Flash drive -v- Hard drive ?

Linda,

If you're looking for pure storage, the 13" MBP with 750gb hard drive is going to hold more photos than the 15" retina MBP...

Having said this, you're going to be able to open, edit, and save photos faster on the 15" retina MBP because the solid state drive is that much faster. The quality of the screen is also going to be much better on the 15" retina MBP.

If you can afford it, buy the 15" new MBP with retina display.

The 13 Inch MBP will have the bigger advantage on the storage part.

Although I love the 15 Inch MB Pro - Retina edition, bear in mind that the RAM and Flash Drive is not upgradeable in the future should you decide to upgrade later.

If you want the 15 Inch MB Pro - Retina, then go for it. It's a great machine. Buy an external drive and save all your photos, videos and misc files in the external drive so you won't run out of space.

Peformance wise, the Retina Version is faster than the 13 Inch MB Pro

You said you want a MBP "for editing photos in aperture and putting iMovie films together from holidays."

Though the 13" MBP will do that, the 15" with it's far superior GPU capabilities should be evaluated in comparison with the 15" retina MBP.

Note that RAW images and video files take up a lot of space. A small internal drive means the addition of external storage.

Look at the two display options to determine if the new retina is or is not as good as some would like you to believe. This is a bit tricky because the comparison should be made with imagery that can take advantage of the higher resolution. An inherently bad image will look bad on both. The reason I say this is when I looked at the new iPad compared to the prior generation, I could discern no differences in the displays.

Ciao.