using After Effects on a new 24" M1 iMac

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
February 24, 2022
2 replies
2224 views

Im in the process of buying a new iMac and wondered what spec I need to run After Effects (including Photoshop, Illustrator et al) sufficiantly. I think the low spec starts at 8GB RAM so will I need to get more RAM for example?

Performance

This topic has been closed for replies.

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

Ger at least 16GB of ram and as much storage as you can afford. Most of the Adobe suite is now universal, but After Effects and many 3rd party effects and scripts must still be run in Rosetta.

Lewis7kAuthor

Inspiring

Will the new M1 chip be ok running 3rd party programs. I've heard there might be a problem. I'm still thinking of getting a 2020 refurbished intel imac with a higher spec although I cant find one cheap enough that has higher than 5 core processor which could cause a problem too?

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

I ran numerous tests on a basic M1 Mac Mini before buying a new, nearly fully-loaded 16" MacBook Pro (M1). I have a lot of 3rd party plugins from Video Copilot, Maxon (All the Red Giant stuff + more), and Boris FX. There are even a few others. I have no significant problems running in After Effects or AE Beta using Rosetta. Sometimes I will have to roll back a version when a build has a bug, but I'm very happy with my decision.

Premiere Pro rocks. I'm working on a 4K documentary, and I've tested 6K and 8K footage from several cameras. The performance is amazing, and rendering H.264 samples for the client takes much less time than expected.

The M1 chip is not perfect, but I'm delighted, and the performance way exceeds the iMac Pro I sold about a year and a half ago. I am also more productive than using my 18-month-old traded-in completely maxed-out intel MacBook Pro. On some projects, the basic Mac Mini (8 GB ram and external SSDs for the Creative Cloud and footage, was even faster than my nearly new $$$$$ MacBook Pro.

I am not guaranteeing you will not have some problems, but I'm way more productive on the M1 machine.

ToolfarmJP

Community Expert

You get access to the link below about the system requirement of After Effects.

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/system-requirements.html

Lewis7kAuthor

Inspiring

The system requirements dont mention Apples new M1 processors with only 8 GB of RAM. I take it from my brief conversation with Rick Gerard that an M1 model with 8 GB is enough and i dont have to spend more money and upgrade to 16 GB?

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

Do everything you can to get 16GB of ram. It will save you enough time to pay for itself if you charge for your work.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded