2025 MacBook Pro specs for Photoshop and Lightroom Classic photo editing

[JEK99]

After too many problems with Windows machines over the years, I am considering buying a MacBook laptop. I'm a keen amateur photographer who uses Photoshop and Lightroom Classic to edit my photos for personal use. My budget is flexible: I would rather pay more for good performance and future-proofing than just squeak by with the bare minimum to do what I want to do.  I seek feedback on the following specs/configuration recommended by an Apple salesperson, who said that he himself uses these programs. This includes any thoughts on how upgrading any of the specs might improve performance or anything else I should be thinking about.

16-inch MacBook Pro
• Apple M4 Pro chip with 14 core CPU, 20 core GPU, 16 core Neural Engine
• 48GB unified memory
• 140W USB-C Power Adapter
• 512GB SSD storage
• Three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI port, SDXC card slot, headphone jack, MagSafe 3 port
• 16-inch Liquid Retina XDR display
• Standard display
• Backlit Magic Keyboard with Touch ID - US English
• Accessory Kit

[melissapiccone]

I would up the Hard drive to 1 TB. I dont' store much on my mac and have about 400GB free on my 1TB drive. You don't want to work with a full hard drive and you don't want to have to keep moving things around.  My Mac is a 2019 with 32GB ram and still going strong. I replaced my 2012 iMac with it in 2020. 

[JEK99]

Thanks. I was thinking about doing that, so good to know that that is your opinion too!

[Conrad_C]

Yes, the proposed configuration would achieve your goal to “pay more for good performance and future-proofing than just squeak by.” It’s a good configuration. I spend a lot of time in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop and I still use an M1 Pro chip (3 years old) with 32GB unified memory that still works great with that software. Your proposed system is significantly more powerful than mine and should last quite a while. (I think the “squeak by” configurations are an M4 non-Pro with 16GB memory, or a MacBook Air.)

For non-professional use, you don’t need to upgrade anything except maybe the storage, depending on how you plan to use external storage. 512GB is OK if you plan to keep most photos/videos on external volumes (which I do), as long as you can consistently keep at least 100GB free on internal storage for the various large temporary and cache files that the OS and graphics applications will create and purge as you work. In other words, if everything you need on internal storage will consistently fit within around 350–400GB, then 512GB of internal storage is reasonable. If you think that isn’t realistic, then budget for 1TB internal storage. If you really want to keep all photos and videos on internal storage, then you’d have to buy enough expensive Apple internal storage to hold it all while also keeping enough space free for large temporary files.

For Photoshop, there’s the question of the temporary scratch file. If your Photoshop files are large enough to regularly set up scratch files that are more than a couple hundred GB for a session, then you should take that into account. To avoid paying for more internal storage, when I’m about to edit a very large file I plug in a large, fast, empty external SSD that’s assigned in Photoshop as the primary scratch disk so that it doesn’t consume internal storage. For smaller files, the free space on my internal storage is enough.

The situation with OS and Photoshop temporary files is exactly the same in Windows, so you can go by whether you’ve ever had “scratch disk full” issues in Photoshop for Windows with your current PC storage setup.

On a side note, any Apple display with “XDR” in the name meets the requirements to enable full HDR editing in Lightroom/Adobe Camera Raw, if you’re getting into that. Also, all of the Thunderbolt ports are also USB ports, and all can also drive displays with the right adapter.

It’s nice that the Apple salesperson didn’t upsell you to the even more expensive M4 Max. Although that’s a great chip, its additional GPU cores aren’t needed for most Lightroom Classic/Photoshop work. But I will say that you could consider the M4 Max upgrade if you frequently batch-process many images using AI Denoise, because the doubled GPU cores at the Max level should roughly halve the time it takes for AI Denoise to process.

[JEK99]

This is very helpful, thanks. Good to hear about your experience with your configuration. I only use Denoise with one photo at a time, so I'm comfortable staying with the Pro instead of upgrading to Max.

[A Likely Storey]

Apple all the way!

I was a die-hard windows pc guy throughout the last few decades. Then I got a 2022 MacBook Pro 14” with M1 processor, 32Gb memory, 512Gb hard drive.  Can’t believe what I was missing all those years. I will never go back to Windows PCs. The extra cost of the Mac is well worth it.

I use Lightroom mostly, Photoshop as needed. I routinely work with 24 (and sometimes 48) megapixel images. The Mac has no problem with that. The monitor is great, although a 24” desktop monitor would be nice for photo editing. A luxury I may treat myself to someday.

As mentioned by others, I think the larger 1Tb hard drive is probably the best choice if you can afford it. I store my photos on an external drive and advocate doing so. Periodically I make a copy of it as a backup.

Apple just has all the bases covered and their ecosystem (MacBook, iPhone, Apple Watch, AirTags) works really well.

[JEK99]

Thanks, this is very helpful! Sounds like you're doing similar stuff to me, so this supports my decision to switch.