Amount of RAM optimal with M1 PRO MacBook Pro

I feel the need to add that as Photoshop evolves, its demand on system resources increases.  However, I chose to stay with 64Gb on my current Windows 11 system (which is a year old now), because Photoshop never used all of its allocated memory on my previous system.  What it does use, is a lot of Scratch space, so don't skimp on drives, and use multiple drives if possible.

This decision is based on your personal needs. The more applications you simultaneously run and the larger the files (or videos), the more RAM is required. I found a balance of 32 works well for my photographic needs on my M1 laptop, but my iMac runs 128.

warmly/j

I'm gonna disagree with both of the marked correct answers and say there are lots of Photoshop use cases where 64GB of unified memory is not a good value, especially after seeing how much less memory the early M1s needed for high performance compared to Intel Macs. You have to take into account how large your images are and how many applications you run at the same time. (I have a 32GB M1 Pro.)

Although maxing out is necessary for the low-end Macs because the limits are so low, some time ago the pro Macs passed the point where maxing out was a reasonable option for photographers. Today, the (very expensive) maximum configuration of Unified Memory, or storage, or CPU/GPU is designed not for photo editing, but for video and 3D editing. The max configuration is usually overkill for photo editing.

Maxing out a Mac today does not really make it last longer, especially if you maxed out only one spec. If you have to sell your Mac in 3 or 4 years because for example, the single core CPU performance is no longer adequate (remember, the M1 Pro/Max do not improve on the M1 in that area), but you maxed out to 8TB or SSD of 64GB memory that you never really needed, you threw out that money on the upgrades.

Also, maxing out a current Mac typically won’t make it useful longer than about 7 years, due to the limits placed on system and application upgrade eligibilty placed by both Apple and Adobe. There is a hard limit to “future proofing” that did not exist for earlier Macs, and no amount of additional money dumped into the Mac will future proof it any further.

If you have any kind of limit on your budget, configure to what you expect to need for about 5 to 7 years. I hav a strong feeling a lot of people who maxed out these first M1 Pro/M1 Max models are going to kick themselves in a few years when they realize they want the improvements in a later model (M2? No notch? HDMI 2.1?, FaceID?), but they sunk too much money unnecessarily maxing out the last one they bought.

I’m not saying never max out a Mac, because some need to, but you need to have a really good reason and maxing out should never be the default approach. 

Hey gang, 

I recently jumped on the 16in Pro with the M1 pro, and 16bg of memory and have had the chance to put it through extensive editing over the past month, all 50mp GFX raw files. I run the latest PS configuration and it works very good, but...big but, even with the new hardware the ram is getting maxed out and sharing memory after running photoshop for about 1 hour or so, and my workflow slows down with it. As it is only 400$ more, I think I will be returning and getting the 32gb as others have suggested. Although it hasn't given me much trouble now, it worries me to spend this kind of money only to have a clogged down macbook 3 years down the line. 

Two other photoshop issues I want to mention to save you the heartache when you start.

1) If you use external mouse (specifically magic mouse) the mouse communication will flake out and walk your cursor up the screen (mid-edit when you are working mouse commands fast) from your left hand hover over the trackpad while using basic keyboard commands. This was really fu***** frustrating; that they could do all of this design work and create a problem that hasn't existed in the past with their own NATIVE mouse. I tried three different magic mice before the possibility of the trackpad interfering accord to me. Solution: Turn off trackpad while mouse is connected via accesiblities. Work aroud worked.  

2) This is a photoshop issue that I imagine will be corrected with time and development on the new chip, but dialogue boxes such as "Do you want to save before closing?" are invisible and only respond with you press return or esc, locking you out of control. Annoying, but can be managed by knowing when they will pop up and what command is needed. 

We knew there would be issues with the brand new system, so far the benefits outway the cons, and the issues will likely be resloved in time BUT GET THE 32gb. 

All the best,

Justin 

Get as much RAM as you can afford for future-proofing if nothing else. I would recommend at least the 32GB upgrade. Going to 64GB requires the M1 Max which is more money, so I suspect 32GB will be the sweet spot.

I was debating the same thing.  I use LR, PS and started using Luminar AI.   I was using a Macbook Air with an Intel processor and it was slowwwww.   I don't want any more issues so I went with the pricy 32GB in the14inch.  I'd rather have too much RAM than not enough.  I'm planning on having this for at least 5 years so I was the right choice for me.

32GB RAM is probably the safe choice, but that is a guess until more people have a chance to run their jobs on it.

Both Lightroom Classic and Photoshop recommend 16GB RAM, so that is the baseline for good performance. One thing to keep in mind is that because it’s Unified Memory, RAM not needed by applications is probably available to be used by graphics; that could be a reason to get 32GB if you frequently use applications that support GPU acceleration. But if money is tight, chances are 16GB RAM will perform well enough on Apple Silicon, and better than 16GB RAM on Intel.

It has been a long time since it made sense to “max out” a pro Mac. Maxing out all options on just the 14-inch MacBook Pro (M1 Max 10/32/16 cores, 64GB RAM, 8TB SSD) costs US$5899. Most typical 14" MBP configurations for Photoshop and Lightroom Classic probably should not exceed $3000 unless you do a lot of work daily with large files.

M1 Pro and M1 Max expand the specs well beyond M1, which already didn’t work the same way Intel x86 did. This is uncharted territory. If you can wait, wait until more photographers have tried out their Photoshop and Lightroom Classic workflows and have a better idea of how well the various combinations of CPU/GPU cores and RAM work for these applications.

You need RAM for everything you do. And your macOS needs 8-10 GB or more of RAM just by itself.  So get 32GB if possible.

The simple answer is, the most you can afford. PS needs 3-5 times each file size in RAM ideally. So much depends on the size of the documents you'll edit.