MacBook Air for RAW & Lightroom?

hi there...

my 15" MacBook Pro 2011 just died (

Anyone working with a MacBook Air?

using a MB Air with Lightroom and lots of RAW files?

id rather a lighter weight laptop as I travel a lot, (and it's cheaper than a Pro) but it needs to be capable of doing the job. Until now I've been using Aperture but I will now switch to Lightroom.

I shoot RAW with D700 & Fuji x100s...

the Air would be my main computer and need to process RAW files. I'd be using Lightroom for project organisation and editing photos but I also use Photo Mechanic for uploading and quick / primary selection.

Is a MacBook Air strong enough to deal with several hundred RAW files loading from a card / processing / editing etc.?

Many thanks!

Lightroom runs fine on a MBA. There is nothing that won't work. It will not run very fast, but it will get the job done. Do remember that the MBA screen is not exactly famous for its image editing quality.

Been using one since 2012.

It works fine, though it's getting a bit slow now.

I'm about to replace it with a MacBook Pro.

Yeah, the MBA is sorta languishing, I'm afraid.

The regular MB is about 50% heavier, but even the 1.2 is about as fast. And you get a MUCH MUCH better display, 2300x1440 vs 1440x900. Well worth a bit more in price if you're a photographer.

It's also about my middle aged eyes.

I'm quite, quite ready for 15" instead of 13".

Why not look for a refurbished 13" MacBook Pro? Every so often you find one with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD at the Apple Store for about $1100 -- not that much more than a MacBook Air. I bought one a few months ago and I'm very happy with it.

I'll throw in my 2c worth being that I too shoot D700 and X100s Raw. Curious as to how well a MBA would handle heavier task and being pushed a little, a couple of times I've connected my 11" i7 MBA to a 27" external monitor and admit that I was quite pleasantly surprised at how well it handed the entire flow. Yes the fan will kick in with those raw files but it plowed right through them just fine. I could, if necessary, live with that being my full time desk set up. I have no experience with the i5 Air. Now...Having said that, I'm inclined to agree with another poster who suggested a refurbished 13" MBP which would probably not be that much more money especially if your considering an i7 Air. Not sure I could edit full time on a 13" screen but I no longer have 20/20 vision so ymmv. I'd still have to look into a decent external monitor even with a 13" pro. Hope this helped a little. Good luck.

Thanks!

ive been talking with a friend of mine in Sydney who's a work a day pro , commercial photographer- he's shooting RAW on 5D mk 3? I think ... the newest one whatever that is.

Afyet seeing how well his kids basic i5 air could deal with his files (he had a top spec 2012/13 MBP he went out and got an i7 2.2ghz Air. He uses it daily and hard. Reckons it flies! No worries what so ever. Light weight , battery last forever and in the studio plugs into to a large display.

Im looking at a Refurb from Apple and the money saved goes towards a monitor which I need anyway.

hope this helps!

thanks

I'd be surprised if you're not pleased with that set up as both a desktop, with the monitor, and as a mobile solution when you need to travel with it. My 11" is the 2.2GHz. I didn't purchase it to edit photos with but was happy to see that it can handle the task easily if I need to. Take care.

Yeah, I'm sure it will be good.

Once I'd spoken with my mate in Sydney I felt super confident. I know his work load and he's reliable.

before we spoke I sent him a text, his reply was

'air bro air!'

Looking forward to getting it now.

Still trying to choose an affordable monitor (US$4-500) any recommendations welcome?

cheers

I pair it up to a Dell P2715Q and absolutely love it.

Here's a link below. Amazon also has it in stock.

Thanks I'll check it out.

can I ask if you use it with prints much?

Printing is my concern regarding a monitor. I'm sure the photos look great on screen but if you ever make prints? Either via a home style ink jet or pro lab (example for exhibition prints) does the print match (more or less) I know any print will not have the brightness / vivid vibrant look of screen but I mean general colour / tone / saturation.

Thanks!

Stan-o-Stan said:

Thanks I'll check it out.

can I ask if you use it with prints much?

Printing is my concern regarding a monitor. I'm sure the photos look great on screen but if you ever make prints? Either via a home style ink jet or pro lab (example for exhibition prints) does the print match (more or less) I know any print will not have the brightness / vivid vibrant look of screen but I mean general colour / tone / saturation.

Click to expand...

That's an issue. A display always has different characteristics than a print for just those reasons, and so using something like soft proofing can help. But depending on your needs a wider gamut monitor might help as well. The newer iOS devices and Macs have DCI-P3, which has a wider gamut than say that Air, but not as much as a nice Adobe RGB type monitor, but those are obviously expensive. And you'd need something to do color calibration like the Xrite device or maybe what comes with some monitors. Or just budget for a bunch of test prints.

I've got the 2015 MBA, i7, 500GB SSD, 8GB Ram

It's fantastic. I wouldn't mind upgrading but the new Pro's dropped the SD slot so I'm sticking with MBA, when I don't have to have dongles.

High Sierra does make it faster. I have also noticed that Capture One is much faster than Lightroom in every respect. i'm working on converting over.

--
Make it a Great day!

I do little printing but was satisfied with the output of what I did do. I don't know how much difference it makes but my monitor came with a factory calibration sheet in the box. First time I'd had that happen. Like I said I am quite pleased with this monitor and it fell within your price range. I'm sure there are better, at additional cost, but for the money this one gets pretty high marks. I read a LOT of reviews before making my choice.

I'm in almost the exact same situation as you. Late 2015 MBP 15" (mine has both the 1680x1050 display upgrade and 2.5Ghz 8Mb cache CPU, 16GB RAM) discrete GPU is failing. Since it's obsolete now, and I can't even find that logic board from 3rd parties, it's time to move on. Sad really, because it's a wonderful machine.

My second laptop is an 2014 MacBook Air 11". It has the 1.7GHz and 8GB RAM options and 512GB SSD. I bought it when my 15" GPU failed the first time the day before a trip. Unfortunately, I spilled cider on it and the keyboard is hozed, but the laptop works fine with an external keyboard plugged in.

Since Apple discontinued Aperture I've started using Lightroom 6 on both machines. Both Aperture and Lightroom are completely usable, although there's a definite difference in responsiveness. Not enough to be an issue though. The big difference is in generating jpeg/png/etc from RAW, since this is the one area that's entirely done in software. So importing (generating previews) and exporting takes approximately twice as long. For reference, I'm working with 16MP - 22MP files, so it should be slightly better for you.

Worth noting is that there are difference between the two CPUs that go much deeper than the (superficial) CPU speed. Much of the interface responsiveness is done by offloading certain tasks to the GPU. For example, moving a slider to change some attribute (exposure/saturation/whatever) causes LR to have to update the image displayed accordingly. If it has to do this in software, it takes a long time. Offloading it to the GPU makes it instant or near instant. The GPU in the current MacBook Air, while nowhere near as powerful as the ATI monster in the 2011 MBP, has most of, if not all the same offloading features, and a bunch of new ones that future versions of LR will no doubt be able to use.

I have since decided to replace both my laptops with a combination of 12" MacBook for when I'm mobile and a PC desktop as my main machine (since I do more video these days). The MacBook CPU scores slightly lower in Passmark and Geekbench than my MBA, but it's nevertheless more responsive in LR (can't do Aperture, since it requires running a much older version of OSX) than the MBA.

You can get the 12" MacBook with 16GB RAM, and it has a much nicer display too, so this is well worth considering.

I do find the built in SD card reader to be quite invaluable that the MBA offers.

Aperture seems to work just fine even on High Sierra if you wanted to use it. Capture One is the speediest of the three on the new OS and does take advantage of the GPU much better.

In my case, the 11" doesn't have one (neither does the MacBook 12"). Fortunately, there are very good, very tiny card readers available. I have this one:


There's a similar one for XQD. I hope they update this for USB-C soon, but in the mean time, the apple USB-C to USB-3 adapter does the job and it still doesn't take much space.