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Which Macs for Capture One pro 8?

Philip Sowels
Hi All,

I'm about to set up a new (in house) studio and have been given the option of either Mac mini (i7) with monitors or imac (i5). Both are compromises I know, but which would be better running Capture and. Photoshop, assuming I can max out the ram in each...

My worry with the Mac mini is the max ram at 16gig and the intel graphics card. The worry with the imac is the screen which I know is hard to calibrate...

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks Philip
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Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • brianmerwin
    Between the two I'd recommend the the iMac.

    The Mac Mini is a nice cheap little computer, but it's intended uses are pretty specifically as a file server, cheap home theater pc, and low end web browsing kind of setup.

    The graphics card in the Mac mini is... sub-par to say the least and is not upgradeable. This will have large performance impacts both with rendering previews during tethered capture as well as speed when processing files after you've made your RAW edits.

    The iMac definitely isn't ideal but between the two it's the better decision. You're correct that the display is difficult to calibrate (read: can't really be calibrated fully) and for color critical work you're going to want to use an external display (NEC PA series or Eizo are ideal but you can get most of the way with less costly options).

    To ensure the maximum possible useful lifespan out of your iMac I strongly recommend maxing out the ram (32gb), choosing flash storage instead of the fusion drive (this is optimal for Capture One), and select the iMac model with the NVIDIA GeForce line of graphics cards (otherwise its no better than the graphics card in the Mac Mini).

    You can in theory upgrade to the SSD after initial purchase (but it requires special tools you'd have to order) and if you get the 27" model you can also upgrade the RAM after purchase (you can NOT upgrade the ram in the 21.5" model though) so keep that in mind.

    Good luck!
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  • j thorsen
    I am running C1 pro 8 on a Mac Mini i7 2,3 with 16 Gb ram, and one monitor connected to the thunderbolt port.
    With a 24 Mpix raw file, there is about 1 sec. delay until the image is rendering on the screen when making adjustments or scrolling around on the image. Exporting a 16 bit psd file takes about 5 sec.

    The integrated cpu-gpu is not geek porn.... but it has very good color accuracy on the big chart in the i1 profiler.

    I like the Mac Mini, and it is fast enough for me, but as brianmerwin writes, it is not specifically made for professional photo editing.
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  • dee jjjaaaa
    [quote="PSowels" wrote:
    Hi All,

    I'm about to set up a new (in house) studio and have been given the option of either Mac mini (i7) with monitors or imac (i5). Both are compromises I know, but which would be better running Capture and. Photoshop, assuming I can max out the ram in each...


    which iMac ?

    iMac i5 might be with 27", 32 Gb, GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5... if you do not pay yourself, why not
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  • NN636274225804497206UL
    [quote="jess munk thorsen" wrote:
    I am running C1 pro 8 on a Mac Mini i7 2,3 with 16 Gb ram, and one monitor connected to the thunderbolt port.
    With a 24 Mpix raw file, there is about 1 sec. delay until the image is rendering on the screen when making adjustments or scrolling around on the image. Exporting a 16 bit psd file takes about 5 sec.

    The integrated cpu-gpu is not geek porn.... but it has very good color accuracy on the big chart in the i1 profiler.

    I like the Mac Mini, and it is fast enough for me, but as brianmerwin writes, it is not specifically made for professional photo editing.


    I've got a similar Mini Server model (i7 2.6 with 16GB) with two internal SSD drives (one for OS, one for C1Pro Catalog) with images on a Thunderbolt Raid drive. I bought it over an iMac as I have a 30" Cinema display I wanted to continue to use. Not a bad setup, plenty fast. I think the video card is a bit under powered but I'm not sure how a better one would improve things honestly. It would be nice if it supported 32GB of RAM , though I'm not sure I'm pushing my 16 to the limit.
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  • j thorsen
    [quote="CorsairVelo" wrote:
    I've got a similar Mini Server model (i7 2.6 with 16GB) with two internal SSD drives (one for OS, one for C1Pro Catalog) with images on a Thunderbolt Raid drive. I bought it over an iMac as I have a 30" Cinema display I wanted to continue to use. Not a bad setup, plenty fast. I think the video card is a bit under powered but I'm not sure how a better one would improve things honestly. It would be nice if it supported 32GB of RAM , though I'm not sure I'm pushing my 16 to the limit.


    That's a nice setup... 😎

    The just released 2014 version has the faster iris graphics but it is still max 16 Gb ram....but then again, both C1 Pro 8 and Photoshop runs very fine on the Mac Mini.
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