# is an iMac powerful enough to hack LR?  What about Macbook Pro?



## Ruahrc (Feb 7, 2009)

I am chugging along with a 4.5 year old Powerbook G4 15".  It isn't the fastest at LR but it gets the job done.  With my 1'MP RAW files off my D8' once the previews are rendered it's pretty good.  Definitely not lightning fast but usable.

Anyways been thinking that it's getting near that time to upgrade.  I originally planned on getting a new MBP 15" to replace my current laptop and along with it the Apple 24" LED display to help with better editing at my desk.  The cost of this option, however, is quite staggering (~$35''!).

As an alternative, I have considered purchasing a 24" iMac (with maximum options, like maxed out CPU and RAM, etc) instead.  It's considerably cheaper than the 15" MBP + ACD, and is more powerful to boot.  My question is though, is it powerful enough?  Obviously it'll run circles around my current rig, and so for those 1'MP RAW files it should take care of things handily.  However, I also like to do panoramic photography, stitching together multiple exposures form my camera into large images.  The biggest I have stitched so far is I think 13 or 14 shots wide by 1 row tall, and I have taken images from one pano which is 2' images wide by 2 tall.  Considering the overlap in the images when you stitch, they are coming out to be like 8'-1''MP in size.  As 16-bit TIFFs a 1''MP image is going to be 6''MB.  Is a new fully loaded iMac powerful enough to handle that?  I don't really want to move up to a Mac Pro because of the cost, and the size of the computer is quite large as well, I'd prefer the smaller profile of the 24" iMac.

I heard rumors that a refresh of the iMac line is coming, and with it quad-core processors as an option.  Would a quad-core iMac be able to handle big panos like that?  Would I run into trouble with 4GB RAM being the max you can put in an iMac?

Along those same lines, if I decide to keep the portability and go for the 15" MBP, how powerful is it for doing photo editing?  Again the new MBP will vastly outclass my current setup, but how well would it do (maxed out specs, so 2.8GHz dual core w/4GB RAM) with large panos?

Just wondering if anyone had any experience using a computer of this spec and working with larger filesizes.

Norman


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## jonty (Feb 9, 2009)

I have a 2.2GHz MacBook Pro hooked up to a 24" Cinema Display and it works fine for Lightroom. It also gives you the benefit of a good portable system when you need it and a nice big screen desktop at home. There are certainly cheaper monitors out there, though.

Stitching panoramas takes a while but I would be careful before considering a Mac Pro or something like that - get some benchmarks if you can or test one yourself, and make sure that the things you might find slow on your system are actually faster on the new one - they aren't always.

The quad cores won't magically make every app 2x faster, so it's really speculation at the moment as to how much faster they'll be. Perhaps of more significance is the OpenCL and Grand Central tech coming in Snow Leopard that is meant to be better for multicore systems and also let the OS make more use of the graphics card as well. All should theoretically be great but who knows?

If I were you I would think about it this way:
1) Do you need the portability? If so get the MacBook Pro but don't forget a MacBook instead - the new ones are pretty quick (and the price difference can get you a monitor).
2) If not the iMac sounds good but don't discount the Mac Pro - the maxed out iMac is about the same as the baseline Pro (without the screen) and the Pro has upgrade options in the future.

Good luck!


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## Andrew Hayton (Feb 18, 2009)

If you need portability then the Mac Book Pro would be the way to go. If you want colour accuracy then the iMac won't be the best choice as you don't have a separartye graphics card and you only get mirrored monitor support, whereas teh Macbook pro allows you to hook up another monitor and use the two monitors independantly so you can have a decent monitor hooked up.
I use an early iMac and have no real problems with it.


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