…the advice is conflicting—some suggest getting the basic model, while others recommend all the available upgrades.
By @joannec86097201
Well, you can discard any advice about “maxing out” or getting “all available upgrades” because some of them, like ordering the maximum amount of CPU and GPU cores, won’t help in photo editing very much. Those upgrades would benefit video editing and 3D graphics, where there are always many objects to be re-render in parallel. In photo editing, it’s just one still image.
One of the more reputable YouTube review sites for Macs in photography is the ArtIsRight channel, because he has standard test suites for several photo and video apps including Photoshop, and he runs them on every new Mac model. This lets him see the big picture as well as the point of diminishing returns.
On his Photoshop tests of the Mac mini M4 vs M4 Pro, the two models are pretty close until he starts running the more intensive Photoshop tests, and then the M4 Pro pulls ahead. But the test suites he uses define a “medium” file as 15.7GB and “large” as 56GB, only to accommodate the more demanding pro users who are not often well represented in tests. If you’re saying your files are around 1GB, that might be small enough to be in the test class where the M4 Pro isn’t that far ahead of the M4.
Your current Mac has 32GB RAM. Art is able to run the tests on Mac minis with less (24GB for the M4 Pro and 16GB for the M4), but for your 1GB files you should probably stick with at least 32GB.
I don’t own a current Mac mini, but with all that in mind I would guess that these would be the two suggestions:
If you can afford it…
Mac mini M4 Pro with 48GB Unified Memory
Starts at $1799 at 512GB internal storage
Why: Not for the CPU, but for the additional GPU cores because they’re increasingly important for features that use AI or GPU acceleration. And for the 48GB Unified Memory that should help the computer stay in service longer.
If that’s above your budget, then…
Mac mini M4 with 32GB Unified Memory
Starts at $1199 at 512GB internal storage
This should perform well for several years, but might need to be replaced sooner than the previous suggestion.
For context, the price of either option is far below what it would cost to get another Mac Pro. (Today’s Mac Pros aren’t really suitable for photographers, they’re more for video production houses.) Also, although the M4 is “not as fast” as the M4 Pro, the M4 is still a lot faster than the affordable M1/M2/M3 models…so the base M4 is a great value.
For 1GB files or larger, it’s important to have several hundred GB of free storage space for the Photoshop temporary scratch file. If you aren’t getting low free space warnings on your current Mac, then you could order the same amount of internal storage on your next Mac. If you are seeing low free space warnings when running Photoshop, then order the next Mac with the next level up of internal storage. If that’s too expensive (because Apple charges a lot for internal storage upgrades), plug in a large, empty, fast external SSD ($60 to $120 for 1TB) and assign that as a Photoshop scratch volume.
Below, I linked to Art’s Mac mini M4/M4 Pro video. The link is supposed to skip ahead straight to the Photoshop tests, but in case it doesn’t, they start at 28:42.
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