Macbook Air M2 - how is it handling LrC Rel 13 and 45MP files?

[calcal]

I'm thinking of buying a Macbook Air for traveling/leaving the house with. My primary computer is a heavy Macbook Pro M1 16" connected to a 32"monitor. My old 13 in Macbook Pro is ready to be retired. I would like something smaller and lighter to travel with and occasionally use Lightroom when I'm not at home. Not sure about the 13" vs 15" yet.

How is the M2 Air handling the latest release of LrC with 45MP raw files.

Advice??

 

[BarkingBeans Coffee]

Will depend on your GPU specs that you choose mostly. Yes get decent RAM but much of LrC like denoise is GPU dependent these days.

I have a 2018 Intel MBA that needs replacing. One thing I am considering is that as soon as the M3‘s come out there will be great sales on the M2s. That will be next year though. BH had crazy deals on MBP M1’s fully loaded over the past 6 months.

Also do a comparison on sizes before you decide on the Air. You might think one of the MBPs is ok.

 

[randomwalk]

Something to keep in mind with the M1 and M2 macs, is that the memory is shared between CPU and GPU. There is no dedicated memory for the GPU like traditional Intel/AMD machines. So I would recommend getting at least 16gb of memory and possibly 24gb (the max for Macbook Air).

 

[BarkingBeans Coffee]

I had WRONGLY assumed you configure the GPU specs on the MBA. I would say it could be a nonstarter for me with only 10GPU to use for photo processing. I just looked at the Apple site. I agree with @randomwalk that 24gb CPU would be the minimum but you really need to have someone that has a MBA give you the time it takes to do a task you would care about. I would suggest Denoise AI in LRc. My 2018 MBA would be 45 min vs 30-45 seconds on my MBP M1 with 24 GPU.

You said occasional use so maybe the MBA is fine.

Apple’s comparison tool will be very useful to you to compare size, weight, and possible GPU and memory specs.

 

[Palmor]

I have a 13" M2 air with 24GB of memory and 8 core GPU (you can opt for the 10 core if you want). I took it with me to Iceland last summer and never had any issues but I wasn't timing it and I was shooting 20MP. When I have used with my A1 files I don't notice it being slow but again I'm not usually processing 1000s of files on it. Is there something specific you want timed?

 

[calcal]

Something to keep in mind with the M1 and M2 macs, is that the memory is shared between CPU and GPU. There is no dedicated memory for the GPU like traditional Intel/AMD machines. So I would recommend getting at least 16gb of memory and possibly 24gb (the max for Macbook Air).

Yes, I would definitely go with 24GB memory. Thank you!

 

[jerrylwatson]

Do not have a MBA but own two PC laptops and a M1 Apple for software development. One PC laptop has 32 GB and the other 64GB of ram with equivalent CPU and GPUs. The 64GB laptop processes much faster in LR and all image processing. So I would suggest getting as much RAM as possible and a dedicated GPU.

 

[calcal]

I had WRONGLY assumed you configure the GPU specs on the MBA. I would say it could be a nonstarter for me with only 10GPU to use for photo processing. I just looked at the Apple site. I agree with @randomwalk that 24gb CPU would be the minimum but you really need to have someone that has a MBA give you the time it takes to do a task you would care about. I would suggest Denoise AI in LRc. My 2018 MBA would be 45 min vs 30-45 seconds on my MBP M1 with 24 GPU.

You said occasional use so maybe the MBA is fine.

Apple’s comparison tool will be very useful to you to compare size, weight, and possible GPU and memory specs.

Thank you. I have to remind myself when I look at the comparison specs that this is for occasional use and light weight. I would likely want it to handle tonal adjustments, cropping and healing but not necessarily masking or more resource intensive tasks.

 

[Nimi]

In Apple world, I'd stick with a Pro. My year old Air is not keeping up with the rapid advances of Adobe and Davinci. No such thing as "future proofing," unfortunately, it takes all the memory, CPU and GPU it takes to run current versions. For the first time I'm thinking about a desktop.

 

[calcal]

I have a 13" M2 air with 24GB of memory and 8 core GPU (you can opt for the 10 core if you want). I took it with me to Iceland last summer and never had any issues but I wasn't timing it and I was shooting 20MP. When I have used with my A1 files I don't notice it being slow but again I'm not usually processing 1000s of files on it. Is there something specific you want timed?

Not necessarily timed but just a whether it can do the more basic adjustments on 45mp files including handling batch tonal adjustments using autosync on groups of a about a dozen at a time. If it could handle that with slowing down much I'd be happy. I would go with 10 core and 24GB memory.

 

[Palmor]

Not necessarily timed but just a whether it can do the more basic adjustments on 45mp files including handling batch tonal adjustments using autosync on groups of a about a dozen at a time. If it could handle that with slowing down much I'd be happy. I would go with 10 core and 24GB memory.

This a really good view that should answer all your questions, way better than I can

Base M2 air:

24GB Ram M2 Air

 

[BarkingBeans Coffee]

Not necessarily timed but just a whether it can do the more basic adjustments on 45mp files including handling batch tonal adjustments using autosync on groups of an about a dozen at a time. If it could handle that with slowing down much I'd be happy. I would go with 10 core and 24GB memory.

So the MBP vs MBA is only .3 lbs difference on 13”. You get more ports and could add GPU. These decisions aren’t easy and sometimes not cheap.

 

[BarkingBeans Coffee]

Not necessarily timed but just a whether it can do the more basic adjustments on 45mp files including handling batch tonal adjustments using autosync on groups of a about a dozen at a time. If it could handle that with slowing down much I'd be happy. I would go with 10 core and 24GB memory.

Maybe buy from a place that gives you 30 day returns just to see if you are satisfied.

 

[ricardo00]

I'm thinking of buying a Macbook Air for traveling/leaving the house with. My primary computer is a heavy Macbook Pro M1 16" connected to a 32"monitor. My old 13 in Macbook Pro is ready to be retired. I would like something smaller and lighter to travel with and occasionally use Lightroom when I'm not at home. Not sure about the 13" vs 15" yet.

How is the M2 Air handling the latest release of LrC with 45MP raw files.

Advice??

I recently upgraded my "travel" laptop, an 11 inch MacBook Air (about 10 years old) to a 13.6 inch MacBook Air M2. Since my goal was to keep it as light as possible, I went with 8GB RAM and 512GB hard drive though did get the 10C GPU. I only process single 45MP RAW files (the best one) and use DXO and also have processed video on this computer. For me, it is perfectly fine. Sorry don't do Lightroom. I mostly use the travel computer to backup my files to an external hard drive, review them, surf the internet and occasionally process a really nice photo that I then upload to the web while traveling in case the worst happens.

 

[Anjin San]

Any M anything machine is going to be faster than the Intel based ones…and the Pro version chip with more GPUs is going to beat the non pro one for complex LrC stuff…but it’s a matter of how much processing do you do on the road vs at home and all ypu really need to do is import and backup. I tried LrC on my wife’s M1 13 Air and with the panes in view it’s too small for serious PP IMO…but would be fine for import and backup. My 14 M1 MBP is better but still too small a screen for full time PP…but I didn’t want the extra weight of the 16 for my travel computer. I dont do much PP on trips anyway…and unless I was on a workshop where we wanted to compare images I would either import and stop or just back up the cards outside of Lr anyway.