MacBook Air for photo editing: M1 16GB/512GB or M2 16GB/256GB

[NoTouchBarForMe]

The configurations are similar in price: $1259 for the 16/512 M1, $1279 16/256 M2.

The most demanding thing I plan to do is photo editing (as a hobby) in Lightroom and Photoshop. Adobe recommends having 16 GB of RAM so I definitely want 16.

Including the OS, I use 350 GB of the 500 GB on my current Mac. However, the vast majority of this is documents and photos, and I have 2 TB of iCloud storage. As long as I have "Optimize storage" turned on for iCloud documents and photos, it seems like storage won't be an issue. Also, I plan to use the cloud version of Lightroom that comes with 1 TB of cloud storage. According to what I've read, I can set a local cache size for Lightroom and everything else is stored in the cloud. So I'm leaning towards the 16/256 M2.

I’m still hesitant because I’ve read Lightroom cloud still uses a lot of local storage. I would appreciate the perspective of someone who has used Lightroom cloud or iCloud “optimize storage” successfully. I worry about performance issues arising out of not having files stored locally.

 

[PaladinGuy]

Keep in mind the SSD is much slower on the M2 256GB models. It may not be very noticeable in your daily use, but I think it’s worth considering.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Don't get any M2 Mac with a 256GB SSD. Just don't.

That said, with how perfect the thermals are with the M1 Air (and how, with the M2 MacBook Air Apple popped in a hotter running chip with less of a thermal solution than on the M1), I'd vote M1 Air. Also, in general, you cannot upgrade storage on any Apple Silicon Mac released thus far, so, safer to go with whatever will offer you more given that you can't later upgrade after the fact.

 

[wilberforce]

Lightroom CC is not as capable or as full featured as Lightroom Classic. For example, cannot print. Not sure if you are familiar with Lightroom CC and if you are satisfied with it.
I would not get 256GB. Remember it is best not to use more than 80 to 90% of an SSD else it slows down and does not have room for caching, swap, snapshots, trashes, etc.

 

[HDFan]

I would not get 256GB.

I keep my Lightroom catalogues on the boot drive. With all of the backups they alone take up ~105 GB.

You post doesn't mention how you backup your Photos. The recommended 3-2-1 backup method does not include iCloud as it is not a backup service.

All of my photos are stored locally on an external RAID drive. Even though it is very fast scrolling through thousands of photos can be painfully slow in Lightroom. Would be way to slow relying on the Internet. Can't do that anyway due to the multi terabyte size of my photos folders.

 

[darngooddesign]

You should get 16/512 whether that means the M1 or you spend a little more for the M2 16/512.

The M1 Air is still a great computer.

 

[wilberforce]

All of my photos are stored locally on an external RAID drive. Even though it is very fast scrolling through thousands of photos can be painfully slow in Lightroom. Would be way to slow relying on the Internet. Can't do that anyway due to the multi terabyte size of my photos folders.

Sounds like you are using LR Classic, like I do.
OP is planning on using LR CC. Although I do not use LR CC much, I understand that all originals are stored in Adobe's CC cloud, with thumbnails stored locally, so scrolling is not an issue. It also has options to additionally store smart previews and originals locally. So LR CC works a bit differently from LR Classic, where I agree it would be extremely slow to have photos stored in cloud.

 

[HDFan]

OP is planning on using LR CC.

I plan to use the cloud version of Lightroom that comes with 1 TB of cloud storage.

I wrongly assumed that meant he was using cloud storage in LR Classic.

I understand that all originals are stored in Adobe's CC cloud, with thumbnails stored locally, so scrolling is not an issue.

Not a Lightroom expert, but I do find scrolling in Classic to be rather slow using 1:1 previews even when the .lrprev files are stored on my very fast internal ssd.

 

[wilberforce]

Not a Lightroom expert, but I do find scrolling in Classic to be rather slow using 1:1 previews even when the .lrprev files are stored on my very fast internal ssd.

Adobe have improved LR Classic fairly recently, and scrolling in Library module is much better than it used to be, I think partly because they make better use of the GPU (so it may depend on the GPU).
Now in LR Classic 12.0.1 on my 2020 iMac the scrolling is almost too fast (if there is such a thing) - I can scroll faster than I can visually register the photos (mostly D850 raw files) - almost a blur. My previews file is taking up about 100GB of my SSD, which might have something to do with it, too.
But my previews file is called [lightroom_catalog_name]Previews.lrdata, not .lrprev