Mac Studio Max Review for Photographers

[Adult80HD]

I posted some pretty exhaustive comparisons on the Mac Studio and several other Macs and PCs back in late March/early April last year, right after the release. Not here, over on the Fred Miranda photo forums. I compared both Capture One and Lightroom and compared a variety of different tasks. The bottom line is that Capture One is pretty poorly optimized for Apple Silicon, but it's also got some very odd choices in other areas as well, such as relying heavily on the GPU for things like exports, where it gets absolutely obliterated by Lightroom, which scales almost linearly with core counts. That said, my Studio Ultra outperformed both a 64-core AMD Threadripper Pro with dual Nvidia RTX 6000 cards and my 28-core Mac Pro with the AMD W6800X Duo MPX module.

There are definitely tasks where the software could use improvements to take advantage of the architecture, and that's happening rapidly lately at Adobe, where they keep increasing performance and adding features in LR after years of letting it languish.

Right now I'd be very confident saying that there's nothing that comes close to a Studio Ultra for raw performance in LR Classic. In fact, when I compare export times for the Ultra to the latest and greatest 13th-Gen Intel and AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors, the Studio Ultra is still faster (and BTW, the Intel processor has 24 cores vs. the Ultra's 20).

You couldn't drag me back to an Intel machine today for Lightroom use. On top of that, the other tools I like to use--Topaz Labs' DeNoise AI and Sharpen AI--are also ridiculously fast on Apple Silicon.

A lot of this depends on what you do. If you're just a casual photographer, then the gains might not be worth the costs until you really need to upgrade. But if you use it for professional purposes--where the cost can be written off, and seconds and minutes add up and really matter--then IMO it's a no brainer.

 

[BigJohno]

I posted some pretty exhaustive comparisons on the Mac Studio and several other Macs and PCs back in late March/early April last year, right after the release. Not here, over on the Fred Miranda photo forums. I compared both Capture One and Lightroom and compared a variety of different tasks. The bottom line is that Capture One is pretty poorly optimized for Apple Silicon, but it's also got some very odd choices in other areas as well, such as relying heavily on the GPU for things like exports, where it gets absolutely obliterated by Lightroom, which scales almost linearly with core counts. That said, my Studio Ultra outperformed both a 64-core AMD Threadripper Pro with dual Nvidia RTX 6000 cards and my 28-core Mac Pro with the AMD W6800X Duo MPX module.

There are definitely tasks where the software could use improvements to take advantage of the architecture, and that's happening rapidly lately at Adobe, where they keep increasing performance and adding features in LR after years of letting it languish.

Right now I'd be very confident saying that there's nothing that comes close to a Studio Ultra for raw performance in LR Classic. In fact, when I compare export times for the Ultra to the latest and greatest 13th-Gen Intel and AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors, the Studio Ultra is still faster (and BTW, the Intel processor has 24 cores vs. the Ultra's 20).

You couldn't drag me back to an Intel machine today for Lightroom use. On top of that, the other tools I like to use--Topaz Labs' DeNoise AI and Sharpen AI--are also ridiculously fast on Apple Silicon.

A lot of this depends on what you do. If you're just a casual photographer, then the gains might not be worth the costs until you really need to upgrade. But if you use it for professional purposes--where the cost can be written off, and seconds and minutes add up and really matter--then IMO it's a no brainer.

Interesting take. I'd like to read your comparisons on Fred Miranda. Can you link that here? I'm trying to make a purchased between ultra and max. Professional use. Using Capture one, photoshop, and Lightroom.

 

[Adult80HD]

Interesting take. I'd like to read your comparisons on Fred Miranda. Can you link that here? I'm trying to make a purchased between ultra and max. Professional use. Using Capture one, photoshop, and Lightroom.

I actually need to go back and re-run a bunch of these tests, because things have only gotten better since then. For example, the export times in Lightroom dropped by 62% with the June 2022 release alone. I have not re-run most of the other tests, and I really need to. I can tell you that I still have the 28-core Mac Pro at work being used by one my employees and when I go to use that vs. my Studio Ultra it feels so slow and unresponsive in comparison.

I'm going to revisit the tests and post an update here in the next few weeks. Should be useful.

 

[Chancha]

If you are the guy with pink graphs over at fredmiranda then I think you for your test. That was the first if not the only really conclusive test seeing how the M1 Ultra is an absolute beast at LR CC, particularly for large MP RAWs.

That said I still only went for the M1 Max Mac Studio due to cost. The base model Max costs literally half as much as the base Ultra which is significant, this is an extra lens or a bunch of good lights and stuff here. And the Max is already really good for LR anyway, in terms of UI responsiveness and general processing. I can totally see a volume-shooter like for events and action who can easily get full value from the Ultra though.

 

[Killerbob]

I am a photographer, and I can attest that the Mac Studio M1 Max is faster than the '19 Mac Pro in most Adobe applications, especially Lightroom Classic. These days the only work my Mac Pro is getting used for is video work in the background - as in I don't even have my two Mac Pros connected to monitors anymore, I just Screen Share into them and start video jobs remotely. All my still photography is done on the Mac Studio.

 

[Adult80HD]

If you are the guy with pink graphs over at fredmiranda then I think you for your test. That was the first if not the only really conclusive test seeing how the M1 Ultra is an absolute beast at LR CC, particularly for large MP RAWs.

That said I still only went for the M1 Max Mac Studio due to cost. The base model Max costs literally half as much as the base Ultra which is significant, this is an extra lens or a bunch of good lights and stuff here. And the Max is already really good for LR anyway, in terms of UI responsiveness and general processing. I can totally see a volume-shooter like for events and action who can easily get full value from the Ultra though.

Yes, that is indeed me and glad to hear it was helfpul! Things have changed a lot since then, too. I was so done with Adobe but in the last 18 months they have kicked it into high great and made some great improvements, particularly in Lightroom. At the time I did that analysis I was very seriously considering switching from Lightroom, but not anymore.

 

[Chancha]

Yes, that is indeed me and glad to hear it was helfpul! Things have changed a lot since then, too. I was so done with Adobe but in the last 18 months they have kicked it into high great and made some great improvements, particularly in Lightroom. At the time I did that analysis I was very seriously considering switching from Lightroom, but not anymore.

Yes the LR Classic pre-optimization was dreadful, I was using MBP 2015 and then iMac 2017, both of which totally maxed out, and almost all the time I got frustrated at the UI sluggishness. Running a modern version of Classic on that iMac now is much more bearable, but the occasional slowdowns are apparent and you definitely feel working in a "last-gen" workflow pacing.

Everything changed with Apple Silicon. I started out testing waters with the base M1 Air which we all know now was ridiculous for what it was, then I moved on to a MBP 14" M1 Pro again not close to a maxed out config, but Classic already flies there. Finally I was in need of the Studio's I/O and form factor (it sits inside a network cabinet), was seriously considering the M1 Ultra due to its 20 CPU cores. Frankly seeing your test results I was pretty convinced the machine is right for what I do but at the end the cost to benefit just couldn't justify it. But I must say again, for shooters who can gain from that extra CPU power it is totally worth it, literally halving the time in preview generation, batch processing, export, any a lot of headroom for future GPU utilizations.