iMac for photography stuff - or other?

roundthebend

Yo
My son is starting a photography course next year after his GCSE exams. Along with that I'm looking for an external monitor to plug my MacBook Pro into when I work from home.

I am considering getting an iMac (not the pro, it's £5k). I wondered if the lowest spec 27" version would be good for his photo editing or if I need something more powerful?

I assume it's easy to plug my MacBook Pro into it. Mine is a 2015 model with HDMI and Thunderbolt sockets.

Alternatively, is there a cheaper Apple option that I can use and just add a decent screen?

Or, maybe Windows is up to photo editing these days, it's not my knowledge area as you can tell.

stickyfiddle

I'll defer to the pros for detailed answers, but I can confirm I'm running Lightroom on a 2013 MacBook Pro and it's still really good. I'm not up on the latest specs but I would assume anything bought new now would be at least on par except for maybe the base model MacBook/Air

BigMonka

As @stickyfiddle mentions, Lightroom is a great programme for photo cataloguing and general edits (not photoshop detail, but still impressive). You can get LR to work on windows just as easily as on a mac and it really doesn't need to be a crazily high spec machine either - I was working on an old i5 processor PC and it was ok, an i7 with an SSD would be even better

I love my MBP, but I don't think that there's anything that makes a mac intrinsically better for photo editing - but it would be worth spending a decent amount on a good quality IPS screen and getting it calibrated properly.

AliGorie

not for graphics / images but I have an MBP + high res monitor for fine wave editing / detailed music s/ware - my daughter didn't know she could run a good size monitor of a lap top and has now copied me.

roundthebend

Cool, so maybe I don't even need to buy the iMac, just a good screen and an Adobe licence - he cant get the student one for £10 /month.

Maybe I'll treat myself to a new MBP and he can have the old one.

strumjoughlamps

I now do most of my editing on an iPad Pro w/ Apple Pencil, bloody love it.. if not that its on a 2017 MBA.

£9.98 pm Adobe plan you get

• Lightroom CC
  
• Lightroom Classic CC
  
• Photoshop CC
  
• 20GB of cloud storage

Which will do him fine

Grumpyrocker

Affinity Photo - cheap as chips, no subscription, Mac/Win/iPad versions available. Does most of what most people want to do with Photoshop.

Axe_meister

One thing I have found recently is the Mac/Adobe don't keep up well with RAW image formats.
My wife has a Fuji camera, and the RAG format is not supported, we we had to download a different program to convert to Tiff before we could edit in Photoshop.
TBH I'd get a decent PC with a 4K screen for the Money

strumjoughlamps

Grumpyrocker said:

Affinity Photo - cheap as chips, no subscription, Mac/Win/iPad versions available. Does most of what most people want to do with Photoshop.

That’s what I use exclusively now, so much so that I paid 50% of the remaining Adobe CC to cancel the contract early.

redrighthand

You can't plug the MacBook into an iMac 5k and use it as a monitor. There are some older 27 inch models you can use like this (Google iMac target display mode) but not the newest ones.

Im using a 27 inch Apple Thunderbolt Display. It's QHD so not 5k but much nicer than 1080p, acts as a docking station for a MacBook (up to 2015) by charging it and providing monitor, screen, Ethernet, speakers, ports etc, and can be used with for example a Mac mini too. They're discontinued now but if you're going second hand worth thinking about.

ThePrettyDamned

I use Windows ,but lr + photoshop are actually easy to run. Hurts more when you want to blast through hundreds of shots or dozens of complex layers. 

My advice is a decent amount of ram (8gb or more, I use 16gb) and an ssd, which will make everything feel much quicker. 

However, the biggest speed boosts for me have come through learning the software and using the tools appropriately - there are lots of ways to skin a cat, and some will be faster than others.

Imacs have a half decent screen. If going Windows, look at dell photography screens for affordable large colour gamut monitors.

TTBZ

Get a windows machine and decent monitor without paying the Apple premium. I use a mac pro for work every day and still don't really get the appeal or see an advantage. 

octatonic

I prefer windows machines for word/excel/powerpoint etc, but IMHO for audio, video and photo editing I much prefer he Mac platform.

I have a 2017 5K iMac 27" and a 2017 15" MBP.
They are both stunningly fast and handle everything I need with ease.