MBpro 15" 2019 - will I see enough performance bump to justify buying the 14"M1Max?

[Psychopulse]

I need some advice before pushing the "buy it" button - here's my current machine:

• MbPro 2019 15"
• Processor 2.6 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7
• Memory 16 GB 2400 MHz DDR4
• Graphics Radeon Pro 555X 4 GB
• Storage 1TB

Will I see enough of a bump in the performance when getting this one:

• Apple M1 Max 14" with 10-core CPU, 24-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
• 32GB unified memory
• 1TB SSD storage

I am a photographer and I work mainly in Photoshop and Lightroom.

I don't care about battery life.
Many thanks for all the help on this!

 

[wilberforce]

I also work in Photoshop and Lightroom. What kind of performance bump are you looking for?
Presumably there is some performance aspect you are currently not satisfied with?
Sliders?
Masking?
Rendering?
Zooming?
Large files?
Many files?
Many layers?
Batch exporting?

I have used PS and LR on various Macs from 2014 to 2021 M1 Pro, so might be able to help

 

[UBS28]

Do you really a M1 Max for photo editing since there are photographers who even use an iPad for photo editing?

If not, you can probably save a bit of money by going for the base model.

 

[wilberforce]

Do you really a M1 Max for photo editing since there are photographers who even use an iPad for photo editing?

If not, you can probably save a bit of money by going for the base model.

Yes, my experience is that PS and LR are CPU and RAM intensive, and while they do take advantage of the GPU, the GPU usage is seldom more than about 25%, and only momentarily. So going from 14 or 16 GPU cores to 24 GPU cores will likely make little difference, at least for usual activities. The M1 Max and M1 Pro (excepting the base 8-core CPU model) have the same CPU.

However, possibly the OP needs/wants the M1 Max for a different reason.

 

[lclev]

Okay here is my perspective. I have the M1 Max MBP/32 core GPU/64GB/1TB. I just recently had to put together a video for a funeral. They brought me 165 photos of various size, quality and formats. I had to resize, crop, and touch up all of them - some required more work than others. So the first thing I did was put all the photos on an external SSD. I selected all the photos to import into Photoshop then sat back to wait for them to import. There was no wait! Like boom! It was instant. All photos loaded before I could blink. I edited and sorted all the photos and the M1 was smooth and fast.

I also had Premiere Pro open and imported the photos into a timeline. I added two psd backgrounds in layers to the photos. Put in all kinds of transitions and a few graphic titles. Added music for a total video time of 13 minutes. Took about 5 minutes or less to encode to an HD mp4 file.

I had Photoshop open so I could move from Premiere to photoshop to touch up any thing I find. I also had the MBP attached to two 4K monitors. While this was not a huge project it was the first one that I had a chance to use my new MBP on.

I went from a maxed out 13" MBP i7/32GB to my 14" M1 MBP. You could argue I went overkill on the specks but I have been working with Adobe apps for many years and I have had to upgrade computers to keep up with the changes. I am hopeful this one will give me five or more years.

My advice - buy the most you can afford. Regardless what you have listed will be a huge improvement over what you have.

 

[satcomer]

Sense some of photographers want a Mac to photo touching up sense I know that the shareware PixelMator Pro to touch up photos!

 

[Grohowiak]

I would try with the base model PRO first if you can.
Seriously.
Please are so happy to overspend for no reason that it blows my mind.
Coming from 2019 16" MBP with the 5300 in it (that I hated with a passion) the M1 Pro is awesome when paired with 38" ultrawide. I have zero complaints which is a first for a mac (and I use them for a looooong time now).
I don't do any crazy PS projects but have a few actions with 500MB+ and it does similar to my 3080 equipped ryzen PC.
No idea about lightroom as I'm on the capture one camp.

 

[bill-p]

I am a photographer and I work mainly in Photoshop and Lightroom.

Then you are working in the absolute worst software possible for these tasks (I should preface: I meant they are barely, if ever, taking advantage of the GPU). They are mostly CPU and RAM bound. RAM is the #1 thing. You want to max out your RAM. M1 Pro or Max doesn't even matter. Heck, if your Intel MacBook had more RAM, it would also beat M1 Pro/Max in some cases as well.

So if you see any improvement, it's mostly because you're moving to 32GB RAM. Not because of M1 Pro or Max. Poor MacBook Air with only 8GB RAM is very very very behind for these tasks.

Source:

TL;DR: please don't get M1 Max for Lightroom and PS. It is a waste.

 

[wilberforce]

Then you are working in the absolute worst software possible for these tasks (I should preface: I meant they are barely, if ever, taking advantage of the GPU). They are mostly CPU and RAM bound. RAM is the #1 thing. You want to max out your RAM. M1 Pro or Max doesn't even matter. Heck, if your Intel MacBook had more RAM, it would also beat M1 Pro/Max in some cases as well.

So if you see any improvement, it's mostly because you're moving to 32GB RAM. Not because of M1 Pro or Max. Poor MacBook Air with only 8GB RAM is very very very behind for these tasks.

TL;DR: please don't get M1 Max for Lightroom and PS. It is a waste.

Having used LR and PS on a 14" M1 Pro, I would basically agree with this. More RAM is better - up to a point. I can see a definite potential benefit with 32GB; less so for 64GB, as there are diminishing returns, especially if one does not deal with large files (like the 314MP panorama example).
I agree there is little point in getting M1 Max for LR or PS - other than it enables one to get 64GB RAM, if so desired. An M1 Max with 32GB RAM is pretty pointless for LR/PS.

I should also point out that I am quite happily using LR and PS on a base 16GB 14" MBP. Faster than my 2020 i7 iMac with 32GB RAM. However, I do recognize that more CPU (not GPU!) cores and more RAM would be beneficial for LR and PS.

Hope this helps