LIghtroom speed on a new mac

[wedding-photography-denver]

<p>This is directed more specifically to those who use current macs for LR2 and weddings (though I am happy to hear anything you want to share about it from anyone with an opinion too :-)).</p>

<p>I need more speed when using LR2 for my wedding image processing. So, I am updating my aging G5 dually.</p>

<p>The question is, will I get near the speed using a MBP 2.66 maxed on RAM as I would using a Mac Pro with a 2.66 and 4gigs of RAM?</p>

<p>A second, less critical question to anyone who knows is, will either one of these give me a significant up in speed with LR2? Like 50% increase or something?</p>

<p>Frame of reference for the update is that my current system is taking about 5 - 10 secs loading an image and there is now a lag in using the sliders (slight, but annoying).</p>

<p>Thanks for any/all advice and opinions.</p>

[cathy_and_david_bock]

<p>We have both.. We have a 2.66 dual quad MacPro with 8gbs of ram, and a brand new top end 15" MBP with 4gbs. Both are great computers. They are both very powerful but not much of a difference.. The good thing about the tower is that it's more expandable (we have 4 1.5TB drives in the MacPro vs the single drive in the MBP.) So the question you want to ask right now is if you need something to take with you. If that's the case get the MBP, otherwise I'd get the MacPro. We do slideshows at our weddings of the photos we shot that day, so having the MBP is a necessity. And we're two photogs so having the MacPro is helpful as well so we can each have our own system to work on (Cathy plugs her MBP into a 24" display and my MacPro has dual 24" displays.).</p>

<p>Best,<br>

David.</p>

[pete_s.]

<p>Dave, you might want to check out http://macperformanceguide.com/ especially the section how to optimize lightroom performance and also http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/blog.html.</p>

 

[wedding-photography-denver]

<p>David and Pete, many thanks for your imput.<br>

Overall the MBP looks like a winner but for storage.</p>

[wedding-photography-denver]

<p>...and that should say "input", haha. Late night posts...</p>

[cathy_and_david_bock]

<p>Agreed. I'd get the MBP first.</p>

[ellery_chua___singapore]

<p>Well David the first thing I would suggest is when you load up LR2 to doing in the 64bit mode. I use this with an entery level MP with 2GIG - what I notice is that the export function now flies in comparison to my old computer - a P4 3mhz with 3 gig ram. LR2 however will get sluggish when the catalogue grows in size and the hard disk on the Mac get lower on space. I am putting in another 2 gigs and probably a 320gig hd replacing out the 160. <br>

The export function is roughly speaking 3x the speed on 32bit on my P4. The rest is about 30 to 40% in the begining now that my hard disk is abt 80% full - I sometimes see an occassional lag in loading and slider access. </p>