iMac 5k (late 2015) - 1TB Fusion drive - 3.2GHz quad core i5.

Michael Batten

Michael Batten

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Michael
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Good afternoon all,

If you have this iMac could you let me know how it is for photo editing pls?

Thanks

Michael.
 
robinsslee said:
My 4 years old imac is doing well, a bit slow on the latest adobe photoshop and LR cc as many has complaint about the similar issues online. No doubt the new one would be quicker.

Mine only has 8gb ram and always running a few apps on the background whilst doing editing on both photoshop and LR.
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What specs does your iMac have pls?
 
I have the higher spec 3.3ghz, 3gb fusion drive version.

In terms of LR/PS it will be more than fine, the thing that would put me off is the 1TB fusion drive which only has a TINY SSD in it, barely enough for the OS.
 
Nawty said:
I have the higher spec 3.3ghz, 3gb fusion drive version.

In terms of LR/PS it will be more than fine, the thing that would put me off is the 1TB fusion drive which only has a TINY SSD in it, barely enough for the OS.
Click to expand...

I contacted Apple and they said that it's 8gb and the OS should only take 2.6 and LR and PS are about 2GB so hopefully should be fine.
 
Apple were telling me that it'll move it to flash if it's used more!?!?
 
I have the 2014 version, 8Gb RAM and 1Tb Fusion drive.

Drive speed is fine, 8GB is too small; LR frequently causes memory to the compressed and swapped out when working on any batch processes - you see the slow down; typically gets 3/4 way through the process in no time, and then grinds to a halt for the last 1/4.

Bought and additional 16GB from Crucial for £85, making 24Gb in total - very different experience.
 
I have that exact MAC, well almost I put and extra 8GB of RAM in it, and find if fine for editing in both LR and PS. Sometimes it does give me the beachball every so often but i am not sure if that because i run my LR catalog on an external HDD. The screen is spot on and it looks good on the desk!!

Hope that helps
 
Thanks for the quick feedback everyone, most helpful.
 
I have the 2Tb 4 GHz version and it works fine. I replaced my aged 2009 Imac mainly due to video work. My previous slower machine worked fine with both PS and Lightroom. The model you are looking at should be fine. Up the memory to about 16Gb for a bit of a performance hike. Also look at adding a SSD via the USB ports for a speed boost
 
mine is the same (more or less) but 2013 model.
If you're having troubles ( I can't see where you say what they are) then the things I have noticed slow mine down are being attached to an external hard drive while editing. If the external HD has spun down it takes ages sometimes waiting for it to wake up
Other than that I have 24GB RAM which is a minimum if you want to use photoshop and other programs without slow downs IMO
I have the 50MB files from the 5DsR and while I notice a bit of a slow down from when I had the 25MB files from the 5Dmk2 it is still generally quick enough not to annoy me.

I use Lightroom and photoshop mostly
There are certain bugs in software programs which can slow things down if you haven't got the updates or patches
maybe tell us more about the nature of the problem?
 
Nawty said:
I have the higher spec 3.3ghz, 3gb fusion drive version.

In terms of LR/PS it will be more than fine, the thing that would put me off is the 1TB fusion drive which only has a TINY SSD in it, barely enough for the OS.
Click to expand...

My 1TB fusion works like a charm. The SSD may be small but OS X puts it to good use and I'm more than happy with performance.
 
I purchased a 5k and it's quite the improvement on the 6 year dual core. Very happy and have put LR on an external HDD via USB 3 and it transfers nice a quick. I can concentrate on taking photos now.
 
I have the late 2015 5k with i7 4ghz and 3TB fusion drive and 32GB RAM and the 4GB graphics card. Even this is a bit slow at running Lightroom.
 
My work iMac 5k screen is very impressive. I have not used it for editing, though I've found my home (pre-5k) iMac (i7 3.4ghz) perfectly capable, though I use Aperture rather than lightroom.
 
I have the exact spec with 16GB RAM and it's terribly slow when using LR. This is my second machine under the 30 day returns policy and this one looks like it's going back too
 
minnnt said:
Really?
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Don't forgot heat will very quickly get the better of those components so tightly squeezed into a slim screen with inadequate cooling. Whilst these have desktop chips they will operate at lower core speeds and be noticeably slower than a proper desktop overclocked equivalent.
 
Oh yeah I fully understand that, but the slowness surprises me. My Mac Mini speeds along and doesn't seem to slow down no matter how long it's been on. I guess everyone's perception of speed is different but everything I ask of it it seems to do pretty much instantaneous.
 
I was going to go the iMac route just before Christmas but couldn't justify £1800 for one so I built my own for half the price.
OK the iMac has a 4K screen and mine has a 2K screen (a Dell colour calibrated 27"), but where I gained was in the disk, memory and graphics.

to be honest it was way easier than I thought it would be and I had the option of choosing my own components, picking the best of the bunch from them all.
 
Scotty Pro said:
I was going to go the iMac route just before Christmas but couldn't justify £1800 for one so I built my own for half the price.
OK the iMac has a 4K screen and mine has a 2K screen (a Dell colour calibrated 27"), but where I gained was in the disk, memory and graphics.

to be honest it was way easier than I thought it would be and I had the option of choosing my own components, picking the best of the bunch from them all.
Click to expand...
I'd still prefer a good lower res display than being stuck with that horrid gloss apple slap over theirs.

Serviceability and longevity will be better too.
 
minnnt said:
Oh yeah I fully understand that, but the slowness surprises me. My Mac Mini speeds along and doesn't seem to slow down no matter how long it's been on. I guess everyone's perception of speed is different but everything I ask of it it seems to do pretty much instantaneous.
Click to expand...

IF your new iMac is running slower than Mac mini then there is probably either dead components or more likely some incompatible software
If you run flash on new Macs it doesn't seem to like it, things like that can slow it down.


A new Mac should run really well so if yours I that slow there is something wrong definitely - its not normal
:)
 
Michael Batten said:
I purchased a 5k and it's quite the improvement on the 6 year dual core. Very happy and have put LR on an external HDD via USB 3 and it transfers nice a quick. I can concentrate on taking photos now.
Click to expand...


I have a 2013 iMac and it runs really fast with LR on the iMac itself (boot volume)-
3.5 GHz Intel Core i7-
24 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

You should get as much ram as you can afford, it makes all the difference.
The only times I have had problems is when LR or Photoshop had bugs (like the white window problem etc-fixed with patches and updates from Adobe)
the only time it slows is when it needs to access the external HDs for archived images and when the external Has have dozed off as they do occasionally because I have set in preferences to spin down external HDs when possible (so they last longer)
 
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My late 2009 iMac runs LR pretty slowly too. It's dual core with 16gb ram and ssd. Any suggestions to improve that or time to upgrade?
 
Personally, I wouldn't buy the 1TB fusion due to the small SSD portion. However, I played with it in an Apple store and found it is not that bad.

The reason why SSD/FD is faster is latencies (much more than transfer speed). Even the tiny SSD portion of 1TB fusion helps a lot to hide write latencies and the OS tries hard to optimise reads. It is not as efficient as the bigger fusion or pure SSD, but hundred times better than HDD only.
 
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Mine is the fusion drive and it whistles along
IMO and IM no expert but I did read a lot before buying, you do need the extra RAM> I decided 16 wasn't enough, but 24 does cut it, I believe it makes all the diff
 
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