Considering a maxed-out 2012 Mini for Lightroom, Photography business

[Mojo1]

I'm all for doing it yourself but when it comes to adding an SSD to a Mini I think that paying Apple a premium to upgrade the drive may be a wise choice for some people.

Here is an OWC video that shows how to install an SSD: http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/mac_mini2012_hd/. If you feel comfortable doing it then you can save some $$$ and install a larger SSD if that suits you.

After watching the video I'm still on the fence about doing it myself. If I did it I would forgo installing the SSD as a second drive and I would use the stock drive as an external backup. Fortunately, I am happy with the stock drive configuration. Speeding-up boot and app launching times isn't important to me. I spent the $150 on a new OWC external enclosure/drive that I really need.

Frankly, I haven't been able to locate a definitive statement from Apple regarding whether installing an SSD yourself will void the warranty (but I didn't spend a lot of time searching either...) If someone can provide something other than an opinion on the matter I'd appreciate a link to the information...

 

[chouseworth]

I am not handy with tools at all and leave most large household jobs to contractors. But that said, I was able to do the HDD replacement that you are contemplating, and it was not hard at all to do. The video was very helpful and spot on as far as to what to look for. My only other advice would be to keep good track of which screws came out of which holes. Take your time and you should be fine. By the way, I am also a hobbyist photographer and use Lightroom and CS6 extensively. They fly on the Mac Mini with the SSD installed. Good luck.

 

[Cave Man]

My experience was bit different, initially when I started with LR3 I also worked with Aperture 3.0 on my Macbook Pro and for me Aperture was slow compared to LR3.

Which gpu does your MBP have? OpenCL has improved substantially for both Aperture and Lion/Mountain Lion.

So I went with LR3 and now on LR4. I'll tell you this you will find tons of more resources for LR4 compared to Aperture online.

I'm not sure what I'm missing. Between Aperture and the Nik suite, I really don't need much else. What do you use in LR that's not available for Aperture?

 

[mjoshi123]

Which gpu does your MBP have? OpenCL has improved substantially for both Aperture and Lion/Mountain Lion.



I'm not sure what I'm missing. Between Aperture and the Nik suite, I really don't need much else. What do you use in LR that's not available for Aperture?

I've 2010 MBP with Nvidia discrete GPU with 512MB RAM.

 

[jimmy83]

Finally got my Mac mini yesterday

I intended to setup the LR catalogue on an external HDD, but it does look like you can

I dont really want to put the catalogue on the internal drive as that will soon fill up. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[mikeycol]

why cant you? I dont understand! I have it setup like that

 

[jimmy83]

why cant you? I dont understand! I have it setup like that

Lightroom cannot create a catalog named “Lightroom 4 Catalog” on volume “/Volumes/HD-LBU2/Lightroom 4 Catalog” because Lightroom cannot save changes to this location.

Lightroom Catalogs can not be opened on network volumes, removable storage, or read only volumes.

Thats the error I get, I think its because you have to set the catalogue to an internal HDD. But then you can save the photos to any HDD you want including external drives. Well thats my understanding of it.

 

[Mojo1]

Aperture has a "library" that I assume is the functional equivalent of a Lightroom catalog. If you don't store your image files in the library it will be a lot smaller than if images were stored inside it. LR should be similar.

I don't know if Aperture can access a library on an external drive and I don't know why I would want to do so. There are advantages to having all your libraries accessible on the internal drive. And with internal drives being so large these days (except for the smaller SSDs...) it would take a very long time for library/catalog to fill up a drive.

 

[Cave Man]

Lightroom cannot create a catalog named “Lightroom 4 Catalog” on volume “/Volumes/HD-LBU2/Lightroom 4 Catalog” because Lightroom cannot save changes to this location.

Lightroom Catalogs can not be opened on network volumes, removable storage, or read only volumes.

By chance is your external drive initialized as an NTFS volume? An external drive should not be considered the first two. But if you bought the drive as a retail package it was likely initialized as an NTFS volume before packaging. OS X cannot natively write to NTFS volumes.

 

[jimmy83]

By chance is your external drive initialized as an NTFS volume? An external drive should not be considered the first two. But if you bought the drive as a retail package it was likely initialized as an NTFS volume before packaging. OS X cannot natively write to NTFS volumes.

Ah yes, cheers Cave man, your right. Iam switching from Win7, so still learning the rope to OS X. Thanks

 

[blanka]

Don't get that HP. It is horrible for photography. Together with the Dell 2410 these are wide gamut displays that work horrible in simulated sRGB. If you like to work all the time in AdobeRGB, you might try it, but the monitor is no match for the current generation with 3D lut's. Also the contrast is bad. Go after a Dell U2713H or a NEC PA271W.

 

[Cave Man]

Ah yes, cheers Cave man, your right. Iam switching from Win7, so still learning the rope to OS X. Thanks

Are you familiar with reinitializing a drive to OS X? In Disk Utility you must choose the drive and not the volume that is below the drive's name and indented. Once you click on the drive's name, the Partition tab should appear in Disk Utility. Click on that, then choose one partition, set to OS X volume with journaling enabled and case insensitive. Also, click the Options button and make sure the partition map is set to GUID. After that, just initialize the drive and and it should work for your LR library.

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Don't get that HP. It is horrible for photography.

"Horrible" is over the the top. The HP is a fine display

 

[Exodist]

Well lot of debate going on here. I am not about to jump in and try to argue with anyone as I see valid arguments everywhere. Not to mention my wife and I are just hobbyist in this field and still learning. Our main camera is a Canon Rebel EOS T3i, but its the lens, filters and flash that we have most money invested.

Now I am using a Mac mini now. Using Lightroom 4.2 mostly. What little effects I do on photos I use GIMP. I know I will prob get flamed, but I been using GIMP since late 1990's. To put it softly I am damn awesome with it. But its fraking slow.

If I was a pro with time constraints I would use Photoshop. Now recently the past year or two I believe. Photoshop did start adding support for GPUs to help offload rendering. I tried it out and was impressed when using it with a NV GTX560. Now question is how well does it make use of the HD4000 iGPU over the nVidia cards? Just because the 560 is much faster then intel offerings, doesnt directly mean Photoshop is making full use of the nvidia one. Then again it may. I am not making that call.

Now as far as the system goes, 2.6GHz is just a 100USD upgrade. IMHO Thats what I went with and it felt worth it, that 300Mhz boost over 4 cores per se. RAM, The cost of RAM apple is asking for is steep IMHO and sure many will agree. Corsair Vengence is only 99 bucks for 16GB of DDR3-1600 and I consider it the crown jewel of ram. So just to get a running unit ready to go, I went with the 100dollar 8GB setup. Though I recommend 16GB for any heavy video or photography. I also recommend keeping the 5400RPM drive in the system and replacing it yourself. I have a 256GB Samsung 830 series I am shoving in this ones place soon. I recommend the newer 840series and getting the 512GB version for about 250ish bucks. Well worth it and just use the older 1TB HDD in a 2.5 external enclosure for backups. That what I am going to do, but each their own.

Overall, I feel the Mac Mini is very suited to photo editing. Sure there may be slightly faster alternatives out there. But all in all are they worth the extra price? IMHO a moderately speed CPU, good amount of ram paired with a speedy SSD and a really good quality video display is what counts the most.

Also just to point something out, I am not making a claim here. But from what I have read even the iMacs and MBP ONLY use the nVidia chipsets when rendering 3D applications. The rest of the time they use the iGPU on the CPU. This per apples own website. SO I am not saying PS does or doesnt use the iGPU, but its something to question before making your decision over what does or does not come with a extra video chipset. IMHO..

Exo

 

[Cave Man]

Now I am using a Mac mini now. Using Lightroom 4.2 mostly. What little effects I do on photos I use GIMP. I know I will prob get flamed, but I been using GIMP since late 1990's. To put it softly I am damn awesome with it. But its fraking slow.

The GIMP isn't bad, but you should try Pixelmator. It is screaming fast compared to any other photo processing app outside of the NSA.

Photoshop did start adding support for GPUs to help offload rendering. I tried it out and was impressed when using it with a NV GTX560. Now question is how well does it make use of the HD4000 iGPU over the nVidia cards?

Have you looked at the list of gpu-accelerated functions of Photoshop? They are few and far between, and almost none of them are used by most people on a regular basis. Pixelmator is far faster than Photoshop. The principal "bad thing" about Pixelmator is its inability to save 16-bit files (8-bit only). Fine for final products, but not if you're doing a lot of editing (e.g., highlight or shadow recovery).

 

[Exodist]

The GIMP isn't bad, but you should try Pixelmator. It is screaming fast compared to any other photo processing app outside of the NSA.

I was glimpsing over it the other day. First thought was GIMP clone, but since you mentioned it I will look at it again.

Have you looked at the list of gpu-accelerated functions of Photoshop? They are few and far between, and almost none of them are used by most people on a regular basis. Pixelmator is far faster than Photoshop. The principal "bad thing" about Pixelmator is its inability to save 16-bit files (8-bit only). Fine for final products, but not if you're doing a lot of editing (e.g., highlight or shadow recovery).

Never looked at a list, so glad you have had more more experience with it as I wasnt for sure what was execrated and/or how much of the video card was used.

So basicly chunk extra RAM in a Mac Mini and it should be as able as any other mac to run LR and PS smoothly..

Cheers,
Joe

 

[output555]

I have a Late 2012 2.3GHZ Mini w/8 Gb of ram. Lightroom 4.x works fine but I shoot M43 and my raw file size is approx. 25 Mb each.

If you are a Pro I presume that you are shooting FF and the new Nikon D800 has 75 Mb files.

If I were shooting FF as a Pro, who will be doing post processing on thousands of files, I would NOT buy a Mini. I would get a computer with the best dedicated video card that I could afford.

The Mini's strength is not graphic processing. Photos and video processing are becoming much more intensive as the file size increase.

The computer is a tool that should fit the job, just like selecting the correct lens for the shoot really matters.

I think you may be confusing what a CPU and GPU do when working in Photoshop. Most common tasks in PS are only CPU intensive and require virtually no GPU processing. Therefore, if the OP is processing 100s or even 1000s of large files in LR or PS he should only be concerned with CPU power. Whereas if he was doing a lot of video editing, animation or 3D gaming, then the GPU would be critical. So, for the OP (and you) the Mini's wimpy GPU should be more than adequate. The Mini's i7 CPU is as powerful as all but the top-of-the-line late-2012 iMacs.

For more information, check out macperformanceguide.com

 

[gnopx]

I use a 2.6ghz i7 mini, 16gb corsair vengeance and apple aka 830 ssd 256gb, my lightroom library on external usb3 drive.

After change gpu settings to basic in photoshop everything is fine, 5dmk2 raw and 2-3gb 16bit psd.... Not as good as my previus pc (i7 3770k and nvidia quadro) but just fine...

 

[joeink]

No.

For weddings any computer is fast enough (and any camera is good enough, including an iPhone 3G). They can live with 4 mpixel pictures as long as there is one very high quality print with the "happy" couple including full gown and shoes. Woman that got married are not interested in the pictures. They just want prove the dress looked gorgeous on them.

This is the type of extreme statement that comes along at right about this time in any thread regarding photography.
Really, think about what you're saying before you try to make whatever point you're trying to make.
If you were attempting to edit RAW file from a 5D MKIII on an iBook G3, how do you think that would go? And just how happy do you suppose a bride would really be with a photo captured for all time with the (not) extraordinary optics of an iPhone 3G?
If you're trying to make the point that it's the person behind the camera and not the camera, fine. If you're trying to make the point that wedding photography isn't as fine an art as other forms of photography, fine. I only partially agree on the first part, as shooting with a MK III and a 85mm 1.2L in even remotely capable hands will trump whatever the greatest photographer can get out of an iPhone, and I disagree with the second completely.
Again, if you're wishing to make a point, just try to do it in ways that are less ludicrous. That's all anyone would ask.

 

[blanka]

The HP is a fine display

Fine for gaming yes, with poppy colours. MAME shines on it. But for colour accurate work it is horror.

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I only partially agree on the first part, as shooting with a MK III and a 85mm 1.2L in even remotely capable hands will trump whatever the greatest photographer can get out of an iPhone, and I disagree with the second completely.

Give the following a try: use the same camera, but put it on S-RAW or M-RAW and do a wedding shoot. I bet nobody will notice but your iBook. The nook will fly through your shoot, while it would crash on full resolution. The main reason why I never take out my D800 for a wedding. The only sucks-feature of the D800 is that is misses low-res RAW like the Canon offers. It is 36mpixel or nothing.

 

[Cave Man]

Fine for gaming yes, with poppy colours. MAME shines on it. But for colour accurate work it is horror.

You're mistaken. If it's calibrated, it's calibrated. The HP has covers sRGB with an S-IPS panel that is perfectly fine for high quality photo work. Have you even used one?

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

You're mistaken.

No.

If it's calibrated, it's calibrated.

No.

The HP has covers sRGB with an S-IPS panel that is perfectly fine for high quality photo work. Have you even used one?

You confuse probably AdobeRGB with sRGB.