Will the MacBook Pro 2015 handle Lightroom and photoshop?

Chilt

Chilt

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Nick
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So I’m after a laptop, liking the look of the MacBooks, now there’s a few options.. I know 16gb of ram would be better but would I be able to get good results with only 8gb? And the i7 is better but would the i5 work well also? I’m not great with computers you see.

Thanks for any help
Nick
 
I think 8gb will be a bit slow and with i5 not fast but workable.

Depends on how much editing you do to the images, do you stitch, do complex colour adjustments, focus stack multiple frames, blend multi exposures etc - if so I don't think it'll be powerful enough. If it's more basic editing and it's not massive camera RAWs it will be ok.
 
I have a 13" 2017 MacBook Pro with an i5 processer and 8gb ram, and it works perfectly well enough for me. I've not once thought it was too slow. But then my other machine that I'm comparing it to is a 2010 iMac, and that's slower than a tortoise with no legs, and takes ages just to display a photo in LR, so who knows!
 
My main editing machine is a 2013 MBP 15" with a 2.6 Ghz i7 processor of whatever vairant of processor Apple were using back in late 2012. I upgraded memory from 8gb to 16gb and fitted a 1tb SSD. Its fast enough.

Could be faster in some ways but for editing / photoshop, its quicker at doing its bits than I am at my bits so I don't notice any lag or slowdown - I'm the bottleneck.
 
It'll work, but there are things that put more pressure on your computer. For example, larger high res images, extensive layers. Multiple images open at the same time. Basically the more apps running at the same time (lots of Photoshop plugins and Lightroom all open together) typically make your machine feel like its going slower (if you use too much RAM).

A bit of a dodgy analogy:
You can think of RAM like a Worktop - it is a fairly small size compared with all the cupboards, but you can work on things quickly that are in front of you. If you can fit everything you want to work with at the same time on the worktop, then you can access them all quickly and all works well. However when you start trying to put lots of things on the Worktop is gets too full, you then need to take somethings off the Worktop, and put them back in the Cupboard (disk Storage) which takes time. Then if you need them back you need to start putting others back in the cupboard and swapping what is on the worktop.
 
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I had a 2015 i7 with 16gb ram. Ran LR and PS absolutely fine. I had a large catalogue and it loaded instantly. Edits were instant.
I upgraded to the new 16 inch as I have started doing a lot of 4k video and the 2015 couldnt cope with that.
 
Yes, it will cope, but be careful not to spend a lot on 5YO technology. IIRC there's no way to upgrade this series of Mac's, so don't buy anything with a low spec, hoping to make it better.
 
I have a 2014 & 2015 macbook pro. Both have I7, 16gb RAM, & 512SSD. Love them
 
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