M1 MacBook Pro for Photography - First Impressions on Using an Apple Silicon Mac for Photographers
I’ve been working of a pretty old computer for some time now. My main workstation was an ageing 2012 Mac Pro, which despite its age was working perfectly for why I needed. Or at least I thought it was.
The newest operating system I could use was macOS 10.14 Mojave and there were starting to be applications that just wouldn’t run on it. As my laptop was also old (2012 MacBook Pro) and I needed to replace that, I decided to take the plunge and embrace the future with an M1 MacBook Pro.
It’s been an eye-opening experience.
Overall Impressions
First of all, everything you read is true. This thing is incredibly fast. And while processing and benchmarks may paint an impressive picture, what doesn’t come across in the numbers is the overall responsiveness. It’s such a different experience, it almost doesn’t feel like using a Mac. Some things happen almost instantly.
The other thing that it made me realise, was how far behind the technology curve I was. For example, wide gamut displays and Retina display technology has come a long way. Images and video look amazing on this screen, and it’s not a particularly high-level or quality screen. This isn’t really a Mac-specific thing, but rather the fact that I had been used to older systems.
The one annoying thing is that the default resolution on the 13” is scaled, even though it tells you it’s the “default” resolution for the display. It actually started to give me a headache, so I ended up dropping it one notch to what is actually the 2X native resolution of the LCD panel. I much prefer this, and it definitely looks better, but I can pop back to a higher scaled option if I need the real estate. Oh, and when you change resolutions, the change is instant with no blackout. Again, it’s so unusual you are taken aback the first time you do it. To make it easier to switch on the fly I use a little utility called One Switch, which comes as part of the Setapp bundle.
The scaling has come a long way since the first retina displays, though. On my old 15” MacBook Pro, which was one of the first retina displays, using one of the scaled modes was noticeably blurry. On the new 13” MacBook Pro, it’s not, so whatever scaling algorithms they’re using now are much better. There’s also no noticeable performance hit, whereas on my old laptop, using a scaled resolution would cripple it.
The battery life on this thing is insane. While I was working on my main computer, I have it beside me for looking things up and browsing while my main computer is rendering etc. I open, on battery power all day yesterday, and for the evening the night before. It’s still on over 50% power. I haven’t been doing any heavy lifting on it or anything, but still, this is mad!
Photography Applications
I’ve been trying most of the photography applications that I use regularly to see how they perform. So far so good, but here are some specifics to various applications…
Lightroom
Lightroom (cloud) is native and really fast - once you download your images. It behaves more like an iPad app, with instant feedback. It is very impressive. The only slow part is when it is doing its initial sync. That can be a bit of a pain, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with the computer or the system architecture.
I’ve only briefly tried Lightroom classic, which still runs under rosetta. It’s slower than Lightroom desktop in some areas, but it’s still pretty fast, and for the most part, you wouldn’t know any difference. I was trying it on some 64mp sample files from the Sony A7R4, and adjustments were like butter, with realtime dragging of sliders that is way faster than my old Mac Pro.
Some operations like importing and preview generation are a little slow. Generating 1:1 previews for 276 images took a whopping 6 minutes and 30 seconds, and was the first time the fan actually came on since I’ve been using the computer.
The fact that general interactivity is so fast and responsive running under emulation makes me wonder how good it will be when they port it to an ARM native version. For now, the only real issue that I’ve come across so far is the speed of importing and generating previews. (I haven’t tried exporting yet)
Capture One
Capture One works OK, but it is a little sluggish. It is not a universal application, and therefore running under rosetta. When you drag the sliders, there is a slight lag, and stuttering, so it really needs a native version.
When I used the native 2X resolution, as opposed to the “default” which is technically scaled (I know this gets confusing), it was a little better. I even tried connecting to an external, non-retina display to see if it made a difference, but it doesn’t.
Apart from slight slider sluggishness though, it’s mostly responsive. Brushing is very responsive, perhaps mores than my old Mac Pro. It will be nice to see how a native version performs in the future. For now though, under rosetta it’s perfectly useable, but it’s just not as impressive as how some of the other applications perform.
Photoshop
Just as I was writing these notes, Adobe released a native version of Photoshop, and it’s crazy fast. I’ve never had a machine capable of running photoshop like this, and it’s insane. It opens within a couple of seconds (my old computer would take around 30 seconds to open photoshop sometimes - this takes around 2) and everything I’ve tried in it is crazy responsive. It’s quite weird to experience, as I’m used to photoshop being sluggish and, well, photoshop like.
There are a few missing features, but the only real issue that I encountered, is the lack of native plug-ins. This could be a problem if you rely on certain third-party extensions to photoshop, and until they are native too, you may need to rely on using the rosetta version.
Luminar AI
Given that Luminar AI is a big user of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it would seem like an ideal app to make use of the ML cores on the Apple Silicon chips, but it is still only a universal application. Having said that, it is pretty fast on the MacBook Pro. It is way, way faster than on my old Mac Pro.
DXO photo lab 4
I was curious to try this, as it is native, and it uses machine learning as part of its “Deep Prime” noise reduction technology. It works perfectly well, and everything is fast and snappy. I don’t have another modern intel-based machine to do benchmarks against, but it’s much faster than my old computer.
Memory Card Reader
One of the things I almost forgot to cover is what to do about a memory card reader. On my old 15” MacBook Pro there was an SD card reader built in, but on this, as I’m sure you probably know, there isn’t one. Moreover, you’re limited to two USB-C ports. To get around this I ordered a little dock from Belkin, which also has an SD card reader in it.
The dock works fine and has a couple of USB A ports on it, as well as an ethernet adaptor, but the one issue I have with it is that it doesn’t charge the battery when using the power pass through. It will power the laptop fine, and the battery won’t decrease, but it just won’t charge it. I suspect the wattage throughput isn’t enough. I should have done more research on this before getting it, but it works fine otherwise. It would also probably be fine for the MacBook Air which uses less power.
Still to try
I have lots of stuff still to try. For example, I haven’t tried any of the affinity apps yet, or any photoshop plug ins. I’m not actually aware of any native ones at the moment either. I haven’t done any video editing yet either, so I’m curious to try that too. So, lots to still try, but so far, I’m more than impressed.
If you have any questions or things you want me to try, let me know in the comments below. What key software do you want me to cover? (Within reason, I’m not going to go and buy a load of software I don’t have I’m afraid, but If I have access to it, I will happily try it.)
Conclusion
So, at the end of the day, the question is: can you use an Apple Silicon Mac for Photography work. The basic answer is absolutely. The more complicated answer is “it depends”. If you use Lightroom and Photoshop and don’t need a lot of plug-ins then it works perfectly.
If you use Capture One mostly, the slight sluggishness on the sliders might be a bit annoying, but it’s not a deal breaker. If you rely on certain photoshop plug-ins, you may be stuck using the rosetta version of Photoshop, which is still perfectly useable, but you'll be missing out on the speed advantage of the native version.
This was just an overall impressions type post, and I haven’t tested every single function of every application, so there may well be some key functions that don’t work, but for the most part, during my testing, I didn’t come across any issues. For a brand new architecture, the seamlessness of the transition is really impressive. I remember the previous Apple transitions, and they weren't as problem free. I’m delighted with the computer, and it’s one of the best Macs I’ve ever owned (and I’ve owned a lot).
Update - The One Flaw
I have written and re-written the following section, and I wasn’t going to include it, because at first I thought it was just my imagination. However, since I published this article yesterday, I’ve done some more research and found that I am not the only one to notice this, so, for completion, I’m amending this section to this article…
I have come across one big let down or flaw, but it’s kind of hard to describe. It’s like the overall performance of the UI is running at a slower frame rate than my old Mac Pro or even my old MacBook Pro. That’s the only way I can describe it. At first I thought maybe the internal screen was just using a lower refresh rate, but It is particularly noticeable when connecting to an external display.
I’ve been doing a bit of research on this, and it seems that I’m not the only one to notice. I’ve seen others describe this as choppy scrolling, and it does come across like this sometimes. I kind of liken it to the difference between 30fps and 60fps. That’s just an analogy of course, it’s running much faster than this, but that’s the only way I can think to describe it.
When I first connected the MacBook Pro to an external display, I thought maybe there was an issue with the HDMI adaptor I was using, as it looked like the display was operating at a lower htz, but I checked and it wasn't. Having looked it up now, and with others reporting a similar issue, it’s either a bug or a limitation of the M1.
It’s not a huge dealbreaker, and most people probably wouldn’t even notice it. It’s also possibly due to Big Sur, and not necessarily just the M1, and I’ve seen a few comments on this too. It’s not like the GPU is slow either, and compared to my old computer which technically has a much faster GPU, the performance in Cinema4D which is a heavy GPU application, is much improved.
It’s really hard to describe, which is why I neglected to include it in this post initially. For example, overall, scrolling in Tweet Deck is much much better on the M1 MacBook than on any of my other computers, and yet it still looks weird in comparison. Once again, the only way I can think to describe it is that the whole user interface is running at a lower frame rate.
Either way, a lot of people are reporting this, and hopefully if it is something that can be fixed in firmware it will be. If not, I hope the next generation of Apple Silicon chips don’t have this issue. It’s acceptable on an entry level machine, but won’t be on a high end or pro system.
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