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M1 Macbook air - Is the base model enough??

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
September 14, 2021
7 replies
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Hello everyone,

I need to upgrade my old 2011 macbook. Will the base model M1 macbook air or pro be enough to edit photos with lightroom. 8 or 16 gb?

Thanks Ash

macOS

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Correct answer Conrad_C

Adobe hasn't changed their system requirements, the document still says 16GB is recommended. Since Adobe has code that works with the M1, I guess they have good reason to still recommend 16GB.

Where the M1 is different is that where having only 8GB RAM would cause problems on an Intel Mac, the same task on an 8GB RAM Apple Silicon Mac has generally been observed to perform much closer to an Intel Mac with 16GB RAM.

However, Lightroom Classic does not exactly fit into that, because if you give it more than 12GB RAM it has at least one specific use for it: It will cache adjacent previews in RAM so that it's faster to go from image to image in Loupe view.

If you use an 8GB RAM M1 Mac, although it is RAM efficient Lightroom Classic may not believe it has enough RAM to use that performance enhancement. For that and other reasons, even on an Apple Silicon Mac, it is still important to get the recommended 16GB RAM if you want Lightroom Classic to perform optimally.

(Edit, 2023) I’m updating this reply, because the new AI features such as People Masking and AI Denoise use the GPU heavily, and work much better if the GPU gets enough graphics memory. On Apple Silicon Macs, graphics memory is dynamically shared with system memory, so a Mac with 16GB unified memory and higher is more likely to have enough system memory free to let the GPU have what it needs for advanced GPU operations.

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Anav253204154yuc

Participant

Hi! I'm an enthusiast photographer.

I'm using the base model M1 Macbook Air for all my photography workloads (I even use final cut pro to create reels for my instagram), and unless you're batch editing hundreds of photos, the 8GB ram should do just fine (even with multiple layers on photoshop).

My advice today: if you can afford it, go buy the 14 inch macbook pro, but if you're on a tight budget like I am, buy the m2 macbook air (base model, I know that the SSD is slow, but for an enthusiast photographer its totally fine) or the m1 macbook air (base model).

Cheers!

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ashley5D1E18277700Author

Known Participant

thank !! Good to know!! I actually bought the M1 AIR with 16gb and an external hard drive. So fingers crossed when I start editing more photos I shouldn't have any problems. All the gear and no idea. Appreciate the feedback

ultrachrome

Inspiring

We bought this computer with 16mb of ram and it's not very good for Photoshop when running CPU intensive filters and functions.

GoldingD

Legend

Looking at the Apple web page on the Air.

What is meant by unified memory? Apparently no separate VRAM?

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

Adobe don't tend to change their system requirments between versions. So, use them as a guide not absolutes. Also, like many other vendors they're still honing their apps for optimim performance. Fortunately, memory use is largely controlled by macOS, although that's not to say that app developers can ignore it.

Above being said, 8GB is definitely not sufficient for Lightroom Classic. My recommendation is for 16GB ram and a minimum of 512GB SSD (1TB preferred).

Jim mentioned memory swapping above, and while it does occur, I don't find my 16GB, 1TB M1 Mac mini with 1TB ssd and 16GB of ram any worse than my 16-inch MacBook Pro with 1TB, 16 GB ram and 4TB of VRAM. In both cases, it's most likely to occur in the Develop module, especially if louping from image to image or when using the Healing brush or Local Adjustment brush. A more useful metric than swap use is Memory Pressure, and I've yet to see it go into the red band (i.e. band at which more ram would absolutely be more benificial).

dj_paige

Legend

Adobe recommends 16GB.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/system-requirements.html

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ashley5D1E18277700Author

Known Participant

even with the new M1 chips??

dj_paige

Legend

Why would new chips require less memory?

Jim Wilde

Community Expert

I would suggest that you'll find 16GB to be the best option. I'm using that on an M1 Mac Mini, and performance is fine (but even with the 16GB option there are the odd occasions where memory swapping has to take place). I have seen posts from unhappy Lightroom users who selected the base model and regretted it.

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ashley5D1E18277700Author

Known Participant

Thank ! 16gb seems like the way to go and will future proof my laptop.

I will just have to bite the bullet and buy the cheaper external ssd.

thanks for the feedback

Jim Wilde

Community Expert

What size internal SSD are you thinking of ordering? If you're thinking of having the Classic catalog folder on the internal drive, I'd suggest 256GB isn't enough. I had an MBP with the 512GB SSD....I started with my Catalog folder on the internal drive, but eventually had to move it to a dedicated external SSD as there was too much pressure on the available free space on the internal drive (Classic uses a lot of temporary working space on the system drive, so it's generally advisable to maintain 20% free space on that drive). So for my Mac Mini I bought the 1TB model so that I could get my catalog back on the internal drive.