imac 4k performance with photoshop and lightroom

Problem is I feel that the 21" inch screen iMacs are NOT really up to the task to do substantial image editing work at the base level models.

FIrst, ditch the slow 5400 RPM hard drive and get this with the 512 GB Flash Drive option.

The Fusion drive isn't that great as they have paired a 256 Flash Drive with the slower 5400 RPM standard hard drive.

Get this iMac model with the quick 512 GB Flash Drive and you can add faster 7200 RPM Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 external hard drives or external SSDs in a Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 enclosure, later

Get the 16 GB of RAM option, well. You'll need ALL of that 16 GBs of RAM.

Good Luck

Please download and install EtreCheck from http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Run it and post the report here.

I thought the OP was looking for advice.

It's hard from the way the post is if the OP is asking advice for a new iMac or if the OP already has this new iMac.

😕

If you already have this iMac, I am going to state that performance of Photoshop and Lightroom on your new model iMac is going to be an uphill battle.

If just purchased, you have 14 days to return this iMac for a full refund if it isn't working out for you.

You can reorder/repurchase a more powwrful 21 inch screen iMac or opt for the even more powerful 27 inch screen iMac models.

I missed that. On rereading it, I think you are correct and I am wrong.

John Lewis have the best returns policy in the UK. Get back to them ASAP and talk to them about what they can offer you in exchange, they have a price match poilicy. If you don't like what they can come up with, ask for a refund and go elsewhere.

I use Photoshop and Lightroom on older - 2011 - iMac 21" and they work perfectly fine. I'm not a Pro but I am a serious hobbyist, my LR library is in excess of 60k images, Raws and Jpegs and I have zero performance issues. The newer machines are even more powerful.

Hi Terrence.

The issue is though is that your 2011 21 inch screen iMac is the last of the 21 insch screen iMac line that, basically, had the same specs and hardware of the larger screen iMacs.

The older 21 inch screen iMacs had discreet GPUs (not integrated, shared GPUs in the new slimline models).

The older model 21 inch screen iMacs had 7200 RPM desktop class hard drives (the new slimline iMacs use lesser laptop class 5400 RPM drives).

No more user accessible/upgradeable RAM in the 21 inch screen models.

Your 2011 iMac can have up to 32 GBs of third party RAM installed (the new slimline iMacs are limited to 16 Gbs of RAM that needs to be installed by Apple at the time of purchase as there is no future upgrading of RAM).

The new slimmer 21 inch iMacs, I believe, are a much lesser iMac now and are, more or less, a lesser computing "appliance".

I do not believe these new slimline iMacs are up to the challenge of using Photoshop and/or Lightroom unless you opt for more powerful options available for the 21 inch screen models are you orders these options at the time of purchase.

Not near it now but it's a 2011 iMac 21" with a 1TB HD and 8 gigs of Ram. So, four years old. So old it still has an optical drive 😉

It's the latest versions of both LR and PS via the Creative Cloud subscription.

This is a bit of a bug bear of mine tbh. I see lots of posts on here asking if the latest Mac will be good enough for... whatever. We were doing whatever 10 years ago with less and it was a little slow, 5 years ago and it was fine and now it's even better. Most often it's a case of folks saying 'I need a car to go to the shops and drop the kids to school, do I buy the Porche or the Ferrari' 😉

If you're a pro, if you're shooting thousands of shots per week (or even day), then yes, you need more than the base model. If you're a hobbyist maybe shooting 15-20k per year, I don't see the benefit for the cost. Frankly, in that scenario, you'll get more productivity from a bigger screen than from a more powerful chip or an SSD.

That and $2 might get you a cup of coffee some places.

That PC wilk be faster, but cost of ownership, over time, maybe more and more hassles as you will continue to battle with all of the Windows virus and malware that is a staple of using Windows software.

Plus, Macs have a much longer longevity than PC's. As well as better resale value.

You just need to return this for a better spec"d iMac than this.

OS X needs that 8 GBs of RAM mainly for the OS, so you really do not have sufficient RAM in that iMac to really run anything as powerful as Photoshop and/or Lightroom with only 8 GBs of available RAM.

The 5400 RPM hard drive, IMO, will be a bottleneck for swap files and scratch disc use.

The difference in speed of a hard drive spinning at 7200 RPMs and one spinning at 5400 RPMs is a significant one.

Well,

You have a point, but I had been using Photoshop CS2 on a G4 PowerMac for 8 years until I could afford a newer, used Intel iMac.

I am only using Photoshop CS3 and Corel Painter XI now and some older CAD software which absolutely fly on this iMac, now.

So, I am still getting along on older hardware, myself.

My iMac is only a 3.06 Ghz dual core CPU iMac, but it works fine for what I use it for.

I, also do video work on this older iMac, too!

But I do more creative drawing, painting and technical illustration-like work with these kinds of apps and not as much image editing and image enhancement, though I still do enough of that with my own projects.

But, while I use an older and less powerful iMac, many aspects of it are better.

I still have faster desktop class 7200 RPM internal and external hard drives.

My GPU is only a 256MB GPU, but it is still an independent GPU with its own VRAM that doesn't share my other 16 GB system RAM.

And both of our iMacs have the ability to upgrade our own RAM with cheaper and less expensive third party RAM.

So, in some ways, even our older hardware has better specs than newer hardware out there.