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I've been following the development of Affinity Photo for some time now. I use a Mac, of course, but am reluctant to upgrade beyond Snow Leopard because of several apps I use that are no longer supported or would need to be expesively upgraded too. Affinity Photo does not run under SL so; it's time to buy a new Mac; but which one? Sorry, I am getting to the point!

 

Does Affinity Photo, for instance, use the full power of a Mac Pro? - multi-threading cores etc. Or would an iMac 5k Retina be a better (certainly cheaper) choice? I've used an Eizo monitor for the past seven years and would prefer another Eizo (4k) than an Apple screen. Perhaps they'll upgrade the Mac mini with a Skylake processor.

 

I'm desperately trying to avoid going the route of Lightroom and was happy to see that Serif is pursuing a DAM solution. The panorama feature released recently looks terrific and even the live stacks feature almost gives the ability for HDR. Lens corrections? In a similar fashion to LR?

 

Any advise greatfully accepted.

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Hi WildCottage, 

 

Welcome to the forum. 

What model Mac are you presently using?

It may run well on El Capitan, I've tried Yosemite & El Capitan booted from an external USB drive on a Mac Pro that is running Snow Leopard and the speed of the OS & apps were marginally faster than Snow Leopard! 

 

Because the Mac Pro did not have USB3 support for the USB3 drive I was using, boot up time was expectedly slower, but over all performance seemed snappier when running and Affinity Photo/Designer were heaps faster than Adobe's equivalents. 

 

Paul. 

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Thanks Bill & Paul for your replies.

Interesting solution Bill; I'm using a 2009 Mac Pro - and yes I discovered that SL does not support USB3.

But not an ideal solution for me. Actually the lack of modern connections is another reason for getting a new Mac.

 

Paul; good to hear that AP is so streamlined.

I probably can't afford to go the Mac Pro route but wanted to discount it if there was no technical advantage (AP using several cores, multi-threading etc.)

 

Best wishes,

WildCottage

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Thanks Bill & Paul for your replies.

Interesting solution Bill; I'm using a 2009 Mac Pro - and yes I discovered that SL does not support USB3.

But not an ideal solution for me. Actually the lack of modern connections is another reason for getting a new Mac.

 

Paul; good to hear that AP is so streamlined.

I probably can't afford to go the Mac Pro route but wanted to discount it if there was no technical advantage (AP using several cores, multi-threading etc.)

 

Best wishes,

WildCottage

 

I sincerly believe you'll be at no perceptable disadvantage with a  new iMac (vs a Mac Pro).

 

The only time I find myself waiting on AP is when using the "refine selection" tool. Even that is not bad. If an 8 year old iMac feels snappy, a new one will do you well.

 

Bill

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I currently run AP on a 2015 15" MacBook Pro (500 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM).  At home I connect it to a 27" IPS monitor with 2560x1440 resolution for more screen space and an external Thunderbolt 2 drive for extra storage, but I love that I can pick the MacBook up and use it on trips.  AP performance is great.   

 

The Mac Pro seems a little dated to be Apple's high-end machine and it's unclear whether Apple will update it anytime soon.  When you consider the cost of high res monitor, keyboard, etc. in addition to the actual Mac Pro, it's a little pricey.

 

The 27‑inch iMac with Retina 5K display would be awesome and I am sure would be even zippier if you got the model with the 4.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7.  

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I'm running Affinity Photo on a trash-can style Mac Pro (with 2 Eizo monitors) and 64 gigs of RAM and it is screaming fast.

 

But I'm also running Affinity Photo on a mid-2007 iMac with 6 gigs of RAM running Yosemite, and AP screams on the old iMac too.  

 

The code is very streamlined.

 

Bill

 

Thank you very much for the information about the mit-2007 iMac!

 

I'm running El Capitan on my 2008 iMac with 6 GB RAM and was afraid that AP would run too slow. Purchased it last night and - yes - it even runs great when working on my 650 MB scanned large fromat files. Very impressive.

 

Now I wish I could use the PTLens plugin...

hobbyists discuss new camera features

photographers discuss new software

masters discuss light

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I currently run AP on a 2015 15" MacBook Pro (500 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM).  At home I connect it to a 27" IPS monitor with 2560x1440 resolution for more screen space and an external Thunderbolt 2 drive for extra storage, but I love that I can pick the MacBook up and use it on trips.  AP performance is great.   

 

The Mac Pro seems a little dated to be Apple's high-end machine and it's unclear whether Apple will update it anytime soon.  When you consider the cost of high res monitor, keyboard, etc. in addition to the actual Mac Pro, it's a little pricey.

 

The 27‑inch iMac with Retina 5K display would be awesome and I am sure would be even zippier if you got the model with the 4.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7.  

 

I just got a 27" 5K 4.0GHz iMac - and it absolutely flies.  Worth considering now while you can still upgrade the memory yourself, as it seems Apple are removing the possibility for users to upgrade their own memory in newer models.  I put 24GB in it for just £64.  The 21" 4K has pre-configured memory, so you'll end up paying Apple a lot of money for 16GB of RAM.  It also can't be spec'd up as high as the 27".

 

Also - if you are looking for a new machine and a 27" 5K display - this is a no brainer.  There is no display better than this for the money.

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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We debated this in the office.  I went with the 2GB R9 M395.  Seems fine for everything I do.  I'm not so much into gaming, though I do a bit of raw photo and video editing.  The main consensus here was that the performance increase for the cost makes it only worthwhile if you know you need the extra performance of the M395X.  In the UK it's an extra £200... that as an extra on a machine that is already £2169 is a big jump.  So, that was the only upgrade I skimped on, apart from opting for the 3TB fusion drive instead of Flash.  I might regret it one day, but well see.

 

As for use with AP - the M395 is probably plenty!  Unless anyone wants to say otherwise?

 

Of course, just to be sure, you can always drop close to £8000 on a fully spec'd Mac Pro.  I see they do throw in the power lead for that.   ;)

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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I just remember a funny thing about the Mac Pro:

MKBHD (YouTube tech reviewer) mentioned in a video about the Mac Pro that one of the things that gets the fan spinning is Adobe flash player ;)

 

PS:

Do you have Mac Pros in the office for some people?

 

 

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I just got a 27" 5K 4.0GHz iMac - and it absolutely flies.  Worth considering now while you can still upgrade the memory yourself, as it seems Apple are removing the possibility for users to upgrade their own memory in newer models.  I put 24GB in it for just £64.  The 21" 4K has pre-configured memory, so you'll end up paying Apple a lot of money for 16GB of RAM.  It also can't be spec'd up as high as the 27".

 

Also - if you are looking for a new machine and a 27" 5K display - this is a no brainer.  There is no display better than this for the money.

 

Ben 

 

I was in the Apple Store today looking at the 27" iMac Retina 5k.  The display is stunning, even it the only photos on the store model were shot with an iPhone plus!  if I calculate it right, the screen is the equivalent of a 14 megapixel display.  Dell makes a 27" IPS monitor of the same resolution that costs US$ 2,199.99, without the computer, keyboard and mouse!   After the holidays, I plan on placing an order for the 27" iMac with the quad core i7.  Thanks for the tip about the RAM, I'll follow your advice.  I have a thunderbolt 2 external hard disk enclosure, so I may go with the internal 512B SSD, for maximum zip.

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Storage was another thing I stressed over.  If I had opted for the Flash drive, I'd have wanted the 1TB, and that costs a whopping £560 extra.  512GB wouldn't have been enough for everything I store, and so I'd have need to shell out for an external drive as well.

 

The 3TB fusion has 128GB of managed flash storage - so in theory for common tasks and most used apps it should be comparable to the Flash drive.  Not sure how good the smart management is - time will tell.  I only really use a handful of apps regularly, so it may work out well.

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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Will be interesting to see how AP deals with batch processing once the macro editor is available. I noticed CR2 file batch processing is faster in DxO than PS CS5.5. Computer makes a huge difference with stacking deep stacks (>100 x 300 MB tif files using Zerene): MB air: don't bother, 6 dual core Mac Pro still runs hot for 10 minutes solid).

 

Flash drives have high failure rate due to limited write-over cycles. I use SS drive only for system and apps/scratch disk, so it is >80% empty, so loads of bad sectors can accumulate. All working files are on a thunderbolt RAID1. File reading is faster than on previous mac-pro tower with built in drives, which really surprised me. Saving 500 MB files is done in a second, so no complaints. Up to 100 MB file saving is done in a blink of an eye.

 

AP runs smooth with one NEC UHD 322 4K display and one Apple 27" cinema display on a 32GB RAM soup can.

AffinityPhoto | Designer | Publisher V1&2, InDesign, QuarkXPress, Zeiss ZenBlue, ZereneStacker, Heliconfocus, Aurora HDR, DxO Optics Pro, DataGraph, Wacom tablet

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