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Capture One 5 on Mac Mini, a viable choice?

JMSvenungson
Cheers.

I am considering buying myself a new computer since i am sick and tired of rebooting out of GNU/Linux and into Windows every time i need to do some work on my photos. I have thought about this long and hard, which hardware and software i want to use etc. but there are some things i am not sure about.

First of all, i have never used a Mac before in my life but my friend showed me the OS on his brand new iMac and i liked the interface. I am seriously considering my next computer to be a Mac.
Second, after trying out Capture One at my friends house (with his slightly smaller pictures) for a couple of hours i have decided to go for Capture One as well.

So i went to Apples store on the internet and found the Mac Mini which looked really neat and seemed to have a good enough processor. However, it can be bought with 2GB or 4GB RAM and also the gfx-adapter does not have its own memory but instead "borrows" its memory from the RAM.

So my question is simply, would i be able to use a Mac Mini to develop my raw photos in Capture One 5 without growing old between processing images? Would i need the 4GB version or does any of you use the 2GB version successfully? Does the "borrowed" gfx-memory slow the application down or does that not matter when it comes to working with photos?
The camera i use is a Canon 5D MkII so the amount of data in each picture is pretty big.

Yours sincerely, Jan
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Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • Paul Steunebrink
    Jan,
    The combination of Mac Mini and processing 5D mkII files does not sound attractive to me. Both tools are great but I would hesitate to do any serious graphically intense processing on Mac Mini. Capture One 5 really shines on powerful hardware with minimum of 4 GB RAM (preferably more if you want to have Photoshop running concurrently) and a dedicated GPU like most other Macs have.

    What are your options? An iMac is a powerful machine but I am picky on screens (no glossy) and hardware calibration. A MacBook Pro notebook with a good (Eizo CG) external screen works fine before you shop for the very powerful more expensive Mac Pro.

    Any Mac Mini with CO5 lovers here?
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  • JMSvenungson
    Cheers Paul, thanks for the swift reply.

    At the moment my options are to remain dual-booting i'm afraid.
    I wont get an iMac because of the screen (i'm very happy with my current screen, Eizo S, and screen calibration unit) and i wont spend the money required for a Mac Pro for the sole purpose of doing photo-editing. The MacBook might be doable but i would really prefer to not get a portable computer.
    (Edit: i just realised that the three cheapest MacBooks all have the exact same gfx-adapter as the Mac Mini meaning i would have to spend 19k SEK on the 15" 2.66GHz version which puts it up there with the Mac Pro, to much money just to do photo-editing)

    And i second your question, does anyone here use Mac Mini with Capture One 5 and love it? 😉
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  • Paul94
    I just picked up a 2.53 mac mini to replace an aging DC 2.3 PowerMac G5. I'm shooting primarily with the 5D mk2 as well and from what I've seen so far, as a processing machine, it should do the job.

    In terms of the GPU I don't think C1 currently makes use of graphics acceleration or OpenCL but I'm sure there are other people here who have more knowledge on that front. If it doesn't make use of GPU acceleration there's probably not going to be a huge advantage to one of the higher end macs dedicated GPUs in terms of C1's performance. My feeling is more/faster ram, faster cpu and faster hard drives are going to make the most difference in terms of C1's performance.

    I do agree that 4GB of ram is probably the minimum you're going to want to go with and it is fairly limited if you want to run photoshop concurrently with 16bit, full rez tiffs from the 5D. For comparision though my on location machine is an old Core Duo macbook pro that tops out at 2GBs of ram. It's not the best setup for C1 but it is still useable. From my reading the chipset and firmware in the current mac mini can actually support up to 8GB of ram even though it's not offered as a BTO from Apple. The limiting factor here is that currently 4GB DDR3 sodimms are very expensive. But that price will obviously come down in the long run.

    Considering the price jump to the high end 21" iMac I think this mini revision is a pretty good deal if you don't feel like switching to a PC. If you were regularly processing files from a 60MP back I'd probably say you'd have to look at a mac pro but for what you're talking about it should do the trick for immediate future.


    paul
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  • JMSvenungson
    Cheers The-other-Paul. 😉

    So i have heard, it does work but it is not optimal basically. On the other hand, what can you expect from a computer that cheap?

    Anyways, im going to have to OT in my own thread and announce that after speaking to a couple of people at the local photo-store and one of my mates who is a mac-zealot i have decided to not go for the Mac Mini after all. Im going to give my PC to my brother, who cant afford a new computer, and buy myself the iMac 27" with 8GB RAM and the i7-CPU. In other words, im abandoning my PC and will use the Mac for everything and not just photo-editing.

    So much for the plan to get away without spending to much money. 😉
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  • Paul Steunebrink
    [quote="JMSvenungson" wrote:
    ...Im going to give my PC to my brother, who cant afford a new computer, and buy myself the iMac 27" with 8GB RAM and the i7-CPU. In other words, im abandoning my PC and will use the Mac for everything and not just photo-editing.

    That will definitely work for you, that iMac. Hope you will enjoy your platform move (I did).
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