Aperture 2 - Performance on MacBookPro?

[Pete80]

Has anyone tried running Aperture 2 on the MacBookPro, with either the internal or a larger external screen? If so how is the performance?

I am considering either that or Lightroom, the lower cost of Aperture is preferable but I'd rather spend the extra if LR is significantly faster.

NB I would love to try the demo but haven't got a Mac yet. I've tried Aperture 1.5 on a friend's 2.33 iMac, I thought it felt a little sluggish to me.

Thanks,
Pete

 

[Grimace]

Download the demo, that would probably be more accurate than our subjective remarks.

Aperture is always "sluggish" - to the degree that you find it acceptable is pretty personal.

 

[Roy Hobbs]

2 runs much better than 1.5 regardless of hardware.

 

[yaroldb]

I have a first gen Macbook 2.0 with 2gb of ram and am blown away by how fast 2.0 is. It is much faster than 1.5. I really like the new set up, it just seems more intuitive. Granted I have not hooked up a second monitor just yet. I can’t image it slowing it down any. Get the trail and give it a shot.

 

[ChrisA]

Has anyone tried running Aperture 2 on the MacBookPro, with either the internal or a larger external screen? If so how is the performance?

I am considering either that or Lightroom, the lower cost of Aperture is preferable but I'd rather spend the extra if LR is significantly faster.

NB I would love to try the demo but haven't got a Mac yet. I've tried Aperture 1.5 on a friend's 2.33 iMac, I thought it felt a little sluggish to me.

Thanks,
Pete

The new 2.0 seems to run "fast enough" on my iMac. Imacs and MBP have the same "guts" inside. I woud base the decision on which to use based on the user interface and workflow and pior experiance. If you are used to working with Bridge and Camera Raw you will like LR but then LR imposes it's own workflow on you while Aperture does not "rail road" your workflow. You just have to try each.

What I did was make a new user account on my Mac. Call it "Test". That way I have an isolated test setup and I can change Preferences for for the user "Test". Use it for the full 30 day evaluation period. I would not recommend using either Aperture or LR for real work in a real account until you have spend some time using it, reading the user manuals and watching the videos. Make a couple test accounts so preference setting do not mess up your real account settings

 

[Maui]

I have about 10K images in my Aperture library. It runs with zero delay on my Mac Pro. On my MacBook Pro (C2D, 2.2 GHz, 4GB), there is some slight, I'll call it, hesitation when I edit D300 RAW images, but not enough to really bother me. There is no hesitation on jpg's.

 

[zioxide]

I have about 10K images in my Aperture library. It runs with zero delay on my Mac Pro. On my MacBook Pro (C2D, 2.2 GHz, 4GB), there is some slight, I'll call it, hesitation when I edit D300 RAW images, but not enough to really bother me. There is no hesitation on jpg's.

That's because of the slow internal hard drive (in the MBP). Performance in Aperture and Lightroom are both going to suffer because of it. If you put your library on a FW800 external, you'll get better performance.

 

[Binford]

At best I would say its about what your threshold is for lag.

I'm not exactly a speed freak, but i couldn't deal with it on my mbp 2.16ghz, and find it reasonable at best on my new mac pro. or put anther way, even on my dual quad core mac pro i'm satisfied, but not super thrilled.

 

[djejrejk]

Has anyone tried running Aperture 2 on the MacBookPro, with either the internal or a larger external screen? If so how is the performance?

I am considering either that or Lightroom, the lower cost of Aperture is preferable but I'd rather spend the extra if LR is significantly faster.

NB I would love to try the demo but haven't got a Mac yet. I've tried Aperture 1.5 on a friend's 2.33 iMac, I thought it felt a little sluggish to me.

Thanks,
Pete

I have a 2.33 MBP with 2gigs of ram,.. works great for me but I upgraded to a 7200 RPM drive.

Aperture 2 seems to run even better than lightroom as well (IMO). Try if out, you probably won't be disappointed.

I am also not shooting with a D300.. my files are 3-8 MB

 

[Keebler]

snapping pics of the lunar eclipse

Hi,

As the title says, it should be a solid night to snap a pic of this eclipse...anything to know before I do? I know there must be...

Cheers,
Keebler

 

[ChrisA]

Hi,

As the title says, it should be a solid night to snap a pic of this eclipse...anything to know before I do? I know there must be...

The trick to taking pictures of the moon is to remember that the lit surface of the moon is in the same light as the daytime Earth. So a typical exposure that would work on a bright sunlit Earth works for the moon.

You automatic matrix meter will not work. It will see a hole lot of black sky and a little noon and try and average the two.

If you limit the exposure times to something fast like 1/250th second you do not need a tracking mount evwen with a telephoto lens

I'll bet hundreds of clueless photographers will try and use a flash because it is dark.

 

[juanm]

Hi,

As the title says, it should be a solid night to snap a pic of this eclipse...anything to know before I do? I know there must be...

Cheers,
Keebler

You'll want 300mm at least for a DX sized sensor.
If you have it, use the spot metering, and try overexposing ~2/3 stop. If not, take a sunlight exposure as a base, do a small bracketing, and choose the best one.
Important: During the eclipse, the exposure gets MUCH longer, so you'll need a tripod as soon as the moon gets red.

Don't expect marvels. At best, with a sharp lens, you'll get something big enough to fill half a laptop screen when seen at 100%

 

[OreoCookie]

It's much, much faster.
You have a preview mode: instead of rendering each of the RAW files, it will use jpg previews instead. (By the way, that's what Lightroom does by default.) That's a lot faster if you shoot RAW.

I find it a noticeable improvement over Aperture 1.5.6 on my first-gen ProBook (2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB 5.4k drive).

 

[Binford]

I have a 2.33 MBP with 2gigs of ram,.. works great for me but I upgraded to a 7200 RPM drive.

Aperture 2 seems to run even better than lightroom as well (IMO). Try if out, you probably won't be disappointed.

I am also not shooting with a D300.. my files are 3-8 MB

ahhh i was considering just upgrading my mbp to a 7200rpm drive. has it made a big difference?

oh yeah, i always forget to mention i'm proccessing raw files from a d300, guessthat's definetlya huge difference between processing smaller files.

 

[OreoCookie]

ahhh i was considering just upgrading my mbp to a 7200rpm drive. has it made a big difference?

I've had a 7.2k drive before and the answer is `it depends'.
It depends on the capacity of the drives and the size of your library. I had a 100 GB 7.2k drive before which was filled to the brim (~95-97 %). Because all new data is written on the slowest part of the drive, the performance was meh. With my 250 GB drive (~50 % full), it's much faster, because my library resides in the faster parts of the drive.

A fast drive is only as useful as its capacity allows. In my case I've seen a speedup going to a drive that's about as fast as the old drive in synthetic benchmarks (because it has more than twice the capacity).

 

[Whorehay]

I have 13.5MB RAW files from my Oly. Too big to run on Aperture on a stock 2.2 MBP? I'm looking for a new way to organize my photos.

 

[Binford]

I have 13.5MB RAW files from my Oly. Too big to run on Aperture on a stock 2.2 MBP? I'm looking for a new way to organize my photos.

i woudln't say its too slow at all. but maybe not exactly fast? haah i think it all comes down to preference and what you really consider slow and fast. i'm sure u'll be okay though, but i'll let others comment on this!

 

[Evangelion]

Has anyone tried running Aperture 2 on the MacBookPro, with either the internal or a larger external screen? If so how is the performance?

I have 2.4GHz MBP with 2gigs of RAM and 1280x1024 screen in addition to the internal screen. The internal screen has the main Aperture app-window, while the external screen displays the selected image. Aperture 1.5 runs just fine. True, the app is a bit sluggish by default, but if we take that in to account, there are no issues in running it on a MBP.

And 2.0 is supposedly considerably snappier .

EDIT: D'oh! I didn't notice that the question was specificly about Aperture 2, and not Aperture in general....

 

[djejrejk]

ahhh i was considering just upgrading my mbp to a 7200rpm drive. has it made a big difference?

oh yeah, i always forget to mention i'm proccessing raw files from a d300, guessthat's definetlya huge difference between processing smaller files.

The 7200 rpm drive does make a very noticeable difference, however the best way to speed things up is probably to store your library on an external 7200 rpm FW 800 drive.

 

[live4ever]

Version 2 is faster on my 1.33GHz G4 PowerBook than 1.5 was.