Anyone using an iMac for Photoshop?

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Level 1

7 points

Anyone using an iMac for Photoshop?

If so, what are you using as a scratch disk?

The reason I ask is that I hear a lot of photographers are now using iMacs to do their image editing in Photoshop. The new iMacs are almost as fast as the old-design Mac Pro's and a lot less expensive than the upcoming "black trash can" Mac Pro.

But knowing that in order to run decent, Photoshop requires a scratch disk on a separate HDD or SDD than the application drive, I hesitate to buy a new iMac. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.5), (Mid 2011), 16GB RAM, Dual HDD's

Posted on Dec 3, 2013 8:36 PM

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Answer 1

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crh24

Level 3

930 points

Dec 3, 2013 11:02 PM in response to Auroria

I use Photoshop CS6 on my late 2012 iMac with 32GB DRAM. Runs fine for me and I have the scratch disk set to a fast Thunderbolt drive.

My use is limited to an amateur/hobbiest level so I suggest you go to the Adobe Photoshop forum and ask your question. You will find many very knowledgeable Photoshop users there and a very high percentage use a Mac platform.

http://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshop

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Answer 2

Dec 4, 2013 4:46 AM in response to Auroria

photographers are now using iMacs to do their image editing in Photoshop.

Photographers have been using iMacs successfully since they were first issued in 1999 (the iMac G3) with a tiny amount of 512 MB of RAM.

Photoshop requires a scratch disk on a separate HDD or SDD than the application drive

Photoshop does not require a separate hard drive to run effectivly. An external scratch drive is used when working with very large files; 100 megabyte and above or if there are dozens of medium sized files open at the same time.

Most users have a separate drive to store image files in any case, the system drive should always have at least 25% of the drives capacity as free space available.

Any new iMac will be more than adequate in running Photoshop CS 5, CS6 or CC.

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Answer 3

Auroria Author

Level 1

7 points

Dec 4, 2013 9:21 AM in response to crh24

crh24 wrote:

I use Photoshop CS6 on my late 2012 iMac with 32GB DRAM. Runs fine for me and I have the scratch disk set to a fast Thunderbolt drive.

Thanks crh. I am presently using a Mac Mini w. dual internal 7200rpm HDD's w. one being assigned as the scratch drive. With 16Gb of RAM my mid-2011 Mini works just fine until I have several 100Mb+ files open with lots of layers. Then I notice the Efficiency rating begin to drop below 95% and its other operations begin to slow down.

I think the bottleneck is the lame integrated graphics of the Mini. That's why I'm considering upgrading to an iMac. The other option, the new Mac Pro, is overkill for me, primarily designed for video editing & 3D.

I am just wondering about the status of the scratch disk for an iMac -- being on an external drive vs. an internal. In your case the 32Gb RAM, graphics and external T-bolt combines well to get the job done.

I have had minimal response over at Adobe forum so far. They tend to be rather Windows-centric there, having done away with the Mac Photoshop forum. Thanks.

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Answer 4

crh24

Level 3

930 points

Dec 4, 2013 2:02 PM in response to Auroria

Auroria wrote:

crh24 wrote:

I use Photoshop CS6 on my late 2012 iMac with 32GB DRAM. Runs fine for me and I have the scratch disk set to a fast Thunderbolt drive.

<...>

I am just wondering about the status of the scratch disk for an iMac -- being on an external drive vs. an internal. In your case the 32Gb RAM, graphics and external T-bolt combines well to get the job done.

I have had minimal response over at Adobe forum so far. They tend to be rather Windows-centric there, having done away with the Mac Photoshop forum. Thanks.

I've always made it a point to purchase the top of the line graphics card when I've purchased an iMac. It is the one thing that is involved in giving maximum performance to Photoshop and other video related apps that cannot be updated later.

I've found that with the 3TB Fusion drive I really don't need to use a secondary drive for the cache. I currently set the cache to the internal hard drive and I keep all of my photos on the external T-bolt drive and it seems to run very smoothly but I didn't notice a slowdown when the cache and photos were on two different external T-bolt drives.

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