Mac mini or imac photoshop

Especially because if you are willing to dig into the computer a little then you can upgrade the memory later yourself! It is great that Apple has you choose processor first because that also happens to be the most important thing to make Lightroom perform well. Next to that is the memory that just so happens to be your next configuration choice. This memory decision is the real decision you have to make when buying a Mac Mini for photo editing. This decision is not as easy to make as the processor.

The more memory you can throw at Lightroom and Photoshop — especially if you run them at the same time — the better. Of course there is a cost to the memory, and prices are inflated right now due to so much demand placed on the market with the crypto mining craze, so what is the reasonable amount of memory for photographers? So glad you asked. The baseline Mac Mini has 8GB of memory. But Apple has engineered into macOS some special sauce with regard to memory management that makes 8GB on a Mac a whole lot more useful than it is on a PC.

Still, even with the fancy memory tech in macOS, 8GB is going to be really tight. This is also something you could buy if you want to upgrade the memory yourself. Yes, you can actually do that on the Mac Mini! It will save you quite a lot of money and even if you have never done something like this I promise this is something you could do without breaking anything.

Windows or Mac. I already mentioned the special sauce that Apple has put into macOS with regard to memory management, and that is going to make 16GB feel more like 20 or Not saying that 16GB of memory is going to be the same as actually having 32GB of memory.

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There is a big difference there, just that 16GB of memory in a Mac Mini will function more similarly to a basic things can be done for Windows too but takes some advanced knowledge Windows computer with more physical memory. I have been using 32GB of memory on my custom built Windows photo editing computer since , and have needed every bit it. The beginning to intermediate photographer is likely to be just fine with 16GB of memory, but the photographer doing advanced editing on their photos is going to need to get to 32GB. Just so you know. While 64GB of memory may be very helpful for some workloads I could have used it for some of my bigger composites or HDR panoramas for sure , it is absolutely NOT worth the price Apple is charging here.

An analogy that comes to mind would be adding a huge truck bed to the back of a Toyota Corolla. Nobody would do that. Sure you could fit a lot of stuff in the back of that modded Corolla, but good luck getting it to take on a hill with the engine.

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Given the other components in the Mac Mini, like the lack of a discrete graphics card option at all, you are likely to run into other bottlenecks before you can truly use all of that memory. Video editing is where you could really use this amount of memory, and the Mac Mini is NOT a video editing computer.

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Not even close. Paying more for the memory than the rest of the computer combined is insane.

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Then I went and checked the prices to buy the memory and install it yourself. Not worth it. Memory is just plain expensive right now thank you crypto miners , so stick with 32GB of memory. If the memory comes down to more sane cost levels you could look to upgrade it yourself later. Like memory, this decision is harder to make and going to be entirely budget based. One of the challenges with using a Mac Mini for photo editing is the lack of storage.

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Photographers need and use a lot of storage. Not like videographers, that is some serious storage needs with 4K and 8K footage these days, but photographers definitely need a good amount of storage for their photos. No matter which storage option you go with, you are going to have to connect external storage to the Mac Mini, something I will address as well. I like that Apple has made this the third decision to make as you configure your Mac Mini. With all of the options being super speedy SSD, the only bad choice you can make here is not getting enough storage or going with the overkill options.

Come on Apple! The processor and the SSD are both soldered in. Neither is user upgradeable. My MacBook Pro and my custom build Windows desktop. Nothing else. As mentioned above, this is what I chose for my photo editing computers in and It works. With only GB of storage I have to think about what I am putting there and actively manage it a bit, watching for programs that default to using the boot drive for temp files.

Now you are not going to put your photos here. I guess it is nice to see Apple offer some overkill options. You may be thinking that 1TB or 2TB of local storage inside the Mac Mini sounds ideal to you as a photographer, but the price is over the top again here. However, Apple is marking up the costs on the SSD quite a bit more than they are with the memory.

External storage is the best way to meet the needs of storing your photos and GB or B SSD options are better choices. While on the topic of storage, if you are going to use a Mac Mini for your photo editing you really have to plan on adding external storage for your photos. I really wish that Apple offered a desktop computer with the form factor that allowed adding internal storage.

Maybe the new Mac Pro that is supposed to be headed our way in will provide it, but I am not holding my breath. So the storage has to be external. Fortunately Apple has provided some super speedy ports on the Mac Mini to do just that. Thunderbolt 3 connections are capable of speeds that rival the M.

Neither is worth the price of the storage for the tiny bit of performance increase. It would sure be nice if there was a less expensive way to go to 2TB of that insanely fast storage. I do have a very good alternative. Still a little on the costly side for many photographers, but a really good option that will provide quite a lot of performance. That drive is plenty fast to keep your Lightroom and Photoshop moving along.

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Edit from the speedy and mostly reasonably priced SandDisk SSD and then store the photos long-term in the slower but far less expensive WD drive or something similar. A great solution to the problem of storage for a photographer wanting to use a Mac Mini for photo editing. I recommend BackBlaze as both a reliable and good value online backup provider I have used for many years.

There is really only one good reason a photographer would consider this upgrade, and that is if you ever want to use Network Attached Storage NAS. We just talked about needing to add external storage. The important thing to note is that this upgraded Ethernet connection will allow you to get the very most speed out of that NAS as is possible today.

With that 10 gigabit connection you can get speeds fast enough to edit photos from the NAS. If you need it later and are still using this Mac Mini for editing then you can always add a Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter and get there when you decide you need it. Though not listed as a decision you need to make as you are buying your Mac Mini, I wanted to go over this briefly here.

Graphics cards are pretty expensive in general again, thank you crypto miners and you have to add the cost of a Thunderbolt 3 chasis to the mix. There is some support, and in some cases it has helped, but there are still a lot of photographers finding they have to turn off what limited support there is for GPU in order to get the most performance.

Even without great support for GPU in Lightroom and Photoshop, a discrete graphics card would likely do better than the Intel UHD Graphics , but it is going to be good enough for photo editing. I recommend skipping on the whole eGPU option here. At least for now. The other options are just overkill. Love the article. But to be honest made me confused. And that has being my main machine to edit all my photos in Lr and Ps. I work as a wedding photographer. I'm not doing quite as much work with this now, so I usually don't need more than four VMs open at once.

Fortunately, running Parallels, I can cut and paste between both environments, which saves a ton of time. With a lot of my bigger projects, I've been craving a wider screen. When the ultrawide monitors started appearing a few years ago , I was bummed to discover that my iMac wouldn't support them. Then, when I started doing multicam video either with four talking heads or lots of camera angles shot simultaneously it became clear the iMac had met its match.

For me, the best fit was a Mac rather than a Windows machine. The Mac would run Windows, and since I need to run applications on both, I couldn't just run out and buy or build any old Windows machine. That put me in wait-and-see mode for new Macs. As I discussed a few weeks ago, there were four scenarios for a new machine to meet my workload. A Hackintosh could have done it, but I just didn't want to go that route if I could help it. While I'm not uncomfortable with the technical hacks to set one up, I am uncomfortable with the ongoing fiddling required for maintaining them, especially during upgrades.

When I have an assignment to work on, it's sometimes very time-sensitive and I need a machine I can rely on. Since I wanted an ultrawide monitor, the screens that come with an iMac or a MacBook Pro would have been more pain than gain. The MacBook Pro screen is too small for desktop use, and the iMac screen is unwieldy and heavy for most standard monitor stands. I really wanted a headless computer, and since the Mac Pro is missing in action, that meant a Mac mini -- if Apple ever upgraded it. To almost everyone's surprise, they did. And I bought one last week. It'll arrive on Wednesday.

That's just silly. To be honest, I would have liked an even higher performing processor, but this will still be a huge boost. Early Geekbench scores put the Mac mini at for single core and for multi-core. In terms of single-core performance, that puts the Mac mini at just below the 4. In single-core performance, that's about 25 percent faster than my old iMac. Here's why Apple doesn't really care about the Mac or iPad. In multicore performance, it still lags a bit behind the old Mac Pro 8-core Xeon processor, but not by much. The new Mac mini also lags behind the 8-core Xeon iMac Pro, but that's five grand, just to start.

Beyond the two hugely expensive pro machines, the new Mac mini with the processor I chose appears to be faster in multicore performance than all the other Macs. In single core performance, only one machine bests it. Next up is memory. I haven't pushed past about 24GB in any of my recent workloads. So, given a choice, I'd rather not spend on 64GB. My preference is usually to buy gear when my workload needs it. Fortunately, the new Mac mini allows for RAM upgrades. While we don't consider the memory directly end-user accessible, service providers can access the internals of the Mac mini to upgrade the memory.

I'm honestly not entirely sure what I'll encounter when the Mac arrives, but I'm sure it'll be interesting. Next is storage. Apple charges way too much on storage, but it's not internally upgradeable. Apple's internal storage is also seriously fast, since it relies on flash memory. Here, I needed to balance performance against price. I use an external direct-attached RAID array for my video production and assets, so I don't need a huge amount of on-system storage.

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I also have a very large NAS with most of my other resources. I checked my various machines and, as might be expected, the main workhorse iMac used the most. Even so, it was under GB. That machine was equipped with 1TB and I found that quite workable. Finally, there was another big decision.

This time, though, it was not about price, but about reliability. The new Mac mini comes with either a 1Gb Ethernet port or, for an extra hundred bucks, a 10Gb Ethernet port. I am not running 10Gb Ethernet here, mostly because none of my computers support it. I spent the extra hundred bucks and configured the Mac mini with 10Gb. My only concern is that since Apple only has such a port on the iMac Pro and now the Mac mini, will it work properly? Apple just doesn't have that much experience with this new port. I decided to go for it anyway, because it'll help future-proof the machine.

Also, worst case, since the machine has four Thunderbolt 3 ports, the worst case scenario is to throw an Ethernet adapter on the Thunderbolt and use it that way. Oddly enough, that's exactly what I recommended when I recorded my Mac mini Pro video and article last April. I asked for Thunderbolt and USB-3 and got it. I asked for a 10Gb Ethernet port and I got it. I even suggested Space Gray and got it, although I don't really care about shade of gray. I paid a buck less. It's rare okay, never before that Apple builds a machine that's pretty much exactly what I specified as what I need.

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So, yeah, I bought one. Mac Mini Cheat sheet TechRepublic. You might notice I did not discuss an external GPU. To be honest, I don't know if I'll need one. If I do, that's another thousand bucks. I won't enjoy spending it, but at least it's incremental. Undoubtedly, sometime before this Mac mini reaches end-of-life it'll get a GPU upgrade. Just probably not this year. Finally, let's look at the other Apple machines I discussed in my pre-game scenario.

Yes, I would have gotten a Retina display, but I don't want that form factor screen. Was the Mac mini I bought cheap? Oh, hell no. Was it less expensive than other Mac alternatives? Yeah, by quite a lot. Does it look like it will actually meet my needs?

Yeah, I think it will. Stay tuned.