Mac Mini M2 Pro / MacBook 16″ M1 Pro / MacBook Air M1 for Photographers
For any photographer that’s researched new computers (particularly a Mac) you’ve probably stumbled across millions of articles / YouTube videos. Most of which throw out swathes of Geekbench results for the bewildering number of configurations that are currently available.
The vast majority of these channels cover situations that most photographers never encounter and have no particular interest in. As a wedding photographer, I’m not fussed with 8K footage in Final Cut Pro plastered with 20 layers of effects and funky transitions.
Three of the key questions that crop up in many of those YouTube videos are –
a) How much RAM do I need?
b) How much storage do I need?
c) Should I pay extra for a Mac Studio?
Let’s see if I can help answer them as a wedding photographer who needs his kit to do the following –
- Import RAW images from an SD card to a drive
- Converting the RAW images to DNG using Rawsie
- Importing the DNG’s to Lightroom and applying a base preset
- Performing efficiently in Lightroom without any lag
- Exporting images from Lightroom in a JPG format
- Optimising the JPG’s for client delivery using SpaceSaver
Since switching to from Intel based Macs to Apple Silicon back in 2020 I have used the following computers –
- MacBook Air M1 – 16GB RAM – 256GB hard drive
- Mac Mini M1 – 16GB RAM – 256GB hard drive
- MacBook 16″ M1 Pro – 16GB – 1TB hard drive
- Mac Mini M2 Pro – 16GB – 512GB hard drive
As you can see, I keep the hardware fairly close to the base specification. The one area I did bump up was the RAM to 16GB on my MacBook Air and Mac Mini M1. Only because Adobe recommend this to keep Lightroom and Photoshop ticking along nicely!
Is 16GB of RAM enough for Lightroom?
As I mentioned, I’ve been happily working with 16GB of RAM on all four of my systems. Over time I’ve realised this was a sweet spot; the apps became more memory efficient as the developers got to grips with the new M chips. Whilst my computers will sometimes need to swap memory (borrowing from the hard drive), system performance for has never suffered. The fear that spread over the internet that Apple hard drives would cripple due to memory swapping came and went. Yes, I’m sure additional memory will help with labour intensive tasks, but I’ve never encountered performance issues when using Lightroom and Photoshop for my wedding photography processing.
Here are some iStat Menus screenshots showing the memory and CPU usage on the MacBook over the last few days.
The first covers CPU usage (red is system, blue is user). As you can see the M1 Pro chip is working efficiently.
The second chart shows RAM usage (blue is the operating system, red is active, purple is compressed). Once again, the computer isn’t really struggling with 16GB of memory for the tasks I’m working on.
The final chart follows on from the previous one and shows how much pressure the memory is subjected to. The more pressure the greater the need to rely on swap memory. Using Lightroom in conjunction with Photoshop never puts 16GB under intense pressure.
Will an external drive slow up Lightroom?
When it comes to storage, everyone is aware of the astronomical costs that customers need to factor in when speccing out an order for any Apple product. With this in mind I have always been reluctant to add more internal TB’s than needed. To counter this, I have been happily using the Crucial X8 external SSD as an integral part of my workflow.
And this is where the blog post comes into play. I wanted to provide a few examples of the real world workflow processing between a range of M chip computers. The 2020 MacBook Air M1, 2021 MacBook M1 Pro and 2023 Mac Mini M2 Pro.
I’ll compare processing times where catalogs, previews and image files are on the internal drives of each computer. I’ll replicate the processing where the catalogs, previews and image files are on the X8 SSD to see if there is any degradation in performance.
Disk speed
A lot has been mentioned about the Mac Mini M2 disk speed. So let’s start off by looking at the potential disk speeds for the three drives that I’ll be using. I’ll use Black Magic Disk Speed to get an idea of the theoretical read and write values of each drive.
As you can see, the internal drive of the MacBook Pro M1 Pro is blisteringly fast. Surely this is where Lightroom performance will excel? Well, hold your horses!
Crucial X8 – 904 MB/s Write & 865 MB/s Read
MacBook Air M1 – 2324 MB/s Write & 2936 MB/s Read
MacBook Pro M1 Pro – 5267 MB/s Write & 5212 MB/s Read
Mac Mini M2 Pro – 2974 MB/s Write & 2897 MB/s Read
Importing RAW files from a SD card
The first test shows a set of 500 Sony A9 RAW files transferred from a ProGrade 128GB V60 card using a ProGrade SD card reader.
This is certainly one area where the high speed disks will shine. The straightforward data transfer from card to drive is definitely aided by the higher speeds.
Converting RAW to DNG using Rawsie
Prior to loading images into Lightroom, I use an app called Rawsie. It optimises the RAW file, stripping out unwanted data and saving it as a DNG file. In doing so, it saves an incredible amount of disk space without losing any of the image processing capability. Rawsie will generate medium sized previews during the run.
There is a fair amount of read and write processing taking place here. As the chart below shows, there is minimal difference in processing speed whether using the internal drive or the X8. M1 Pro and M2 Pro speeds are fairly consistent.
Import to Lightroom Classic
This test takes the DNG files that were generated by Rawsie and imports them into Lightroom Classic. The catalogs and DNG’s are in different locations to determine whether the drives have a bearing on the processing speed.
The import routine applies my base preset and creates a standard preview with a length of 2880 pixels (medium quality). Once again, the M1 Pro and M2 Pro times are fairly similar.
Export from Lightroom Classic
This test exports the images from Lightroom to the hard drive. They are set as full size images with no sharpening applied.
The difference between internal and X8 drives for each computer is fairly negligible in the grand scheme of things. However, the M2 Pro is substantially quicker than the M1 Pro in this test.
SpaceSaver JPG Image Compression
The final step in my process is JPG compression. Many people use JPEGMini however I opt for SpaceSaver by BlogStomp.
As with the export, the M2 Pro slightly outperforms the M1 Pro, but the differences between Internal and X8 drives are minimal.
General Processing
I’m unable to provide any charts or statistics relating to the general responsiveness of Lightroom whilst I’m navigating the app or tweaking the images or using the masks. However, I can certainly report that each computer handles files without any lag or hesitation. This applies whether the catalog is situated on the internal hard drive or external X8 SSD.
Conclusion
So what does this tell us?!
The key points that I’m taking away from this are :
- For my requirements as someone that uses Lightroom Classic and Photoshop for their primary workflow, a machine with only 16GB of RAM does not cause any bottlenecks or performance issues. With my experience using four Apple silicon M chip machines, I cannot justify paying the extra £400 to upgrade to 32GB of RAM.
- Using a suitable external SSD to accommodate a Lightroom catalog and associated images (whether RAW or DNG) does not have any critical performance impact in the day to day processing whilst using Lightroom. The only area the internal Mac drives excel is the initial off load of data from the SD card. Adding 1.5TB to the base model Mac Mini M2 Pro would cost £600. Compare that to the external 2TB Crucial X8 SSD which at the time of writing is £129 from Amazon UK.
- The M2 Pro chip certainly has a slight performance boost over the M1 Pro chip in certain batch processing functions. The actual editing performance is excellent in both systems. Navigating Lightroom is quick and snappy.
- The nearly two and a half year old M1 MacBook Air still does a great job! This is the computer I take to weddings to begin image culling and editing. For those on a budget and want a portable computer with a screen, this is a great system! Yes it’s a bit slower than the others, but it’s still pretty nippy!
- I don’t regret opting for the Mac Mini M2 Pro over the Mac Studio M1 Max. The Studio may bump up import and export timings, but not enough to warrant a £600 price tag.
- We’re getting to a point where M chips are so ridiculously powerful and efficient that it will become difficult to distinguish between models. If you’re a wedding photographer and want mobility the MacBook M1 Pro is a great buy (especially Apple refurbished). If you only want a desktop and already have peripherals then the base Mac Mini M2 Pro with a X8 SSD is a fantastic option.
