that was the basis of your "I've now read that the new 15" MacBook Pro does not work well with Lightroom"....

For a few months I had been considering getting a new Mac laptop and waited for the new MBP. I would have gone for a 15" because while I've used a 13" for 3-4 years, I've never been really happy with the screen size. It's OK with Lr, very cramped with PS. But the new MBP's specs completely put me off buying one (as has the price hike which is higher in the UK due to the idiotic Brexit vote) and I may now go for a refurbished old model MBP. I don't need it to drive an external screen as I use the laptop mostly for travel, I'm not willing to change perfectly-good hard drives and other existing peripherals just to dance to their stupid USB3-only tune, or carry around dongles even for a magsafe power lead, and the old model just seems to be much better value for money. But definitely 15" - though it can only ever be a personal preference.

John
« Last Edit: November 23, 2016, 03:37:13 pm by john beardsworth »
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stevebri

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #17 on: November 27, 2016, 01:02:31 pm »

my problem with the new light MBP is the lack of ports and the reliance of dongles....
we all misplace, lose, bend, crush and break 'stuff' out there and for Apple to make our working environment more difficult is a tough one for me to swallow... see casey neistats youtube review, he is a big MBP fan and a straight talker.. he echoes my thoughts.

I am currently running an HP ENVY that is 1 yr old, cost $500, is as new and has  a fast i& quad core, 16GB ram, a decent nvidia card, a 480GB SSD win 7 and............... 4 USB 3 ports, a HDMI port, an SD card slot 1920x1080 touchscreen, and competitive battery life (under load),aluminium construction (poor mans MBP).

BUT... its a workhorse, does its job, is a discreet silver slab and with the 1800USD I saved I can use that money to shoot more personal work.

Don't get me wrong, it's NOT a MBP and never will be but it's fast, well spec'd, tough work horse, I can just edit... without losing dongles or emptying my bank acc...

Not bashing MBP's they are great, but maybe consider a refurbished, or like new 2015 MBP for functionality and better $ per speed ratio

S
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Wayne Fox

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Re: 13" or 15" MacBook Pro for Lightroom
« Reply #18 on: December 01, 2016, 01:05:46 am »

I have the most recent MacBook Pro before the change, 2.8 Ghz processor/16GB ram/1TB SSD.  I just received my new MacBook Pro, 2.9GHz/16MB/2TB SSD.

The two machines are virtually identical, since I used migration assistant.  Lr library and images are on a second partition on both machines, but the library and image files were identical (cloned over with Carbon Copy Cloner). I set them side by side and tried to put several tasks through the paces with Lr at the same time.  Obviously I can't do simultaneous brush work, etc. but rendering a Lr Stiched pano from 5 80mp files in the develop  module up to 100% seemed nearly identical, the new one perhaps slightly faster.  Moving around in the Library and zooming to 1:1 on various files is a push.  Selecting the same brush on the stitched pano on both of them, something with probably about 50 or more brush strokes cleaning up edges etc. then showing the mask overlay the new one was about a second quicker the first time, but then toggling off and on it was more like .2 seconds faster.

I then made a virtual copy of that file, deleted all the brushwork and worked on creating it again, doing the same thing on each machine.  The new machine seemed perhaps slightly more responsive, it definitely wasn't more sluggish than the old one.  After about 5 minutes doing the same thing on each file (the history showed about 50 brush strokes and a few other things) I didn't feel there was a significant difference.  I had the GPU enabled on both machines.

So it's about what I expected - not much difference is speed and certainly not sluggish or problematic.  Maybe I haven't tried to do functions that others have found cause the problem, not sure.  my main interest was the new display, something I haven't been able to really get into yet.

The dongle thing to me isn't any big deal, I think most will opt for a little 1x3 inch "dock".  I've got one coming that turns one TB3 port into mini displayport,  USB-c pass through charging, SD card and a couple of USB ports.  The dongle for USB 3 is only $8 right now.  In a year or two, I think USB-C will be embraced pretty quickly by most, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it even begin showing up to be used instead of HDMI on most displays and TV's.

My biggest complaint is Apple not having a solution for mini displayport when they released the machine, even if it was another little dongle.  Many displays now such as my NEC run displayport, but I have to use HDMI because there isn't a good solution for mini displayport.  But all of it short lived, the new connector promises to lead us to a world of one connector to handle all devices.  whether it pans out I'm not sure, because it seems while all the connectors are the same, the cables may not all be interchangeable.  Maybe better than were we are now, but it would be amazing if the cables were all the same, the connectors were all the same, and you just hooked things up.

One other big complaint, the new MBP when used as a target disk through the TB3 - TB2 connecter has terrible speed, only gets about 130 MB/s.  The previous one was around 500-700 MP/s.  I use my laptop as my work drive all the time, when at home I just set it up as an external drive.  The new one is sluggish when I do that so I'll have to migrate the library back and forth.  Hopefully it's something they can address with a firmware upgrade to the dongle.  They've already updated the HDMI/USB dongle once.
« Last Edit: December 01, 2016, 01:13:02 am by Wayne Fox »
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