Is 4Gb enough on a MacBook for an advanced photographer?

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I bought a gently used MacBook Pro that's a bit over a year old and that has 4 Gb of RAM. I am wondering if it's good enough to handle large raw photo files and so on as my wife is going to use this mac for doing her photography stuff... via Photoshop and other such software for pic editing.

I could upgrade to 8gb if necessary but thought I'd ask the pros before dropping a $100-200 or whatever it costs to add the memory.

Thanks!

Lewis
 

chscag

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It would be a good idea to up the memory to at least 8 GB especially if you're going to be running Photoshop. We recommend Crucial or OWC as the best vendors to buy the memory from.
 

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I could upgrade to 8gb if necessary but thought I'd ask the pros before dropping a $100-200 or whatever it costs to add the memory.

An 8gig ram upgrade should cost you closer to $50-$60 bucks (assuming you're in the U.S.). At that price...why not!;)

- Nick
 
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I bought a gently used MacBook Pro that's a bit over a year old and that has 4 Gb of RAM. I am wondering if it's good enough to handle large raw photo files and so on as my wife is going to use this mac for doing her photography stuff... via Photoshop and other such software for pic editing.

I could upgrade to 8gb if necessary but thought I'd ask the pros before dropping a $100-200 or whatever it costs to add the memory.

Thanks!

Lewis

Do the 16gb from OWC $149 Get all that you can.
 
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I bought a gently used MacBook Pro that's a bit over a year old and that has 4 Gb of RAM. I am wondering if it's good enough to handle large raw photo files and so on as my wife is going to use this mac for doing her photography stuff... via Photoshop and other such software for pic editing.

I could upgrade to 8gb if necessary but thought I'd ask the pros before dropping a $100-200 or whatever it costs to add the memory.

Thanks!

Lewis

The very first thing I did after getting my iMac was to order 16 Gig of high speed RAM and have the Mac dealer install it. It's not the Apple brand of RAM but identical chip modules made by Crucial. It's been running great for better than 4 years, now with Mountain Lion aboard. I'm a power Photoshop user.
 

pigoo3

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The very first thing I did after getting my iMac was to order 16 Gig of high speed RAM and have the Mac dealer install it. It's not the Apple brand of RAM but identical chip modules made by Crucial. It's been running great for better than 4 years, now with Mountain Lion aboard. I'm a power Photoshop user.

Great advice Bob!:)

As far as I can tell...you're one of the "Main-Men" around here when it comes to photography!:)

- Nick
 
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Great advice Bob!:)

As far as I can tell...you're one of the "Main-Men" around here when it comes to photography!:)

- Nick

Few computers or software require more resources than Adobe Photoshop. Only high end gaming requires more.
 

Slydude

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Hey Bob wouldn't it be safe to say that other than memory an ample amount of storage space is one of the next best investments?
 
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Hey Bob wouldn't it be safe to say that other than memory an ample amount of storage space is one of the next best investments?

IMHO you don't need a big hard drive at all. My iMac has a 500 gig HD and still has 350 gig free. I store my photos online at SmugMug.com, have for 4 years. They backup everything on three different servers at three different locations. It cost me around $50 a year for that security. Even though hard drives have gotten cheaper it doesn't get close to that price. Plus, what's your time worth spent backing up on multiple hard drives? If there's a fire, theft or disaster in your home you lose everything. I can't deal with that.

After RAM your best investment is good software. With my Photography I own the latest Mac versions of Photoshop and plug-in suites from 3 different makers: Topaz, OnOne & NIK. Again, these were all downloaded from the companies so backups are always available for free. Been there, done that.
 

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That's a good deal to have backups in more than one place. I don't have a lot of photos at the moment but would like to begin digitizing a lot of old family photos and do some touchup work.

I have the OnOne plugins and really like them. I need to contact them since I need to reinstall them and seem to have misplaced my serial number. I'll be trying the NIK plugins soon as well.
 
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4GB RAM is just fine if you just collect so many pictures, etc. But if you're planning to download so many applications and software a larger RAM is better :)
 

Raz0rEdge

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4GB RAM is just fine if you just collect so many pictures, etc. But if you're planning to download so many applications and software a larger RAM is better :)

RAM has nothing to do with storage. So what and how much you download are have no relation to the RAM. RAM has everything to do with WHAT you run. So running applications that will load large RAW images or video footage for post-processing needs a lot of RAM to make it efficient..

Please learn about the terminology and usage before posting..
 
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RAM has nothing to do with storage. So what and how much you download are have no relation to the RAM. RAM has everything to do with WHAT you run. So running applications that will load large RAW images or video footage for post-processing needs a lot of RAM to make it efficient..

Please learn about the terminology and usage before posting..

Give her a break. I've got underwear older than her. :)
 
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Go with 16G crucial. Great investment.
 

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Give her a break. I've got underwear older than her. :)

LOL
1. WAAAAAY too much info there Bob.
2. You must hate shopping more than I do.
 
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LOL
1. WAAAAAY too much info there Bob.
2. You must hate shopping more than I do.

Actually I hate doing laundry so I have 6 weeks worth of tighty whities. :)
 

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