The moment denoising a single picture takes 15 minutes, you get warning messages that your hard disk is full, and you can no longer install Lightroom or Photoshop updates because there isn't enough free disk space available, you know a computer upgrade is knocking on your door.
What Happened?
I'm not exaggerating, denoising a single picture in Lightroom took 15 minutes. Seriously, 15 minutes for a 20 megapixel picture from my OM System OM-1 camera. I'd hate to think what it would take to process a full frame picture that is (much) bigger than 20 megapixels. Imagine coming back from a photo shoot and wanting to process not one but tens or even hundreds of pictures... Needless to say that I stopped using Lightroom Denoise after a few attempts. I continued to use DxO PureRAW for denoising and sharpening but even that took a minute and a half per photo. And that's the DeepPRIME setting and not even DeepPRIME XD. So not exactly warp speed. My dogs chew down a bowl of food faster than that!
The computer I have been using was a Windows PC with an older Intel i7 processor and 16GB of RAM. Fast when I bought it 5 years ago, but lethargic after feeding it a steady diet of bits and bytes disguised as software and photo files for all those years. And while my hard disk had a decent capacity, it started running extremely low on free disk space (see The Big Cleanup blog post). Photoshop and Lightroom updates could no longer be installed because there wasn't any free storage left to do so.
Shortly before Christmas this culminated in a single photo edit that took 30 minutes due to multiple shutdowns and restarts of Lightroom, and reboots of my PC.
I was ready to throw my old computer out of the window. I even uninstalled Photoshop to give Lightroom some breading space on my hard disk, but that only delayed the inevitable. It was time to start looking for a new computer.
The Criteria
Having established that my old computer was no longer up for the task, I started thinking about what new computer to buy. Would it be another Windows PC or should I switch to Apple considering I'm happily using a MacBook Pro at work? How much memory would I need? What processor would be powerful enough to keep up with my photo editing? And what about storage: buy a computer with a big internal SSD, use my external SSD, or perhaps invest in a cheaper hard disk? There was lots to think about. Obviously there was a budget to consider as well. Finally, I also wanted to make sure that I would end up with a computer that would see me through the next 5 years, and preferably a bit longer than that.
In order to make sense of what I truly needed (or should I say wanted?), I had to take a step back and consider what I was going to use my new computer for. That turned out to be fairly straightforward: on the one hand I have some light workloads such as internet browsing, listening to music, and managing email, but on the other hand I have the much heavier photo editing workload where I'm running Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, and DxO PureRAW. Since any new computer can deal with the light workloads without a problem, I knew I had to find out what specifications would allow me to use my photo editing software without running out of steam.
With that in mind I started reviewing websites and YouTube videos that compared the performance of different computer configurations with a focus on Lightroom/Photoshop benchmarks. It's (un)surprising how much benchmarking information is available and it took me a while to absorb it all. Some of the sources I used are:
ArtIsRight (YouTube channel)
There are obviously many more, so just do an internet search and you're more than likely going to find whatever additional sources you might be interested in. For me it became clear that I needed at least 32GB of memory. That should be sufficient to run my photo editing software smoothly. More than that and the laws of diminishing returns start to kick in for my use cases. And since I had started pivoting to the Apple eco system, I figured one of the following Apple chips should be considered:
M1 Ultra
M2 Max
M2 Ultra
M3 Pro
M3 Max
Looking at the eye watering price of the Ultra chips I had to accept those were going to be out of reach for budgetary reasons. Arguably they were overkill for my requirements anyway, so it became a "race" between the M2 Max, M3 Pro, and M3 Max.
The next decision was the form factor of my new computer: desktop (Mac Studio) or laptop (MacBook Pro)? Since I had an all-in-one PC with a fairly decent 4K display, I thought I might use that as the monitor for my new Mac. I could always upgrade my monitor in the future if I really needed to. And to be honest, I really don't need a laptop for photo editing: I have a late model iPad Pro with Lightroom for when I'm on the go and that serves me quite well. Add to that the price differential between a similarly specced Mac Studio and MacBook Pro and my decision was made.
What Did I Buy?
So what did I end up buying? Well, I ended up with an Apple Mac Studio M2 Max with 32GB of unified memory and a 1TB SSD. The SSD upgrade - 512MB is standard - was the only upgrade over the standard model and done for two reasons. First, I didn't want to run into the same issue as on my old computer where I could no longer upgrade my photo editing software due to limited disk space. Second, I had seen in many Apple product reviews that Apple's 512 SSDs are significantly slower than any of the bigger sized SSDs.
My old computer had a 2TB hard disk that ended up being not large enough for my photo collection and software, so why go with a 1TB SSD in my new Mac Studio you might ask? Well, as consequence of The Big Cleanup I bought an external 4TB SSD and that's where my photo files and Lightroom catalog currently live. After the cleanup I'm using around 1.1TB of storage space so with 4TB I still have plenty left for years to come. This is in addition to the internal 1TB SSD so I have 5TB in total at my disposal. I initially wanted a 4TB SSD in my Mac Studio but after learning that this would set me back an additional and absolutely insane AUD 1,800, I was happy to stick to my external SSD (which only cost me AUD 355).
But here's the rub: what good would a brand new Mac Studio be without a 5K display?
As mentioned, my original plan was to continue to use my old computer's display. It felt wrong though: I wouldn't take advantage of the 5K output of the Mac Studio. And why keep an all-in-one PC just for the monitor? I could actually make a friend very happy with that computer. She has a computer from the Stone Age that takes 3 days to boot up, so she would definitely appreciate a computer upgrade as well. As you might have guessed, another extensive round of research followed and it became clear to me that I really, really liked the Apple Studio Display. And I really, really tried to resist spending so much money on a display, but I just couldn't. The budget got utterly and completely blown!
Is it Any Good?
The new Mac Studio is a beast! While I was clearly expecting significant performance improvements, I am completely blown away by how much faster it is. Below is a comparison of the processing times between my old PC and the new Mac Studio for various photo editing tasks. The processing times are based on a single 20MB photo from my OM System OM-1 camera.
Task | Old PC | Mac Studio |
DxO PureRAW DeepPRIME | 1 minute 30 seconds | 5 seconds |
Dxo PureRAW DeepPRIME XD | 5 minutes | 8 seconds |
Lightroom Denoise | 15 minutes | 12 seconds |
These differences are astounding. Look at that Lightroom Denoise difference! It's the difference between using or not using some of these features. It's the difference between hours of post-processing, or minutes of post-processing. It's the difference between satisfaction and frustration. I can go on...
The Studio Display is also awesome. There are zero regrets blowing the budget on that monitor. I love how incredibly sharp the display is and I also appreciate the brightness. The sound is incredible compared to my old computer, so that's a bonus as well. I realise there are other 5K monitors around, but the Studio Display feels like the perfect match for my Mac Studio, and it serves as a fantastic external monitor (and charger!) for the MacBook Pro I use for work. It's a win-win.
I have no doubt that a new Windows-based PC with a high-end processor and sufficient memory would have produced stellar results as well. This was never meant to be a contest between Windows and Apple computers. It's just that I decided to switch to Apple and I happen to be extremely pleased with the choices I made.
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