# MacBook Pro Retina 13" 2014 LR performance?



## magendim (Dec 4, 2014)

I currently have a MacBook Pro 15" mid-2012 and do just about all of my LR work on this system.  When I'm in the office or at home I do use a Thunderbolt dock with 24" external display and full size mouse/Keyboard.  I'm looking at upgrading to a new Retina MBP but since I travel a lot, I'm looking at pairing down to a fully loaded MBP Retina 13" (Core i7, 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM) to shave a couple of pounds off my messenger bag.  

So, any folks that have the newest MBP 13", can you comment on the Lightroom performance and using it as my main LR computer?  I know it's not going to be as good as the 15" unit since that is quad core processor vs the 13" which is dual core.  I do shoot all RAW and my typical workflow is import to DNG, select/rate, do corrections, then export to JPG for web/social media, so particularly interested in the ingest & export performance since those processes typically uses the most horsepower.  I only use the rest of the Adobe CC suite once in a while (PS, Media Encoder, Premeire)

I mainly do music related events, trade shows and some unit photography, so I may shoot/ingest/process hundreds of of photos a day.  With the 2K Retina display I'm not too concerned about the 13" screen being too small for editing in the field.

Thanks for any input!


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## clee01l (Dec 4, 2014)

Welcome to the forum. 
I have a Late 2013 13" rMBP.  I also have a Nikon D800 and a D810. Each NEF is ~40Mb.  I use the rMBP as a travel computer.  I have a dual screen iMac that I use for most work.  The Dual core is adequate and the 13 retina screen is usable although I would not want to permanently restrict myself to a screen this small.


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## Victoria Bampton (Dec 6, 2014)

If you do hundreds a day, I think you might get frustrated.  I have a 15" mid-2012 and a 13" early-2013 and while the 13" is fine as a one-off, I wouldn't want to use it as my only machine for Lightroom.  If you can't keep the 15" as well, you could get the 13", see how you go, and consider a refurb quad-core Mac Mini for your desk (not the latest ones, for the 2012 model that still had quad core)


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## magendim (Dec 7, 2014)

I only do about 4-5 large events/productions a year out in the field where I have the hundreds of photos/day to deal with that I have to get web ready images out within 24 hours.   Apple does have a two week return policy so I suppose I could do some tests on the 13" and see how it performs compared to the 15"  I have now.  At home/office I would use a large external display as I do now so not too concerned with the smaller screen size.

I also do have an old 1st gen Intel MacPro at home that I rarely use since I like to use one machine for everything (never been too keen on juggling images between two LR systems but haven't looked closely at streamlining that process).  But, I am looking at building a new Haswell-E 8 core Windows system which would absolutely kill anything I throw at it photography wise.


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## Victoria Bampton (Dec 7, 2014)

magendim said:


> Apple does have a two week return policy so I suppose I could do some tests on the 13" and see how it performs compared to the 15"  I have now.



That sounds like an excellent plan. Performance is fairly subjective, so you might be perfectly happy with it.


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## magendim (Dec 24, 2014)

Ok, so I received my new fully loaded MBP 13" today and loaded up LR 4.4 and some test files (haven't gotten to the LR 5 update quite yet).  This is the top of the line Core i7 (dual core) with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. The two most CPU intensive LR tasks in my workflow are importing/converting CR2 raw files into DNG and then exporting the finished files to JPG.  

So for my quick test results: Importing 100 medium size raw Canon files into LR DNG on the 13" MBP took 1:54, on my mid-2012 15" quad core, 1:34.  Bump that to something like 1000 shots from a 12 hour music festival days means 19 minutes to import vs 15.5 minutes.  Not too shabby.  Exporting 100 adjusted DNG photos to 1600 pixel JPGs w/ watermarks was 4:06 13" MBP vs 3:03 on the 15" MBP.  Bump that number of photos by 3X (300 exports) is 12minutes to export vs 9 minutes.

Based on this simple test, I think I can sacrifice a little time and save an extra pound out of my shoulder bag.  The 2014 15" Haswell MBP is obviously going to have better performance than my Ivy Bridge 15" MBP but I think the 13" performance is more than adequate.  General LR functionality on the 13" MBP is zippy and the retina screen is gorgeous compared to the 1440x900 screen on my old MBP.


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## Victoria Bampton (Dec 25, 2014)

That's good to hear!  I've been tempted to drop to 13"-only when my machines next come up for renewal.


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