iMac Pro iMac Pro for Photographer

[bigbadneil]

I am a photographer that works with a large 100 megapixel camera. I like to take landscapes with maybe 5 x 100 megapixels images stitched together in photoshop. I will plan to store my files on external hard drives and the cloud.
All my other work is mail and surfing the net.
What configuration would you recommend for me
Neil

 

[Bradleyone]

The base model would handle this just fine, and there are some nice "off the shelf" discounts starting to appear.

Otherwise, base iMac Pro + 64GB (to let Photoshop go nuts with) + 2TB SSD (for storing the large megapixel files), if the budget allows.

 

[Redneck1089]

I am a photographer who also uses the iMac Pro. I don't work with medium format files, as it appears you're wanting to do, but I do work with files from the Canon 5DsR, 1DX2, and 5DIV on a regular basis. I went for the 10-core, 64GB RAM, 16GB Vega, and 1TB SSD configuration.

I used to use the Classic Mac Pro 6-core and Trashcan Mac Pro 6-core (for travel) in conjunction. I can tell you right now, the iMac Pro blows them both away. Photoshop is very very fast, and Lightroom doesn't ever seem to lag anymore. It's terrific. Working with the 1DX2 4K codec is also much easier now too.

For your needs, I'd definitely get 64GB of RAM, 16GB Vega. The CPU will be fine either with 8 or 10 cores, and the SSD is really subjective; how much do you want to store on your main drive?

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

I would recommend an upgraded standard 27" iMac.

You'll see an improvement when using Adobe Camera Raw on the iMac Pro, but it likely won't be worth the price difference, or the worse single-core app performance.

The iMac Pro only really makes sense when crunching through large datasets.

Example: I did a photogrammetry run yesterday on my 10-Core, 128GB iMP where I ran three sets of eighty-four 24 megapixel images through Adobe Camera Raw, and then After Effects for blue-screen masking (used 74GB of RAM per run), saved them out, and then fed all 252 16-bit TIFF images (and their JPEG masks) into Agisoft Photoscan, where I topped out at 92.4GB of RAM use (just for that app), and 79% CPU utilization while building the point cloud over the course of 8 hours. Building the mesh took another 2 hours.

On any computer with less RAM/Cores, it would have taken days to complete.

 

[BigJohno]

The standard config 8 core with 64gb ram would be fine for what you are doing. The question is, what are you working on now?

I'm also a photographer and while not shooting with a 100mp camera I do work with a7rii 43mp files. Sometimes my workflow includes 100+ gb of timelapse to render, stills, and landscape panos. I had to move to a Ryzen 8 core system because the standard imac 5k just wasn't powerful enough (prior to imac pro announcment + im waiting for mythical mac pro update). The imac pro 8 core is even faster so I don't think you will run into any issues with the base model.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

For your needs, I'd definitely get 64GB of RAM, 16GB Vega. The CPU will be fine either with 8 or 10 cores, and the SSD is really subjective; how much do you want to store on your main drive?

Fellow working photographer here. I couldn’t agree more with this advice. It is spot on.

 

[h9826790]

For Photoshop, my understanding is that you need

The fastest CPU (highest clock speed, not core count)
Lots of RAM (if you need to deal with large size image)
Lowest latency SSD (more or less the same for most NVMe SSD)

GPU performance is not that relevant. Only few filters can use GPU acceleration. And the performance difference is a matter of second, not that significant overall.

So, if for any reason you want the iMac Pro but not the normal iMac. Go for the fastest turbo boost CPU, disregard the core count (they are all way more than enough for Photoshop).

GPU doesn't really matter, both are overkill

If you plan to use external storage, this can become a huge bottleneck and slow down everything, which totally defeat the purpose of spending so much money on an iMac Pro, you better think twice before doing that. Of course, if just for storage, and you always keep your current project on the internal drive, then everything will be fine.

RAM, as much as you can afford (unless you plan to void the warranty and upgrade it by yourself).

TBH, it make much more sense to buy the iMac (not pro), Quad core i7 Turbo 4.5GHz (and can really reach 4.5. So far, I haven't seen a capture that the 10 core iMac Pro can really reach that speed), 64GB RAM (can upgrade by yourself to lower the cost), 1TB SSD (or above as per your usage). This should give you a virtually same Photoshop performance machine as an iMac Pro (10 core turbo 4.5GHz, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Verga 56), but ~25% cheaper.

Of course, if money is not an issue, then I will go for iMac Pro, with 128GB RAM and Vega 64. Just in case Adobe update their apps to benefit from more from GPU acceleration and more VRAM. Also, 128GB RAM can help to let most recently used data stay in the RAM as cache to further speed up the whole process.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

I would go with either a maxed out 5K iMac with the at least a 1TB ssd or the base imac pro with 64gb RAM and maybe the vega 64 but that's only for when you inevitably get into 4K video.

 

[bigbadneil]

Wow loads of advice here. My current machine is a 2012 Mac Pro with 64 GB RAM but it’s slow now when I start stitching Leica S007 files. I think I will go with the iMac Pro base with 64GB and the Vega........ not sure what that does but everyone is recommending it
Neil

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Do you live anywhere within reasonable distance of a brick-n-mortar "MicroCenter" store?
Right now, they're offering the "base" iMac Pro for $1,000 off. The "catch" is that you have to pick it up "in the store".
Might be worth driving a few hours for...

 

[bigbadneil]

OP:

Do you live anywhere within reasonable distance of a brick-n-mortar "MicroCenter" store?
Right now, they're offering the "base" iMac Pro for $1,000 off. The "catch" is that you have to pick it up "in the store".
Might be worth driving a few hours for...

I live in Phuket Thailand....... no such offers here

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

I would go with either a maxed out 5K iMac with the at least a 1TB ssd or the base imac pro with 64gb RAM and maybe the vega 64 but that's only for when you inevitably get into 4K video.

Even 64GB of RAM may be overkill for his needs. I just created 5 unique 10MP images in Photoshop on my 10-core 128GB iMac Pro, expanded the first to 400% of its original width, and copied the last 4 into the first one (twice) to represent alignment and retouching work, while leaving all images open. I didn't purge the undos.

Photoshop's scratch size meter never went over 14.5GB, and the Activity monitor says 13.27GB, with a 21.3 GB swap. Mind you, Photoshop didn't have to swap on this system as I gave it all the RAM. But Photoshop is an OLD piece of software that was born back when 128 megabytes of RAM was a big expensive deal. It's really not well optimized at all. Every paint stroke, for instance, causes a complete screen redraw.

The CPU meter also barely budged just two cores. So I think he'll see a lot better performance from a 32GB i7 iMac. Heck, my late 2015 i7 iMac with 24GB of RAM would probably work just fine for him.
[doublepost=1516205549][/doublepost]

Wow loads of advice here. My current machine is a 2012 Mac Pro with 64 GB RAM but it’s slow now when I start stitching Leica S007 files. I think I will go with the iMac Pro base with 64GB and the Vega........ not sure what that does but everyone is recommending it
Neil

Neither Vega option on the iMP will do anything at all to help Photoshop, and I don't think that you need more than 32GB unless you're planning to start doing video editing. Which, unless you're editing 8K, or VERY complicated/layered 4K, will run just as well on a standard i7 iMac.

 

[06tb06]

Example: I did a photogrammetry run yesterday on my 10-Core, 128GB iMP where I ran three sets of eighty-four 24 megapixel images through Adobe Camera Raw, and then After Effects for blue-screen masking (used 74GB of RAM per run), saved them out, and then fed all 252 16-bit TIFF images (and their JPEG masks) into Agisoft Photoscan, where I topped out at 92.4GB of RAM use (just for that app), and 75% CPU utilization while building the point cloud over the course of 8 hours. Building the mesh took another 2 hours.

You're probably one of very few that are pushing these machines to their maximum potential. It's great to see some real-world scenario results rather than synthetic benchmarks or gaming comparisons. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Trebuin]

I am a photographer that works with a large 100 megapixel camera. I like to take landscapes with maybe 5 x 100 megapixels images stitched together in photoshop. I will plan to store my files on external hard drives and the cloud.
All my other work is mail and surfing the net.
What configuration would you recommend for me
Neil

I actually started stitching my old photos together in landscape like you do again and here's what I got:
1) the CPU isn't really going to help at all over the 2017 imac.
2) memory will, but you can get that with the 2017 imac.

The only benefit of getting the imac pro is getting the absolute baseline for temp control, but you'd probably be better off saving the money getting a lower end 2017 imac.

 

[dwig]

I currently use a Late-2015 5k iMac fully blown (i7/4.5ghz, 32gb RAM, 1tb SSD, ...) and regularly work on ~300-500 megapixel images in Ps with SmartObjects, 5-20 adjustment layers, ... . I have to agree with the bulk of the advise so far. You need a fast processor, 4 cores (more won't help much), and 32-64gb RAM. You also need a lot of fast external drives and a good backup plan that DOES NOT include the cloud. With files that large (mine run 4-16gb each), any and all cloud-based storage is out of the question.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

You're probably one of very few that are pushing these machines to their maximum potential. It's great to see some real-world scenario results rather than synthetic benchmarks or gaming comparisons. Thanks for sharing!

Heh... I did push the iMP hard enough on that run to get get the fan cranked up to "hair dryer on low". First time I'd heard the fan at all.

Here's a screenshot that I saved of the Activity and CPU monitors...

 

[whwang]

Check this out:
https://macperformanceguide.com/idx-mpg.html#iMacPro2017

As several others pointed out, the top-spec regular iMac 5K is the way to go. It's as fast as iMac Pro for photography (see the tests in the above link), and it's significantly cheaper. For Photoshop, you hardly need more than 4 cores. The ECC RAM and high-end graphic card won't help you a lot either.

I personally use a 50MP DSLR and do lots of 200MP+ panoramas. My 2010 12-core Mac Pro is still highly ranked in multi-core benchmarks among all existing Macs. However, in terms of processing pictures in Photoshop, all my later MBA, iMac, and MBP run faster than the Mac Pro, as long as the RAM is sufficient. The extra cores in the Mac Pro do no help at all. I still keep it because it is the only machine that I have with more than 64 GB of RAM.

Unless you are sure that you will need 128 GB of RAM, a regular iMac 5K with 64 GB of RAM will be as good as an iMac Pro.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

Full-time photographer here. I’m not questioning the discussion taking place on Photoshop’s lack of multi-core performance, but I would like to point out that other photography software programs could be coded to take advantage of high core count CPUs. For example, I’ve been told that Capture One sings with 10 cores and lots of RAM. I’m not sure, but how about Affinity Photo and other programs that were coded within the last couple of years? Adobe has always been a dog in performance and they don’t seem too interested in improving performance either, which is one of the reasons why I try to avoid Adobe products all together. Anyway, my point is, there might be more at play here than old-man Photoshop that was coded a couple of decades ago.

Now, with that being said, I’ve beeen getting into higher-end video editing over the last year, so for my own personal buying decision, I’m looking at the iMac Pro from a slightly different perspective than a pure photographer would. But I am still very interested in learning about the pros and cons for photographers, so please keep your thoughts coming! I appreciate this discussion.

 

[ThatSandWyrm]

Full-time photographer here. I’m not questioning the discussion taking place on Photoshop’s lack of multi-core performance, but I would like to point out that other photography software programs could be coded to take advantage of high core count CPUs. For example, I’ve been told that Capture One sings with 10 cores and lots of RAM. I’m not sure, but how about Affinity Photo and other programs that were coded within the last couple of years? Adobe has always been a dog in performance and they don’t seem too interested in improving performance either, which is one of the reasons why I try to avoid Adobe products all together. Anyway, my point is, there might be more at play here than old-man Photoshop that was coded a couple of decades ago.

Now, with that being said, I’ve beeen getting into higher-end video editing over the last year, so for my own personal buying decision, I’m looking at the iMac Pro from a slightly different perspective than a pure photographer would. But I am still very interested in learning about the pros and cons for photographers, so please keep your thoughts coming! I appreciate this discussion.

I first learned Photoshop (version 2) at school in 1994. When I worked on movies in Silicon Valley in 1998 I was really happy to have a Mac with 360MB of RAM for version 3. I had an SGI O2 on my desk for almost all my work. But the Mac was there purely for Photoshop V3 (because the SGI was limited to Photoshop v2 or the Gimp for painting).

And yeah, Adobe keeps falling down on improving performance. Witness their delayed migration to 64-bit, and the "video" features they added a couple of versions ago that are 10x slower than a dedicated program like Premiere would be. Even in the video they made to introduce the feature, they admit that they don't have a good reason why they added it.

Still, Photoshop is THE standard. Other apps do certain things better, but none combine all of its functionality into one package that everyone from Graphic Designers to Game Artists, to Movie Matte Painters (and beyond) are expected to know. So Ignoring Photoshop just isn't an option 99% of the time. Any more than ignoring Microsoft Office would be for a any other business.

But back to professional photography... Are you regularly processing 100+ RAW format images from weddings or sports gigs? You'll see a nice bump in performance in Adobe Camera RAW, but whether or not it's worth the price of the iMP depends on how many of those kinds of runs you have to crank out in one day. Editing is faster, but saving isn't.

My personal feeling is that unless you expect to use more than 64GB of RAM on a regular basis, you're better off with a standard i7 iMac. Even for 4K video editing, you'd have to be using a ton of layers on long timelines to really need the extra power.

 

[bigbadneil]

So this is what I ended up getting;

I will just use this for PScc and Phocus

Neil

 

[alien3dx]

So this is what I ended up getting;
View attachment 749425
I will just use this for PScc and Phocus

Neil

nice spec.. my mind keep thinking /10 (malaysia) divide to 5 usd..

 

[bigbadneil]

nice spec.. my mind keep thinking /10 (malaysia) divide to 5 usd..

Its about 31 Thai Baht to a USD$ so ~ USD 4000