MacBook Air for LR editing

roc1

roc1

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Hi,

I'm going to need a MacBook Air (or would consider pro) for LR wedding image editing when working away from my office. I'd keep all the raw and processed images on an external rugged drive, but my main concern is whether the air would be powerful enough to use for this purpose?

If I could get some advice on what sort of spec I should be looking at getting (either for the air or pro) that would be great. Think I'd ideally want the air for portability reasons but happy to keep an open mind.

Thanks!


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I can't speak to LR, but I'm happily using my mid-2011 MacBook Air (1.8GHz i7, 4GB RAM) to post process photos using Aperture.

That said, the displays on the Air are very sensitive to pressure on the other side of the lid which, being an Air, isn't very thick at all. I had several bright spots on the screen caused by pressure damage that I got repaired under warranty, but 18 months on I have the same problem and now it's a more expensive repair job. Needless to say, bright spots on the screen makes PP work more difficult than it should be.

I've recently been given a new 13" Retina MacBook Pro for work purposes, and it's so much lighter and thinner than the previous MBPs that it virtually qualifies as an Air. If I had to go out and buy a portable Mac today, I'd get the 13" Retina MacBook Pro upgraded to 2.8GHz i7 and a full 16GB RAM.
 
roc1 said:
Hi,

I'm going to need a MacBook Air (or would consider pro) for LR wedding image editing when working away from my office. I'd keep all the raw and processed images on an external rugged drive, but my main concern is whether the air would be powerful enough to use for this purpose?

If I could get some advice on what sort of spec I should be looking at getting (either for the air or pro) that would be great. Think I'd ideally want the air for portability reasons but happy to keep an open mind.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I do. I have the smallest MacBook Air and I run my library from a Western Digital Passport. I find it absolutely fine for this purpose. I don't do any final colour proofing or critical retouching on this screen, but it's portability is certainly a huge plus.
 
Thanks for the replies! I'll take a look at the pro and air in the flesh to see how they compare size wise. Sounds like they are powerful enough to cope especially if I go for 8gb+ and ssd
 
Looked at the Air aa couple of years ago to replace my 3 year old MBP. It was OK the only advantage was battery life that was my main reason for considering it. Any decided not to go ahead, but bout the Retina MBP in July last year. Screen is much better and calibrated easily ( something I wasn't sure the Air could do. Even straight out of the box the rMBP has an excellent screen . Calibrated it matches my iMac, something the earlier MBP couldn't do. (Almost but not quite ).

Lightroom and Photoshop run fine on it as does Final Cut Pro
 
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