iMac Pro for Photography?

[mavericks7913]

Well recently, I got A7rii and I was surprised because of its RAW file's size. I have Mac Pro 2010 with custom parts but CPU is not powerful enough to handle those files. Btw Im using dual X5677 which has 3.47ghz and 8 cores total. Im using both C1 Pro and LR but it is quite difficult to review, edit, and import those images.

Many photographers with A7rii seem to use iMac 27inch but I doubt about using only 4 cores CPU while my Mac Pro 2010 used all 8 cores and extremely get hot. Yeah, I really need 8 cores CPU so much. For me, 4 cores CPU is not enough. Other than that, iMac 27 seem to be a great deal around $3000

I know that iMac Pro is for professional users but I wonder if I need it instead of iMac 27 with 4 cores CPU. But it seems that there is no 6~8 cores Kabylake CPU... Damn.... Just stick with quad core cpu?

 

[spacedcadet]

Do you have SSDs and a USB3 card in your Mac Pro 2010? I edit 24mp RAW quite happily on my 2010 (upgraded to 6 core 3.33ghz, 32GB RAM, SSD drives, USB3 PCI card for card reader, stock graphics card). Obviously the files are smaller than yours, but I'd expect your rig to handle the A7 manageably. Adobe apps aren't particularly well programmed for multi-threading but they love RAM, CPU speed and fast hard drives for scratch. The iMac will work fine I expect.

 

[kenoh]

Hmm, that doesnt sound right. I use a HP Z1 workstation running an Intel Xeon 3.5Ghz quad hyperthreaded with an SSD and 24GB RAM and it handles A7Rii files seamlessly so twin quads on that should be fine. Also, until recently I was editing the A7Rii files on a 2010 Macbook Pro with little issue - 2.53Ghz i5, 8GB RAM, SSD.

 

[MCAsan]

When I shoot high res mode on my Olympus E-M1 II it produces 62MB raw files that I can process with my 2013 rMBP using Lr, PS, Topaz Studio, Luminar or other plugins. Surprising that the smaller A7rii files are a problem.

 

[The Bad Guy]

Better question is:
Base model iMac Pro for 5k US?
Answer is: Hahahahahha...no.

In other news, my quadcore last of the non retina MBP's smacks around 4GB PSD / TIFF files easily enough. I get the feeling you're reaching.

 

[dwig]

Processor speed and number of cores is rather far down the list of "things that affect Ps & Lr processing speed". #1 is RAM, #2 is HD/SSD speed(s), and #3 is GPU performance particularily with Lr.

 

[dwig]

...
Many photographers with A7rii seem to use iMac 27inch but I doubt about using only 4 cores CPU while my Mac Pro 2010 used all 8 cores and extremely get hot....

I recently replaced my main workstation at my job. The new one is iMac 27 Retina, i7, 32gb RAM, 1tb SSD and it replaced an Early 2009 PowerMac with dual processors (8 cores total), 16gb RAM, 1tb HD. My personal 4 year old Dell XPS (Win10, 4th gen i7 and a mere 8gb RAM) is modestly faster than the old PM at work and the new iMac is a very significant improvement. A single 6th gen 4 core i7 will run rings around a 6-7 year old PM, even those with dual Xeons.

My comparisons are with my "typical" work files, YMMV. My typical files are either 6300ppi scans from 35mm transparencies or 36mp RAW files from a Nikon D800. After initial processing in Lr, I move them to Ps as 16bpp files and upsample to 20x30" 300ppi (54pm equiv). These usually have 10-30 layers and 1 or 2 Smart Objects, each with a mask and 1-2 Effects. These can reach 2-4gb file sizes. I also frequently work on 48x72" 300ppi 16bpp (~320m) images, again with 1-2 Smart Objects, 5-10 layers with masks, and file sizes in the 3-12gb range.

 

[mavericks7913]

Processor speed and number of cores is rather far down the list of "things that affect Ps & Lr processing speed". #1 is RAM, #2 is HD/SSD speed(s), and #3 is GPU performance particularily with Lr.

You dont understand about cores. Photoshop and LR require at least 4 cores each. If I have 6 or 8 cores, then I can use other programs or check safari without any lagging issue since it has extra cores. I already tested about this of using 4 or 8 cores and it was vastly different.
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Do you have SSDs and a USB3 card in your Mac Pro 2010? I edit 24mp RAW quite happily on my 2010 (upgraded to 6 core 3.33ghz, 32GB RAM, SSD drives, USB3 PCI card for card reader, stock graphics card). Obviously the files are smaller than yours, but I'd expect your rig to handle the A7 manageably. Adobe apps aren't particularly well programmed for multi-threading but they love RAM, CPU speed and fast hard drives for scratch. The iMac will work fine I expect.

I have M.2 SSD and USB3 with 32gb RAM
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When I shoot high res mode on my Olympus E-M1 II it produces 62MB raw files that I can process with my 2013 rMBP using Lr, PS, Topaz Studio, Luminar or other plugins. Surprising that the smaller A7rii files are a problem.

lol really? A7rii RAW file's size is around 85mb dude. You can not compare with Olympus E-M1 ii's 62mb raw files.
[doublepost=1496852881][/doublepost]

Better question is:
Base model iMac Pro for 5k US?
Answer is: Hahahahahha...no.

In other news, my quadcore last of the non retina MBP's smacks around 4GB PSD / TIFF files easily enough. I get the feeling you're reaching.

Full upgraded iMac 27 is very ideal except for CPU. That's why I hesitate about getting it.

 

[ChrisA]

... I have Mac Pro 2010 with custom parts but CPU is not powerful enough to handle those files. ...

How did you determine it was the CPU that is not powerful enough and that something else was not the bottleneck?

Where are the files stored? How fast is that storage device and how is it connected to you Mac? What about RAM? How much do you have and how much is in use? If you want informed advice come back and post NUMBERS. Tell us how many seconds something is taking and the numbers of bytes of RAM in use and not in use.

Don't say "slow" say something like "I click on the crop tool and it takes 35 seconds before the cropped image is displayed"

What part of the processing is to slow for you? can you give timed examples?

Apple's "Activity Monitor" app iOS a decent tool for looking into things like this. If you look you will see CPU, Memory and IO utilization. Look at those while the processing is slow and see what's holding things up.

 

[Bending Pixels]

I know that iMac Pro is for professional users but I wonder if I need it instead of iMac 27 with 4 cores CPU. But it seems that there is no 6~8 cores Kabylake CPU... Damn.... Just stick with quad core cpu?

The short answer- the iMac Pro is really designed for someone that's doing video production on a daily basis. it's definitely overkill for photography. Lightroom/Photoshop will rock on the updated iMac's as is.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Well recently, I got A7rii and I was surprised because of its RAW file's size. I have Mac Pro 2010 with custom parts but CPU is not powerful enough to handle those files. Btw Im using dual X5677 which has 3.47ghz and 8 cores total. Im using both C1 Pro and LR but it is quite difficult to review, edit, and import those images.

Many photographers with A7rii seem to use iMac 27inch but I doubt about using only 4 cores CPU while my Mac Pro 2010 used all 8 cores and extremely get hot. Yeah, I really need 8 cores CPU so much. For me, 4 cores CPU is not enough. Other than that, iMac 27 seem to be a great deal around $3000

I know that iMac Pro is for professional users but I wonder if I need it instead of iMac 27 with 4 cores CPU. But it seems that there is no 6~8 cores Kabylake CPU... Damn.... Just stick with quad core cpu?

I'd rather have a pro screen thanks. Ultra glossy Mac screens mean you need to work in a cave or crank up the brightness. Neither work well for photography

 

[ChrisA]

You dont understand about cores. Photoshop and LR require at least 4 cores each.

That is not how cores work. The operating system does NOT assign CPU cores to processes. Take a look at Activity Meter before you even start up any Adobe app. You will see that on the Mac there are already literally about 100 process or "threads" running. This or corse works just fine even on a two core MacBook. Apps don't "require" some number of cores and they are never assigned cores by the OS.

There is a scheduler inside MacOS that multiplexes available cores to threads that are ready to run. It will run a thread on a core for a short time (on order of a millisecond) and then it will preempt execution and reevaluate the assignment of core to the set of "ready" threads. Having more cores means threads will get to run a greater fraction of the time

When the scheduler finds there are not "ready" threads it will idle the core. Look at Activity Meter and see if CPU utilization is under (100% times the number of cores). If so this means no cores are idle. Flower then adding more cores would simply means then more would be idle.

lol really? A7rii RAW file's size is around 85mb dude. You can not compare with Olympus E-M1 ii's 62mb raw files.
l

Yes it is easy to compare the files. Here is one way to compare them (85 - 62) / 85
So comparatively the A7rii files are 27% larger

27% larger is not really a big deal It means a 10 second operation now takes 13 second with the larger file. 27% not a huge difference.

In terms of image resolution, this proportional to the ration of the square roots of image size. Some have 9.22 / 7.87 = 1.17 or roughly a 17% increase. Again a small increment. Notice that going from 4K to 5K image is a 25% increment. 17% is roughly comparable to that.

All that said...

I have a collection of 100 megapixel images. These are scans form medium format (6x7 cm) negatives. And yes there were slow to process with my old iMac that had only 8GB ram and a two core "core dual" CPU. But now my 2011 vintage iMac with 24GB and SSD upgrades does well enough. It is not instant by any means but the files are processable.

I am moving from Aperture to Lightroom, so I'm getting a good look at old files

 

[mavericks7913]

That is not how cores work. The operating system does NOT assign CPU cores to processes. Take a look at Activity Meter before you even start up any Adobe app. You will see that on the Mac there are already literally about 100 process or "threads" running. This or corse works just fine even on a two core MacBook. Apps don't "require" some number of cores and they are never assigned cores by the OS.

There is a scheduler inside MacOS that multiplexes available cores to threads that are ready to run. It will run a thread on a core for a short time (on order of a millisecond) and then it will preempt execution and reevaluate the assignment of core to the set of "ready" threads. Having more cores means threads will get to run a greater fraction of the time

When the scheduler finds there are not "ready" threads it will idle the core. Look at Activity Meter and see if CPU utilization is under (100% times the number of cores). If so this means no cores are idle. Flower then adding more cores would simply means then more would be idle.



Yes it is easy to compare the files. Here is one way to compare them (85 - 62) / 85
So comparatively the A7rii files are 27% larger

27% larger is not really a big deal

Well, when I was using both programs, the computer was suing 4 cores. I see the difference when I use only 4 cores or 8 cores by using a single or dual CPU tray.
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I'd rather have a pro screen thanks. Ultra glossy Mac screens mean you need to work in a cave or crank up the brightness. Neither work well for photography

I already have one, BenQ SW2700PT. But I really need 4k or higher cause 2k is not enough for me. Yeah glossy panel is suck. Idk why Apple keep making a glossy panel for.
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The short answer- the iMac Pro is really designed for someone that's doing video production on a daily basis. it's definitely overkill for photography. Lightroom/Photoshop will rock on the updated iMac's as is.

Well not that overkill. GPU might be but still what I need especially ECC parts. I never had any issues with Mac Pro while Macbook pro failed several times.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Well, when I was using both programs, the computer was suing 4 cores. I see the difference when I use only 4 cores or 8 cores by using a single or dual CPU tray.
[doublepost=1496855142][/doublepost]

I already have one, BenQ SW2700PT. But I really need 4k or higher cause 2k is not enough for me. Yeah glossy panel is suck. Idk why Apple keep making a glossy panel for.
[doublepost=1496855219][/doublepost]

Well not that overkill. GPU might be but still what I need especially ECC parts. I never had any issues with Mac Pro while Macbook pro failed several times.

If you already have the SW2700PT have a look at the SW320. Same specifications as yours but 4K.

 

[kenoh]

I'd rather have a pro screen thanks. Ultra glossy Mac screens mean you need to work in a cave or crank up the brightness. Neither work well for photography

Yep or like me, your photos always look dark when published... Hate that! All my screens are glossy but don't have desk space for pro spec screen on top of kit already squeezed on there.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Yep or like me, your photos always look dark when published... Hate that! All my screens are glossy but don't have desk space for pro spec screen on top of kit already squeezed on there.

I love my NEC Spectraview alongside my iMac. Especially because I paid £70 for it!

 

[kenoh]

I love my NEC Spectraview alongside my iMac. Especially because I paid £70 for it!

Well there you go, an excuse to want to poke you in the eye...

 

[mavericks7913]

If you already have the SW2700PT have a look at the SW320. Same specifications as yours but 4K.

Well it seems that people have negative comments on SW320. Is it really bad?

 

[Apple fanboy]

Well it seems that people have negative comments on SW320. Is it really bad?

I think there might have had a bad batch in the first ones. They didn't launch that long ago.
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Well there you go, an excuse to want to poke you in the eye...

Well I've never been gifted a Leica