Photographer switching from PC to iMac - but what spec?

Hi,

I am not a complete newbie to Mac. I have been running a 13" Retina MacbookPro since mid 2013 but I have retained my PC. But having become increasingly concerned about the way Windows is going I have decided to make the change despite my feelings about the cost of the transition.

Basically I am a keen amateur photographer using Lightroom and Photoshop for processing RAW files and intend to continue doing so. I will be running the usual office stuff.

I have been looking around the internet and chatted to my local (UK) Apple shop. iMac 27" with retina 5K is the machine I will be buying. The top spec is the one with 3.3Ghz i5 but without the graphics upgrade. I would favour the processor upgrade for future proofing but much depends on the overall cost of the system. The basic 8GB RAM which I will upgrade myself to 24GB.

The internal storage options are what I am puzzling over most. My PC has a 128Gb SSD plus 3 x 1Tb internal hard disks. Of this about 2Tb is in use overall. Initially I had thought of the 3TB Fusion disk but I am wondering about the 512Gb flash storage option instead. My current backup strategy is based upon backing up the system SSD (plus a bootable clone) and having a clone of the other disks updated daily. I would prefer to keep that strategy using Time Machine and one of the cloning applications (not sure which one yet) which is making me think that the SSD option for internal storage is better (especially as performance would be better) and get suitable external hard disks to keep the data with others to hold the clones.

I would be interested in suggestions about which internal storage option about which external disks. I am also wondering whether an external SSD (to hold the LR catalogue and the photos I am working on) would be a good idea.

I also suspect I will need more connections to attach it all and would welcome suggestions as to the best options.

Thanks in advance.

spock999 said:

The internal storage options are what I am puzzling over most. My PC has a 128Gb SSD plus 3 x 1Tb internal hard disks. Of this about 2Tb is in use overall. Initially I had thought of the 3TB Fusion disk but I am wondering about the 512Gb flash storage option instead.

Click to expand...

Yes…one weakness of every Apple computer now sold is the lack of internal storage flexibility (extra storage bays). This of course is due to the design of Apple computer cases having some "personality"…instead of an ugly Windows box.

I would say get your iMac configured with as much internal SSD storage as you can afford…and then basically all additional storage needs be via traditional rotating external HD's.

spock999 said:

I am also wondering whether an external SSD (to hold the LR catalogue and the photos I am working on) would be a good idea.

Click to expand...

I don't think that this would be a very good idea. A super fast external SSD would probably suffer from "port bottleneck"…not able to transfer SSD data into the computer fast enough. Thus reducing the strengths of an SSD.

HTH,

- Nick

I'm running Lightroom and Photoshop on my 2012 27" iMac with a 1TB hard drive and 16GB of RAM. It runs absolutely fine editing large RAW files (from my Nikon D800). I've then got a 2TB external hard drive permanently connected for TM back ups and then store my photos on 3 further external hard drives (1 of which is a bootable clone - I use the free version of SuperDuper and find it works well).

Thanks for the info.

I have decided to go with the 512Gb Flash Storage option and as external drives the 8Tb WD My Book Pro RAID see http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00YIO5WR0/.