MBA and iPhoto

[jcannan14]

Hi everyone,

I am looking to get a new MBA 13" and wanted to see if anyone has had any issues using iPhoto to organize, edit, or create albums using their new MBA. I am not a professional photographer and use a point and shoot sony camera (12 mega pixels). I have approximately 30 gigs of pictures on my current computer (15" G4 Powerbook, which still works but struggles with "heavy lifting"). I want to treat myself after my Christmas bills are paid off and buy a 13"MBA with 4 gigs or RAM. I've read tons of post on the new MBA and think that it is perfect for my normal daily use (safari, email, iTunes, word, skype). I didn't see many post of people commenting on iPhoto use with it, and I like using that program to make/order books from apple of my trips.

I was wondering if you could comment on if you have had any issues (slow, crashing, overall opinion) using iPhoto with your new MBA. Also how many pictures do you have and their avg. file size. Like I said, i'll be moving up from my 5 yr old Powerbook so I know it will perform better than that.

Thanks,

 

[fswmacguy]

From what I've heard, iPhoto on the MBA runs perfectly fine. I can't see a reason it wouldn't, though, as it's not necessarily a CPU-intensive application as compared to the other iLife apps.

 

[logandzwon]

The HD is limiting... other then that it's great!

 

[aristobrat]

I was wondering if you could comment on if you have had any issues (slow, crashing, overall opinion) using iPhoto with your new MBA. Also how many pictures do you have and their avg. file size. Like I said, i'll be moving up from my 5 yr old Powerbook so I know it will

Aperture (which is known to be slower than iPhoto in many situations) absolutely FLIES on my 13" MBA (compared to my previous Mac, which was a 15" i7 MBP with a 7200 RPM drive).

Based on that, I don't think you'd have any performance problems with iPhoto.

Photo management uses a lot of disk access and the Air's SSD makes disk access incredibly quick IMO!

 

[ReallyBigFeet]

iPhoto, Aperture and even Final Cut Pro all run fine on the MBA 13. You may want to do some research on ways to make iPhoto work with an external hard drive, however, if you don't want to fill up the SSD.

 

[zub3qin]

Photo management uses a lot of disk access and the Air's SSD makes disk access incredibly quick IMO!

Anyone using iPhoto off an external HD with the MBA?
It simply isn't realistic to hog up the limited SSD space on the MBA with 30 or 40GB of photos. But when running an iPhoto library off an external USB hard drive, are your speeds super slow/sluggish, defeating the purpose of the SSD in the MBA?

I imagine real-life usage speed for iPhoto (simple photo editing) to be fastest to slowest :
MBA > MBP with standard internal HD > MBA with external USB HD

Is this true?

 

[aristobrat]

It simply isn't realistic to hog up the limited SSD space on the MBA with 30 or 40GB of photos.

For me, that's not a problem. My Air has the 256GB drive, so 40GB for my photos and 40GB for my music still leaves me with a TON of space for my other files.

For others where that's not the case, they might try using multiple iPhoto libraries. Perhaps they could keep one smaller iPhoto library (containing only the last year or two of pictures) on the faster SSD, and place all other pictures into a larger iPhoto library that's kept on the slower, external USB.

 

[darrellishere]

i stream my iphoto and aperture libraries from my imac to my 11" air.

The speed is about the same as my old 1.6 air.

Usable. But I wouldn't want to do any retouching tools as I know they take up allot of ram and cpu power. But for basic editing and browsing its fine.

If i had the both libraries on my ssd drive it would be that bit more snappier. And definitely usable.

I have 4gbs ram, but on my old air with 2, it used to write to my fast ssd. 64,00 page outs! But I never noticed any slowdown at all. btw Aperture is less resource hogging than iphoto. And I dislike the new iphoto. you can't zoom an image without going into edit mode, which bugs the hell out of me . I even thought about downgrading!!

 

[shootingstar64]

when at home i also stream all my content from my mac mini server (iphoto, itunes, movies, documents and such) to my mba 11 and atv2 which is hooked up to a 50" tv.

my network runs at 5ghz and i feel the speed is sufficient,....

if i plan to retouch things on a couple of photos i copy them over to the mba which is then attached to a 27" acd. this is my homebase setup also used to do my coding and web design work. if i have to see my clients i copy all the files i need onto the mba or use "slink" to connect to my home network.

imho the mac mini server is one sweet add-on to any mba