What specs to get for a 15 inch macbook Pro?

Marc dbr · Mar 11, 2018

Hello all,

I am still editing my photos in Linghtroom /Photoshop on a mid 2012 13 inch MacBook Pro. I bought it as a base configuration 5 years ago and I upgraded it to a Raid set with 2 SSDs, and 16 GB of ram. it still has the base processor of 2,5 Ghz though. However, the machine is starting to show its age and I am thinking about upgrading to a 2017 or 2018 macbook pro. I would go for the 15 inch base model, since the upgrades are quite expensive.

When editing in Lightroom and photoshop with 30 Megapixel Raw files, would the base configuration be fast enough, and also future proof for the comping 6-8 years? Or is there a spec I absolutely need? For example a 2.9 Ghz processor, or the AMD radeon 560 with 4 GB of Vram?

Thank you in advance

Marc

Tom_N · Mar 11, 2018

There is the question of how large of a SSD to get. You can (custom-)order anything from 256 GB to 2 TB of SSD storage. If you are on a tight budget, the 512 GB option is almost a no-brainer – it doubles internal storage for less than 10% of the base price of the laptop.

Marc dbr · Mar 11, 2018

Yes that is indeed what I intend to do, and although I would prefer having a 1tb sad, I will settle on the 512gb. I am just curious about whether the other upgrades affect performance a lot in Lightroom and photoshop

graybalanced · Mar 11, 2018

Marc dbr said:
Yes that is indeed what I intend to do, and although I would prefer having a 1tb sad, I will settle on the 512gb. I am just curious about whether the other upgrades affect performance a lot in Lightroom and photoshop

No, not really. The main one would be the RAM but all 15-inchers come with 16GB already.

The CPUs are all quad core i7, so not much to improve on there either.

The base graphics card of the 15" already exceeds the VRAM requirements of LR and PS, in my opinion you only need the 4GB VRAM upgrade if you're gonna run 4K+ high resolution external monitors off the MBP...and that upgrade would be more for the monitors, than for LR and PS which do not get much additional benefit much from top of the line graphics.

Marc dbr · Mar 11, 2018

Ok cool thanks for that! The processors do vary in power (2.8, 2.9 and 3.1 ghz) does this choice matter at all?

lightandaprayer · Mar 11, 2018

Marc dbr said:
Ok cool thanks for that! The processors do vary in power (2.8, 2.9 and 3.1 ghz) does this choice matter at all?

--
My Flickr Portfolio: https://www.flickr.com/photos/148263466@N03/albums

The difference in speed is not very much especially considering what Apple charges to upgrade. I would stick with the 2.8 GHz option; there are better ways to spend your money.

Before you spend money on a GPU upgrade, check Mac hardware test websites and see if any have done LR tests with the MBP and GPU options. Barefeats.com is a good place to start. There are more PC hardware testing websites and you may be able to find tests using the upgrade GPU but they usually only test Windows machines.

LR runs slowly on most computers and a lot of money has been wasted on hardware in attempts to speed it up. . . It's recently been reported that LR code has finally been tweaked to improve its speed running certain processes. But from what little I have read it appears to be rather limited tweaking directed at a relatively small number of LR processes. Maybe you will be lucky and discover that the improvements are for things that you use a lot. But I would caution you to be wary of basing costly upgrade decisions in the hope that they will improve LR and Photoshop without solid evidence that the upgrades will provide more than a small increase in efficiency. The cost-benefit ratio matters when it comes to hardware upgrades, unless you have money to burn. . .

JPAlbert · Mar 11, 2018

If you can hold out, wait for the 2018 release.

The keyboards on the 2016-17 design have had too high a failure rate, even when relatively new. And if even one key goes bad, it's an expensive fix -- the entire top case requires replacement.

Maybe they'll rework the design for 2018.

lightandaprayer · Mar 11, 2018

JPAlbert said:
If you can hold out, wait for the 2018 release.

The keyboards on the 2016-17 design have had too high a failure rate, even when relatively new. And if even one key goes bad, it's an expensive fix -- the entire top case requires replacement.

Maybe they'll rework the design for 2018.

Agreed, except I don't expect Apple to come up with an acceptable keyboard replacement. . . I am in the market for a refurbished 2015 13" MBP primarily due to the crappy keyboard used in current models.

There have been recent articles about expected keyboard design changes to address problems associated with the current keyboards, such as the fact that tiny crumbs can disable individual keys. Unfortunately, the ideas do not address the insufficient key travel that makes typing a very poor experience indeed.

The Apple patents detailed in the linked article do not impress me at all. . . Apple's fixation on thin computers needs to be reconsidered. There is simply a point where key travel is reduced to such a degree that it cannot be "fixed" without increasing it. I think that the current keyboards have reached that point. . .

Apple patent imagines a MacBook keyboard that’s more resistant to crumbs & other debris

Jacques Cornell · Mar 12, 2018

Marc dbr said:
Hello all,

I am still editing my photos in Linghtroom /Photoshop on a mid 2012 13 inch MacBook Pro. I bought it as a base configuration 5 years ago and I upgraded it to a Raid set with 2 SSDs, and 16 GB of ram. it still has the base processor of 2,5 Ghz though. However, the machine is starting to show its age and I am thinking about upgrading to a 2017 or 2018 macbook pro. I would go for the 15 inch base model, since the upgrades are quite expensive.

When editing in Lightroom and photoshop with 30 Megapixel Raw files, would the base configuration be fast enough, and also future proof for the comping 6-8 years? Or is there a spec I absolutely need? For example a 2.9 Ghz processor, or the AMD radeon 560 with 4 GB of Vram?

Thank you in advance

Marc

What you need depends on how much work you need to get done how quickly. Until a few months ago, I was happily running my high-volume event business on a mid-2012 13" 2.9GHz MBP with 16GB RAM and a boot SSD. It was very responsive and perfectly adequate for most of my uses. But, as I've switched from Aperture to DxO PhotoLab and rely on its Prime noise reduction, and I crank out hundreds of finished JPEGs at a time on short deadlines, I was feeling the need for speed. Prime NR is very CPU-intensive, and it took about 1 minute per 16MP image on this machine.

My new base-model 2017 13" MBP is about 25% faster at this task. Plus, it can drive two desktop displays. But, I wanted more, and I didn't want an iMac because I prefer my two NEC displays, so I bought a used Mac Pro 6-core, which is 3x faster than my new MBP. Maybe I should have gone for a 12-core, but I got a good price - $2k - on the 6-core.

TBH, my Mac Pro doesn't feel an different from my old MBP on most tasks. What I paid for is faster export of JPEGs from PhotoLab, as that is the single bottleneck in my professional workflow.

Macworld's podcast reported on new Intel chips that will double the number of cores in laptops. When this will arrive in a MBP is anyone's guess. Adobe has improved LR's use of multiple cores lately, so more cores seem the way to better performance, which hasn't always been the case in the past.

One last thought: you get more performance bang for your buck from an iMac than a 15" MBP. Whether you want an all-in-one is another matter.

--
If you think digital is hard, try slide film.
http://jacquescornell.photography
http://happening.photos

graybalanced · Mar 12, 2018

lightandaprayer said:
It's recently been reported that LR code has finally been tweaked to improve its speed running certain processes. But from what little I have read it appears to be rather limited tweaking directed at a relatively small number of LR processes. Maybe you will be lucky and discover that the improvements are for things that you use a lot. But I would caution you to be wary of basing costly upgrade decisions in the hope that they will improve LR and Photoshop without solid evidence that the upgrades will provide more than a small increase in efficiency.

Currently the focus appears to be on making the most of cores and RAM, and as I said, there's no upgrade path there for the 15" MacBook Pro, but at least that model exceeds what is said to be useful for Lightroom CC 7 (more than two cores, more than 12GB RAM).

Luckily there are some sites seeking to quantify any improvements, and as much as I am a fan of Bare Feats, they don't test Lightroom very much.

This site did test Macs with a range of Lightroom tasks and saw improvement:

Lightroom 6.14 vs CC 7.1 vs 7.2 Performance Comparison

photographylife.com

William Carson · Mar 12, 2018

Marc dbr said:
Yes that is indeed what I intend to do, and although I would prefer having a 1tb sad, I will settle on the 512gb. I am just curious about whether the other upgrades affect performance a lot in Lightroom and photoshop

Regarding whether to order unit with 512 GB or 1 TB SSD, while It seems like you will never need more than 512 GB, I found I had to upgrade to a 1 TB. If the unit does not allow upgrades, you should go for at least 1 TB SSD and 16 GB RAM. It will be better in the long run.

Marc dbr said:
--
My Flickr Portfolio: https://www.flickr.com/photos/148263466@N03/albums

lightandaprayer · Mar 12, 2018

graybalanced said:
lightandaprayer said:

It's recently been reported that LR code has finally been tweaked to improve its speed running certain processes. But from what little I have read it appears to be rather limited tweaking directed at a relatively small number of LR processes. Maybe you will be lucky and discover that the improvements are for things that you use a lot. But I would caution you to be wary of basing costly upgrade decisions in the hope that they will improve LR and Photoshop without solid evidence that the upgrades will provide more than a small increase in efficiency.

Click to expand...

Currently the focus appears to be on making the most of cores and RAM, and as I said, there's no upgrade path there for the 15" MacBook Pro, but at least that model exceeds what is said to be useful for Lightroom CC 7 (more than two cores, more than 12GB RAM).

Luckily there are some sites seeking to quantify any improvements, and as much as I am a fan of Bare Feats, they don't test Lightroom very much.

This site did test Macs with a range of Lightroom tasks and saw improvement:

https://photographylife.com/lightroom-6-vs-cc-7-1-vs-7-2-performance-comparison

Interesting. . . It's too bad that image editing functions in the Develop module don't see any improvement from LR 7.1 to LR 7.2. As the author and several commenters agree "that is where the biggest pain lies. . ."

Marc dbr · Mar 13, 2018

My current MacBook has 512gb of storage, and altough I would like to have a little more, the price difference is way too much so I won’t get 1tb. Right now I have a 3tb external hard drive that I put all my raw files and Lightroom folder on every 6 months.

MacroPhotographer · Mar 19, 2018

There are deals going on now on 2016 15-inch MacBook Pros, where you get more space for a fraction of the original cost. The 2TB model with Radeon 460 graphics is $2,999 through AppleInsider, which is $1,300 off MSRP.

I personally have 512GB of space, but I wish I had waited for this 2TB deal.

Lowest Price Ever: Apple's loaded 2TB 15" MacBook Pro for $2,999 ($1,300 off), plus $700 to $1,000 off other models w/ no tax in most states | AppleInsider

Readers can exclusively save $1,300 this week on Apple's maxed out Late 2016 15" MacBook Pro with the line's fastest processor, 2TB of storage and top-of-the-line Radeon 460 graphics. Plus, the Mac qualifies for free expedited shipping and no tax collected in most states.

appleinsider.com

stratman1976 · Mar 20, 2018

William Carson said:
Marc dbr said:

Yes that is indeed what I intend to do, and although I would prefer having a 1tb sad, I will settle on the 512gb. I am just curious about whether the other upgrades affect performance a lot in Lightroom and photoshop

Click to expand...

Regarding whether to order unit with 512 GB or 1 TB SSD, while It seems like you will never need more than 512 GB, I found I had to upgrade to a 1 TB. If the unit does not allow upgrades, you should go for at least 1 TB SSD and 16 GB RAM. It will be better in the long run.

johnbandry · Mar 21, 2018

stratman1976 said:
stratman1976 wrote

stratman1976 said:
For pictures, 1TB won’t be enough either

Depends how many pictures of what size, obviously.

Assuming 300GB for OS and general stuff, with 50MB images, a 512GB internal allows around 4000 images and a 1TB internal allows around 14000 images. Someone who keeps only current stuff/wip on the laptop and archives all completed projects to externals may find 512GB enough, or not, depending. If not, the upgrade to 1TB gives substantially more working storage.

SaltyPeanut · Mar 21, 2018

johnbandry said:
johnbandry said:

stratman1976 wrote

For pictures, 1TB won’t be enough either

Click to expand...

Depends how many pictures of what size, obviously.

Assuming 300GB for OS and general stuff, with 50MB images, a 512GB internal allows around 4000 images and a 1TB internal allows around 14000 images. Someone who keeps only current stuff/wip on the laptop and archives all completed projects to externals may find 512GB enough, or not, depending. If not, the upgrade to 1TB gives substantially more working storage.

William Carson · Mar 21, 2018

SaltyPeanut said:
johnbandry said:

Depends how many pictures of what size, obviously.

Assuming 300GB for OS and general stuff, with 50MB images, a 512GB internal allows around 4000 images and a 1TB internal allows around 14000 images. Someone who keeps only current stuff/wip on the laptop and archives all completed projects to externals may find 512GB enough, or not, depending. If not, the upgrade to 1TB gives substantially more working storage.

--
John Bandry
“Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of ... self-serving men” - Robert A. Heinlein

Click to expand...

300GB for OS and "general stuff" sounds excessive. What kind of general stuff do you have? I have everything I need and over 1400 cell phone pics copied to Photos and I'm under 100GBs. Granted I don't have a ton of general stuff or 3rd party software, but if you move photos and video (except for cell phone shots and a few short videos) to an external, 512GBs should be plenty until the next computer upgrade, at which time we can hopefully get that 1TB SSD for the price of a 512GB SSD today.

I would like to put in a plug for long term storage of images. SSDs if not fired up periodically will lose any information on the disk. This is also true for spinner HD disks. I ran into a situation in which someone gave me a external storage maxtor drive of 300 GB. Perfect condition. It has not been fired up since 2007 and the critical programing on the chips has gone away through non electrical use and is not able even to show up on desktop as a drive. So, what will indefinitely hold information? At this point, DVD/Bluray 'M' disks. Limited to around 100 GB, it at least will hold the most valuable of your information. Any thoughts?

SaltyPeanut · Mar 21, 2018

William Carson said:
SaltyPeanut said:

johnbandry said:

Depends how many pictures of what size, obviously.

Assuming 300GB for OS and general stuff, with 50MB images, a 512GB internal allows around 4000 images and a 1TB internal allows around 14000 images. Someone who keeps only current stuff/wip on the laptop and archives all completed projects to externals may find 512GB enough, or not, depending. If not, the upgrade to 1TB gives substantially more working storage.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Jacques Cornell · Mar 21, 2018

johnbandry said:
johnbandry said:

stratman1976 wrote

For pictures, 1TB won’t be enough either

Click to expand...

Depends how many pictures of what size, obviously.

Assuming 300GB for OS and general stuff, with 50MB images

Why would you assume that? My 500GB SSD has 100GB of OS and apps, and that's it. All my photos, videos and music live on redundant external conventional hard drives, and my LR catalogs and works-in-progress live on a 500GB external SSD. This way, I can easily work on the same data on my Mac Pro and MBP simply by plugging the externals into whichever Mac I want to use.

johnbandry said:
, a 512GB internal allows around 4000 images and a 1TB internal allows around 14000 images. Someone who keeps only current stuff/wip on the laptop and archives all completed projects to externals may find 512GB enough, or not, depending. If not, the upgrade to 1TB gives substantially more working storage.

What specs to get for a 15 inch macbook Pro?

Forum Enthusiast

Forum Pro

Forum Enthusiast

Veteran Member

Forum Enthusiast

Veteran Member

Senior Member

Veteran Member

Forum Pro

Veteran Member

Veteran Member

Veteran Member

Forum Enthusiast

New member

Senior Member

Senior Member

SaltyPeanut

Guest

Veteran Member

SaltyPeanut

Guest

Forum Pro

Similar threads

Keyboard shortcuts