Photography question M3

[Clix Pix]

Just offering my perspective and experience here, for whatever it's worth..... I have a 16" M1 MBP with 64 GB RAM and 4 TB storage. Why? Because, although I am not a professional photographer, I do tend to shoot in a variety of situations using either a Sony A1 or a Sony A7R V, and both of these have a generous number of megapixels (I think it's 51 on the A1 and 61 on the A7R V). I shoot RAW Uncompressed, and yes, these files take up a lot of space!

It's not a big issue when I'm spending an hour or two some afternoon just shooting a few macros or closeups, but it definitely is when I am out shooting wildlife and fire off the A1 set at Continuous High+. Doesn't take long for the rapid accumulation of frames on the memory card! I don't use Photoshop or LightRoom, I prefer DXO PhotoLab for my editing and I have a couple of other software programs for culling those massive high-speed-accumulated files prior to even taking them into that program.

I shoot pretty much every day so that's one reason for the larger SSD internal drive space, and of course as well I depend a lot on external drives, too, to archive and/or temporarily stash files when I don't have the time right away to work on them. I'll admit, I have a lot more fun shooting the images than I do processing them later!

For me, 64GB RAM seems to be the sweet spot in terms of handling those large files. Storage (archival and temporary) and RAM are really the most important factors as far as I'm concerned. Yes, of course power and speed of the processor is nice, too, and I definitely was surprised at the difference when I replaced my 2018 Intel MBP (2 TB storage, 32 GB RAM) with the M1 machine I have now -- wow!

For my particular situation I made the right choices, although I'll admit at the time I was buying the M1 MBP just short of a year ago now, I wondered if I were overreaching. My bank account was squealing in protest. Seems that I wasn't, after all, and this has worked out very well for me. (And, yes, it was expensive, but in the long run, worth it to me.) Everyone has his or her own preferences, priorities and financial concerns......

 

[NeonNights]

Just offering my perspective and experience here, for whatever it's worth..... I have a 16" M1 MBP with 64 GB RAM and 4 TB storage. Why? Because, although I am not a professional photographer, I do tend to shoot in a variety of situations using either a Sony A1 or a Sony A7R V, and both of these have a generous number of megapixels (I think it's 51 on the A1 and 61 on the A7R V). I shoot RAW Uncompressed, and yes, these files take up a lot of space!

It's not a big issue when I'm spending an hour or two some afternoon just shooting a few macros or closeups, but it definitely is when I am out shooting wildlife and fire off the A1 set at Continuous High+. Doesn't take long for the rapid accumulation of frames on the memory card! I don't use Photoshop or LightRoom, I prefer DXO PhotoLab for my editing and I have a couple of other software programs for culling those massive high-speed-accumulated files prior to even taking them into that program.

I shoot pretty much every day so that's one reason for the larger SSD internal drive space, and of course as well I depend a lot on external drives, too, to archive and/or temporarily stash files when I don't have the time right away to work on them. I'll admit, I have a lot more fun shooting the images than I do processing them later!

For me, 64GB RAM seems to be the sweet spot in terms of handling those large files. Storage (archival and temporary) and RAM are really the most important factors as far as I'm concerned. Yes, of course power and speed of the processor is nice, too, and I definitely was surprised at the difference when I replaced my 2018 Intel MBP (2 TB storage, 32 GB RAM) with the M1 machine I have now -- wow!

For my particular situation I made the right choices, although I'll admit at the time I was buying the M1 MBP just short of a year ago now, I wondered if I were overreaching. My bank account was squealing in protest. Seems that I wasn't, after all, and this has worked out very well for me. (And, yes, it was expensive, but in the long run, worth it to me.) Everyone has his or her own preferences, priorities and financial concerns......

What other programs do you rely on for culling photos? I use DxO PhotoLab too and like their DAM, but wish it was cross-platform compatible with iPad and iPhone or Android. DxO is better at denoise than Lightroom but I still rely on the cloud edition of Lightroom for culling because it syncs my photo collections across my Windows PC, Mac computers, iPad, and even my Android Fold 4 so I can review and cull photos wherever I am.

Do you use something else that can provide the platform support of Lightroom without the monthly subscription ($10/month isn't too bad but that adds up over time)?

 

[NeonNights]

What other programs do you rely on for culling photos? I use DxO PhotoLab too and like their DAM, but wish it was cross-platform compatible with iPad and iPhone or Android. DxO is better at denoise than Lightroom but I still rely on the cloud edition of Lightroom for culling because it syncs my photo collections across my Windows PC, Mac computers, iPad, and even my Android Fold 4 so I can review and cull photos wherever I am.

Do you use something else that can provide the platform support of Lightroom without the monthly subscription ($10/month isn't too bad but that adds up over time)?

Actually, it didn't occur to me before but I could simply access my NAS from any device, anywhere in the world and do my culling that way without a monthly Lightroom subscription. I may just try that instead, although I do like the auto tone tool in Lightroom lol (since I'm still new to photo editing). I wish DxO had a one-button auto tone feature (or is it already doing that with the optics correction and standard profile upon import?).

 

[Clix Pix]

What other programs do you rely on for culling photos? I use DxO PhotoLab too and like their DAM, but wish it was cross-platform compatible with iPad and iPhone or Android. DxO is better at denoise than Lightroom but I still rely on the cloud edition of Lightroom for culling because it syncs my photo collections across my Windows PC, Mac computers, iPad, and even my Android Fold 4 so I can review and cull photos wherever I am.

Do you use something else that can provide the platform support of Lightroom without the monthly subscription ($10/month isn't too bad but that adds up over time)?

Sorry, I should have at least remembered to provide the names of the two programs I use for culling: one is the classic, used for many years by many, many photographers, Photo Mechanic, and the other is a fairly recent newcomer, that I've been using over the past couple years, Narrative Select. I also have used and at this point am still evaluating AfterShoot, which is pretty much based on AI and can be really great for sorting quickly through images when there are many which have been shot in rapid succession so have few changes, but this program is still pretty new and I think still needs some refining.

I do all of my image editing on the Mac, not on my iOS devices, and actually don't shoot many images with my iPhones or iPads anyway. I also do not depend upon any software program's catalog and version of DAM, I prefer to set up files and folders and organize them in my own way. This is one reason (among others) that I do not use Lightroom. I also have system of external drives that works well for me so have never gone with a NAS even though I have multiple computers and devices.

Hope this helps!

 

[aorr]

Disclaimer: I haven’t read through all the comments to see if this was covered…


One thing to always consider is that a lot of the bottlenecking from photographer’s workflows come from the storage system they’re using. If you’re using the internal SSD on Macs it’s not much of a factor…but I think most of us use external storage and offload cards onto it first. Unless it’s some high performance SSD or RAID setup, that’ll most likely be your bottleneck. One way to get around this is to work from the internal SSD and then move them off to external storage when you’re done of course.

I just see a lot of concern from people working worh photos that don’t seem to mention disk read/write speeds and don’t consider that as part of the equation when picking out a computer.

 

[Clix Pix]

Yes, that is an important point and I for one have been doing precisely what you mention -- one reason I have a 4 TB internal SSD in my MBP, so that I have the space to transfer sometimes rather large RAW image file folders to my computer and then review, cull and edit the images using the internal drive and 64 GB RAM. First thing I do, though, after transferring a file of new images from the camera' CF Express memory card(s) to the computer is to promptly copy that file to an external SSD as backup before beginning any sort of process on the images. Then I work on the images, delete anything which will not be processed either now or at some future point in time, and save the edited and unedited RAW image files to other external drives. On the computer itself I keep only the current year's worth of edited images.

Backup of important files is critical for anyone; most photographers are quite aware of this and so there is a bit of redundancy, which may seem tedious at times. However, if there is ever some sort of loss of data or device(s) having all the data and images safely backed up on external drives both at home and also at an off-site location can make the difference in an unavoidable emergency situation.

 

[Goodrich]

PhotoMechanic allows you to copy to a backup drive as you ingest. It’s still an intel app (I assume that they use some libraries that are not available in apple silicon — it’s an old app). I think that they may eventually put out a version that does image authentication in apple silicon flavour. camerabits seems to be a fairly small operation, so things take time.

I haven’t tried aftershoot or Narrative select. They seem targeted at event photographers who shoot lots of people pics.

There are also fastrawviewer and the camera manufacturers own (rather limited) apps.

 

[Clix Pix]

PhotoMechanic allows you to copy to a backup drive as you ingest. It’s still an intel app (I assume that they use some libraries that are not available in apple silicon — it’s an old app). I think that they may eventually put out a version that does image authentication in apple silicon flavour. camerabits seems to be a fairly small operation, so things take time.

I haven’t tried aftershoot or Narrative select. They seem targeted at event photographers who shoot lots of people pics.

There are also fastrawviewer and the camera manufacturers own (rather limited) apps.

I haven't used PhotoMechanic much since I got Narrative Select, but yes, it is still an Intel app. I haven't had any issues on my M1 machine with it, so I suppose that is thanks to Rosetta.

Narrative Select and Aftershoot indeed are apparently targeted at event photographers (weddings, family portraits, sports, etc.), and when I first got Narrative Select and realized this at first I thought, "oops!" I shoot primarily wildlife and macro/closeup images, very rarely shoot people at all. However, I have found that both programs work pretty well for my purposes, particularly the wildlife images, and I use Narrative Select to look at larger zoomed-in versions of images I'm considering editing, to be sure that the bird or animal's eyes are open and that the focus is sharp on the eyes, feathers, fur, etc.

Aftershoot is useful when I have shot something like 2000 images and really need to narrow things down considerably. However, neither program is a mindreader and I have found that after I've done a cull with Aftershoot that it is a good idea to go back and look through the other images again in case that program skipped over an image which I would want to edit. Case in point: in one situation I definitely recalled a sequence in which a pair of birds was doing something distinctive and unusual, something I knew I would want to edit.

When I checked to see how Aftershoot and its AI had culled that particular folder they had not chosen that sequence at all. I ran the files through Narrative Select after that, found the images I knew I wanted to edit, and added them plus a couple of others that Aftershoot had passed over to the folder of images chosen by Aftershoot. So definitely Aftershoot is not foolproof. I do think it would be very effective, though, for AI reviewing/culling images of human faces, etc., since it is programmed specifically for that.

 

[NeonNights]

So is it best practice to still keep the RAWs backed up after we've edited and exported photos?

I'm basically just culling and doing light edits of family trips. I planned to delete the RAWs permanently but now wonder if it's wiser to keep the original RAWs, at the expense of increased storage, in case I ever need to go back and re-edit anything...maybe use new software tools on really old RAWs later?? Does everyone typically keep the RAWs forever?

 

[Goodrich]

I do, which is why I have 8Tb of photos, as I also keep the JPEGs that the camera produces. But it is probably unnecessary.

Unfortunately, Lightroom now has a facility to create HDR images, which makes me more inclined to take bracketed images. They look great on the MacBook Pro screen, even if they are difficult to display online. This leads to greater storage requirements.

 

[NeonNights]

I do, which is why I have 8Tb of photos, as I also keep the JPEGs that the camera produces. But it is probably unnecessary.

Unfortunately, Lightroom now has a facility to create HDR images, which makes me more inclined to take bracketed images. They look great on the MacBook Pro screen, even if they are difficult to display online. This leads to greater storage requirements.

Thank you, I'll start archiving the RAWs. I currently have a 10TB Synology NAS but may need to increase the size as I only have 15% free.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Hi,

I’m just wanting some confirnation of what I already think! But I am right in thinking that M3 Pro chip will be more than suitable for the next 3-5 years for a semi pro photographer with occasional video? I’m just considering whether the base M3 Max would be overkill for the limited GPU tasks that are involved with photography and dealing with pictures of 48mp and above. The M3 Pro has 18 GPU cores and Max 30 GPU. Is there a huge difference in performance??

Many thanks

Buy an M2 Max and more RAM instead of M3. Think about the life cycle of the new box you are buying, not last year's workflow. RAM demands always increase over time, and have always been critical in any workflow involving images (like mine does). 64 GB should be your minimum; I bought 96 GB M2.

M2 Max chip is substantially stronger than M3 Pro as well. Just look at an image of the relative sizes base/Pro/Max. The exception is if you are doing something with ray tracing, like Maya, in which case M3 Max rules.

Mac OS will force-fit pretty much any workflow into less RAM as necessary, but paging to disk is sub-optimal, slower and less than ideal. Why intentionally limit a pricey new box?

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Thank you, I'll start archiving the RAWs. I currently have a 10TB Synology NAS but may need to increase the size as I only have 15% free.

Yup. Bad things tend to happen when storage is allowed to exceed more than ~80% full.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Thanks, but i am worried i might need ray tracing for Blender...

My advice changes. For Blender you may indeed be way better off with M3 architecture. Probably you need to do some research within the Blender community regarding hardware demands, and M3 is so new that few folks have experienced it. Note you still must have adequate RAM whatever chip you end up with. Unfortunately working with images has always rqd pricey hardware, and anything with ray tracing moving forward that means M3 Max and $$.

Edit: You also asked "Is there a huge difference in performance??" [M3 Max versus M3 Pro]. Yes the Max is much, much stronger than the Pro; much more than twice as many transistors. Just read MR's current article comparing the chips. And always realize that (especially for those of us that deal with images) any chip requires bountiful RAM or it will be limited.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I do occasional hobby photo editing on a M1 (base) with 16GB of RAM. You'll probably be fine with a Pro. The only time I notice genuine slowdown is when I'm using the Lightroom AI de-noise feature. (It takes 40-60 seconds per photo) But all M chips besides the Ultra have the same number of neural cores, so you're not going to be able to get around that.

I've re-exported my entire Lightroom library (about 1,000 photos) to jpegs from RAW when I was moving to iCloud Photos and it only took about 20 minutes with my config.

I would consider 32GB of RAM depending on your use case, but you very well might be fine with 16 for 4-5 years.

Edit: Just saw the post about the M3 Pro vs Max being faster at denoise. That's odd... I guess it accelerates with the GPU... get the Max then, I suppose?

No one doing images work should even consider 16 GB RAM December 2023 for a new box. Just because Mac OS makes it run does not mean it is a wise way to configure an expensive new tool.

 

[Clix Pix]

So is it best practice to still keep the RAWs backed up after we've edited and exported photos?

I'm basically just culling and doing light edits of family trips. I planned to delete the RAWs permanently but now wonder if it's wiser to keep the original RAWs, at the expense of increased storage, in case I ever need to go back and re-edit anything...maybe use new software tools on really old RAWs later?? Does everyone typically keep the RAWs forever?

I keep the RAWs that I am pretty sure I'll want to edit even if I don't have the time to do so immediately, and discard those which even though they passed the first round of culling, it is likely I'm probably never going to edit. I do not keep the RAWs of images that I have already edited, as I am pretty sure that I won't ever feel a need to re-edit them; I'd rather be out shooting something new and fresh!

To answer the other question, though, yes, using new software tools on older RAWs does work out very well, and I have from time to time done that.

 

[HawkTheHusky1902]

My advice changes. For Blender you may indeed be way better off with M3 architecture. Probably you need to do some research within the Blender community regarding hardware demands, and M3 is so new that few folks have experienced it. Note you still must have adequate RAM whatever chip you end up with. Unfortunately working with images has always rqd pricey hardware, and anything with ray tracing moving forward that means M3 Max and $$.

Edit: You also asked "Is there a huge difference in performance??" [M3 Max versus M3 Pro]. Yes the Max is much, much stronger than the Pro; much more than twice as many transistors. Just read MR's current article comparing the chips. And always realize that (especially for those of us that deal with images) any chip requires bountiful RAM or it will be limited.

Thank you, i know the M3 Max is much faster now after reading a little. Problem is, M3 is extremely expensive here…and i dont do Blender professionally, only as a hobby, so i want to know, maybe m1/m2 is ok for occasional use?

 

[HawkTheHusky1902]

No one doing images work should even consider 16 GB RAM December 2023 for a new box. Just because Mac OS makes it run does not mean it is a wise way to configure an expensive new tool.

i dont really agree, if i pay under 1k; higher than that its just insane. I have a 2013 MBP now with 16gb ram on Sonoma and 16gb is just fine, but more is definitely good.

 

[macduke]

I would get a refurbished M2 Pro with 32GB RAM unless you want 36GB. Can save some money and the M2 Pro GPU is a little more powerful.

 

[HawkTheHusky1902]

I would get a refurbished M2 Pro with 32GB RAM unless you want 36GB. Can save some money and the M2 Pro GPU is a little more powerful.

But no ray tracing...M3 pro is apparently MUCH faster for Blender and stuff like that...

 

[Filmx]

I had the M1 Pro 16GB model and it definitely couldn’t handle my work. Things became so unbearable I had to upgrade. Had I gone with a M1 Max with 32GB of ram I probably wouldn’t have to upgrade. My issues began when I got a new camera with 60 megapixel raw files. 2 years ago when I got my M1 I was using 24. Point is going with Max if you can.

Which camera? A7RIV/A7RV? My 2020 M1 MBP 13" struggles with my Canon R5 files in Lightroom. When zooming in to 100% or 200% there are substantial delays, sometimes several seconds. And when using the heal/clone tool, brushing/masking, etc. I'm wondering how the Pro vs. Max models compare in this regard.

 

[Miltz]

Which camera? A7RIV/A7RV? My 2020 M1 MBP 13" struggles with my Canon R5 files in Lightroom. When zooming in to 100% or 200% there are substantial delays, sometimes several seconds. And when using the heal/clone tool, brushing/masking, etc. I'm wondering how the Pro vs. Max models compare in this regard.

Leica Q3. I would not get a Pro due to the lower GPU cores. It makes a massive difference.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Which camera? A7RIV/A7RV? My 2020 M1 MBP 13" struggles with my Canon R5 files in Lightroom. When zooming in to 100% or 200% there are substantial delays, sometimes several seconds. And when using the heal/clone tool, brushing/masking, etc. I'm wondering how the Pro vs. Max models compare in this regard.

Max is more than double the transistors of Pro so it should perform accordingly. Plus do not forget that RAM is also all-important.

Non-image folks often do not grasp the significance of such delays. When your brain is creating and the process is interrupted to wait for the computer your brain goes off somewhere else. Very impeding.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

i dont really agree, if i pay under 1k; higher than that its just insane. I have a 2013 MBP now with 16gb ram on Sonoma and 16gb is just fine, but more is definitely good.

We disagree. IMO 16 GB RAM is not just fine for anyone dealing with images.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Thank you, i know the M3 Max is much faster now after reading a little. Problem is, M3 is extremely expensive here…and i dont do Blender professionally, only as a hobby, so i want to know, maybe m1/m2 is ok for occasional use?

I read up on Blender a bit and my guess is that for non-pro work the slowdown from lack of M3 would not be overly problematic. But IMO lack of RAM would be problematic. Just guessing of course, but from images experience.