Apple Silicon M1

[gremlin16]

After the initial euphoria has worn off, I'm now finding that Lightroom feels about 10 times slower than it should be. Yes, its on a beta via Rosetta, but its painful at times. maybe 8GB Ram really isn't enough.

 

[ancient_mariner]

After the initial euphoria has worn off, I'm now finding that Lightroom feels about 10 times slower than it should be. Yes, its on a beta via Rosetta, but its painful at times. maybe 8GB Ram really isn't enough.

Really? So is it not the magic super-fast budget computer that was originally touted, or is that just the shonky beta of LR?

 

[gmpix]

After the initial euphoria has worn off, I'm now finding that Lightroom feels about 10 times slower than it should be. Yes, its on a beta via Rosetta, but its painful at times. maybe 8GB Ram really isn't enough.

With a small catalogue, my Air M1 with 8Gb is taking 8 seconds from app launch to photo library on display ready to start work. A 90,000 photo catalog on external USB drive takes 11 seconds to launch and display the photo library. I didn't think this was too shabby. This is Lightroom Classic Release 10.1 I'm talking about. Is there a LR beta, I know there's a Photoshop beta.

 

[SFTPhotography]

I have to admit that a mini is tempting me back to Apple after all this time. My XPS is now 6.5 years old, and although quite acceptable, it could be usefully faster and smoother with brushes and spot removal.

But I WILL resist.

Likewise - but I'd leave it to M2 before deciding on a PC or this.

 

[LongLensPhotography]

With a small catalogue, my Air M1 with 8Gb is taking 8 seconds from app launch to photo library on display ready to start work. A 90,000 photo catalog on external USB drive takes 11 seconds to launch and display the photo library. I didn't think this was too shabby. This is Lightroom Classic Release 10.1 I'm talking about. Is there a LR beta, I know there's a Photoshop beta.

That's a test of catalogue Ssd storage in the first instance. My 2014 does reasonably well here as long as I use Ssd.

The real CPU stress test comes when you start working with a brush extensively and then use clone tool. And of course exporting. To make it more fun work on 50mp files. This is where life becomes a misery with old tech.

To be fair we should wait for proper LRC release before making any final conclusions. My guess it will be fine for today but for whatever reason I wouldn't plan to own if for more than 2 years.

 

[gremlin16]

Overall I’m still very impressed with it, but my comment above was as a result of Lightroom/photoshop getting a little bogged down when editing in both simultaneously.

For example. I’m editing in LR then open 2 or 3 images as layers in photos, doing some blending and masking then exporting back to LR.

I do firmly believe it’s down to Rosetta and Adobe beta so when it’s optimised for native M1 I fully expect it to be improved.

Early adoption does raise these little snags sometimes.

 

[gremlin16]

This was using a catalogue of about 50 images, with both apps open and frequent switching between the two.

 

[Nawty]

Overall I’m still very impressed with it, but my comment above was as a result of Lightroom/photoshop getting a little bogged down when editing in both simultaneously.

For example. I’m editing in LR then open 2 or 3 images as layers in photos, doing some blending and masking then exporting back to LR.

I do firmly believe it’s down to Rosetta and Adobe beta so when it’s optimised for native M1 I fully expect it to be improved.

Early adoption does raise these little snags sometimes.

But are you eating into swap files? if so then you don't have enough RAM, which could be the problem. I would have thought sending .TIFF files (which are huge) to Photoshop would require more than 8GB Ram,

 

[gremlin16]

Yes, swap has been up to 11.54gb so not even another 8gb of ram will sort that out.

 

[LongLensPhotography]

Yes, swap has been up to 11.54gb so not even another 8gb of ram will sort that out.

32gb is minimal if you want to fit

The only question is how well the nvme 4.0 storage compensates that when you don't

 

[Nawty]

Even just a year ago I would have said 8GB RAM was sufficient for me (as per my 2017 MBP) and somehow these days I keep looking at the 16GB in my 2020 MBP and think eek!

 

[ancient_mariner]

8GB of RAM in a Macbook was mild excess for LR5 in 2013.

 

[Craikeybaby]

After the initial euphoria has worn off, I'm now finding that Lightroom feels about 10 times slower than it should be. Yes, its on a beta via Rosetta, but its painful at times. maybe 8GB Ram really isn't enough.

I thought Adobe recommended 12GB for Lightroom Classic these days?

For what it’s worth, I’m in the “buy next year” camp, I was watching the animosity credit card in hand, ready to buy. But I would not have bought the lower spec Intel MBP, so did not want to rush in and buy just for the sake of being first.

 

[gremlin16]

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a mile faster than my 2015 iMac! And that has 32gb

 

[Nawty]

I’ve had a twitchy finger over an m1 mini to replace my 2015 iMac but think I’ve managed to persuade myself to wait for whatever happens with the bigger MacBook or iMacs.

 

[garryknight]

M1 MacBook Air experiencing random reboots with latest Big Sur update

A number of owners of Apple's M1 MacBook Air are reporting spontaneous reboots after installing the macOS Big Sur 11.1 update.

www.imore.com

 

[goldtop]

Yup - always likely to happen that early adopters like us run the risk of bugs.

I'm keeping an older i5 laptop as Plan B.

 

[gad-westy]

Reading this thread, would I be right in saying that a Lightroom Classic user like myself might be best holding off buying a Macbook Pro M1 at present? It would be to replace a 2011 imac and we would run it via a usb-c dock. Reading this, it seems that LR Classic might be frustrating for now but I've also read of people experiencing issues with wake up (or lack there of) when running with a dock.

Any news from adobe on when we might see an ARM native Lightroom classic?

 

[gad-westy]

Sorry, 1 further question, it seems the most ram I can opt for is 16gb. Should that be a concern? Doesn't seem like a great deal these days.

 

[SFTPhotography]

Sorry, 1 further question, it seems the most ram I can opt for is 16gb. Should that be a concern? Doesn't seem like a great deal these days.

Depends as the ARM architecture works in a different way to an intel machine.

On a PC I wouldn't entertain anything less than 64gb which is why I spec'd 128gb

 

[nandbytes]

Got a new M1 Mac air (base model) as a present.

The issue with the base model with only 8GB RAM is that its not enough for LR which constantly tries to use 10-12+GB RAM. So while loading and exporting is fast, it barely stresses the processor or heats up my Mac, the lack of RAM causes it slow down :-/

What the experience has taught me is to wait for the 32GB version of the new apple silicon Macs before buying my own. the overall experience isn't much worst than the iMac I sold (had 16GB RAM) so I can work with this for now.

For anyone considering buying one, 16GB version will easily suffice and work very well probably for next couple years (if not more) with no issues. But if you are looking to keep it for 4-5 years like me I think it'd be better to wait for 32GB versions. My 8GB version seems to manage nearly as well as my fully maxed out iMac with 16GB RAM and discrete graphics card with 4GB vRAM. So that's pretty impressive in my books considering that iMac was close to £3K 4 years ago.

the battery life is simply amazing - 2 days of use later I still have 24% battery left

 

[goldtop]

What sorts of LR stuff are you doing that need >8GB? Lots of big libraries?

Genuine question, because my post-processing use is so basic, I've not yet had trouble on my 2012 iMac with 8GB and an i7.

I'm currently dithering (sic) between Dark Room and Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro. (although none of those are yet installed on the M1 - still pondering)

 

[nandbytes]

What sorts of LR stuff are you doing that need >8GB? Lots of big libraries?

Genuine question, because my post-processing use is so basic, I've not yet had trouble on my 2012 iMac with 8GB and an i7.

I'm currently dithering (sic) between Dark Room and Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro. (although none of those are yet installed on the M1 - still pondering)

I don't know what is lots of libraries, I only have one catalogue going back to 2013 when I started photography but that is not the issue.

So I have two cameras A7C and A7RIV. Processing A7C files are mostly smooth, the larger A7RIV files less so. There is some loading/buffering for few seconds with certain actions like zooming into 100% view, applying auto settings etc. But my iMac (late 2015 model) wasn't exactly instant either.

Even with general processing I have never seen it below 10GB RAM usage.

I have affinity and planning to try pixelmator Pro. But issue with these is they cannot do non-destructive editing like LR and you cannot store your edits separate from the RAWs which is important for me.

 

[Dryce]

Depends as the ARM architecture works in a different way to an intel machine.

On a PC I wouldn't entertain anything less than 64gb which is why I spec'd 128gb

The memory usage is down to the OS and the applications rather than the CPU.

In principle with multiple GB of RAM then modern OS variants should really have converged to the point where the OS shouldn't make much difference any more - but IMO for whatever reason Windows remains a less happy place to be as far as memory is concerned when compare with alternatives.

However once you start running an application such as Lightroom or Photoshop its requirements should completely dominate the characteristics of the underlying OS.

 

[goldtop]

I don't know what is lots of libraries, I only have one catalogue going back to 2013 when I started photography but that is not the issue.

So I have two cameras A7C and A7RIV. Processing A7C files are mostly smooth, the larger A7RIV files less so. There is some loading/buffering for few seconds with certain actions like zooming into 100% view, applying auto settings etc. But my iMac (late 2015 model) wasn't exactly instant either.

Even with general processing I have never seen it below 10GB RAM usage.

I have affinity and planning to try pixelmator Pro. But issue with these is they cannot do non-destructive editing like LR and you cannot store your edits separate from the RAWs which is important for me.

Thanks - that's useful. I'm still at just 24MP and not yet hitting problems with single-image processing. I'd like to keep it that way, whichever software I eventually settle on.

And interesting that you mention the non-destructive thing - I've been automatically doing File/Save As immediately after opening an image for so many years that the full and clever non-destructive workflow still feels 'wrong' to me. But it would certainly explain why LR wants huge amounts of memory.

 

[SFTPhotography]

The memory usage is down to the OS and the applications rather than the CPU.

In principle with multiple GB of RAM then modern OS variants should really have converged to the point where the OS shouldn't make much difference any more - but IMO for whatever reason Windows remains a less happy place to be as far as memory is concerned when compare with alternatives.

However once you start running an application such as Lightroom or Photoshop its requirements should completely dominate the characteristics of the underlying OS.

Yes, but it is these very applications that are RAM hungry. Throw in larger image sizes, more complex editing (focus stacking, image blending, complex colour corrections) and a lot gets used pretty quickly. 40mp camera systems are now the norm, and pixel shift technology and medium format stuff churns out 100mp plus files. I don't think 16gb will be sufficient for very long

Adobe products also lack multi threading and GPU acceleration - separate issue entirely but if you use something like capture one pro, On1 RAW then a 12 plus core machine with a powerful GPU can romp on.

The M1 chip is in its infancy but expect to see at least a 16 core (there's rumours of a 64 core ARM for the next macpro workstation) and maybe 64gb plus RAM. Adobe really need to catch up and start taking advantage of 12 core plus processers.