For the more involved photographer (like most of the readership of The LuminousLandscape), the big technology companies are not really keeping pace with what we need.Some of us photograph seriously with phones as a secondary camera, many of us do not.Personally, I use my 4 year old iPhone as a convenience scanner, but rarely for anything thatmeets the stricter definition of a photograph. Most of us, however, do our artistic work with acamera manufactured by Sony, Nikon, Fujifilm, Canon, Olympus, Panasonic or perhaps Leica,Pentax, Hasselblad or Phase One (with Apple, Google and various Android licensees notableprimarily by their absence from this list). I’m not sure, but I suspect that a poll of LuminousLandscape readers as to the camera they consider primary might show the category of filmcameras (taken together) to be larger than the category of telephones (taken together)?
This is decidedly out of step with where the definition of photography in much oftoday’s society is going. The phone has become the primary camera of mass-culturalimportance, and the largest companies care mostly about mass-cultural importance. Ifanything, my recent trip to PhotoPlus has shown me that smaller companies care more thanever about the importance of artistic photography (which mostly takes place with non-phonecameras). I saw everything from view cameras to RAW processing software made by smallcompanies who care intensely about the pursuit of beautiful images. I saw printers, papers andprinting software made by companies deeply dedicated to the future of the printed image, andto creativity in its forms. I saw monitors built for photographers and tripods ranging from smallenough to fit in a pocket on up to tall enough to need a ladder. Lighting equipment of everykind was all over the place.
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These companies (and even many of the big camera manufacturers) are small enoughand care enough about photography that most of them will survive even in the smaller cameramarket that the mainstream technology press is screaming about. DxO, Phase One, Arca Swiss,Really Right Stuff and ColorByte among so many others don’t need sales of 20 millioninterchangeable lens cameras (ILCs) per year (the peak number reached in 2012) to survive.They may even do better in a world where 6-8 million ILCs are sold each year, but those soldare purchased by people who care more about photography and are more likely to use theircameras beyond snapshots. You don’t need DxO Photo Lab to process selfies, nor ImagePrint toprint images of your breakfast to share on Instagram. The potential market for these productshasn’t really changed – it’s still the same group of people who read The Luminous Landscape,print some of their images and make photographs instead of taking selfies.
What we as photographers can’t count on, however, is support from the very largestcompanies. Companies that have produced tools we have used for years may be too big to careabout today’s market of artists, professionals and enthusiasts. If the tools they make for otherpurposes suit our needs, wonderful. If they don’t, we aren’t numerous. enough to interestthem. A companion article discusses what Adobe’s nearly non-existent update to LightroomClassic might mean to a tool many of us use, but that its manufacturer clearly wants tosubsume into a cloud-centric, phone-centric vision.
Another company we might have reason to mistrust is Apple. Like many of us, I haveused Macs for many years – but Apple no longer seems to care as much about users like us.They are clearly an iPhone company with a nice, profitable little sideline making Macs. Apple’scurrent net sales show one overwhelming segment (between half and two thirds of everything),which is, of course, the iPhone. Next comes Services (music, TV shows, iCloud, Apple Arcade),etc., which is clearly larger than, and approaching twice the size of, any category except theiPhone. The remaining quarter or so of Apple’s revenue is divided (more or less equally) amongMacs, iPads and an “other” category that includes things like the Apple Watch, HomePods,Apple TV hardware and AirPods.
As is perhaps inevitable with a revenue breakdown like that, Apple’s product launchesare often not the products Mac-centric users have been waiting for. Download video youtube firefox mac. Since Macs are a single-supplier proposition, and, at best, that supplier’s third priority behind the iPhone and services(possibly behind the iPad or the Apple Watch as well), we’re at the mercy of when that supplierchooses to release things, and what they choose to release.
There are persistent rumors that Apple will start releasing Macs with A-series processorsas used in the iPhone and iPad instead of the present Intel chips within the next couple ofyears. There are certain Macs where this would make a lot of sense – the very lightestnotebooks, and possibly some models of the Mac Mini. A-series chips are more power efficientthan Intel processors, and they’re almost certainly cheaper for Apple as well.
The challenge comes in when trying to run large applications that have run on Intelprocessors for years – the developer either has to port the code to the A-series processor or letit run in emulation, which is much slower. If Apple releases an A-series Mac, they will almostcertainly have fast ports of their own applications that make sense on that Mac (they may nothave Final Cut and Logic ported if they are releasing a 12” notebook under 2 lbs, for example).They’ll exert a lot of pressure on smaller developers to port their applications – but there’s a(major) catch.
It would probably be very easy, and perhaps even trivial or completely automatic, toport an iPad application to a Mac that used a processor similar to the one in an iPad. It’s easyenough to port an iPad application even to a Mac with a completely different processor, usingApple’s Catalyst toolset. In cases where there is a big, powerful Mac version of an applicationthat runs on Intel processors and a slimmed down iPad version, the much easier port is going tobe the iPad version. The two predominant cases where we’ll almost certainly see enhancedversions of iPad applications are Adobe and Microsoft – both of whom were notably lazy inporting their applications to Intel Macs some years ago. I would be extremely surprised if any A-series Mac ever saw Lightroom Classic or full-featured Photoshop derived from the desktopversion, although Lightroom CC and an iPad-derived version of Photoshop will certainly berunning on Day 1. Microsoft Office will appear right away, but it’ll be iPad Office…
If Apple releases A-series Macs alongside of Intel Macs, that’s not a problem – there aremany users for whom an A-series Mac is equivalent or even preferable. The question is howlong we have before A-series Macs become the norm, or even the only Macs available?
There are presently two Macs of primary interest to serious photographers – the 16”(was 15” until very recently) MacBook Pro and the 27” iMac. The 16” MacBook Pro was justupdated, and it looks like a great update for photographers, while the 27” iMac is an olderdesign that has received periodic specification updates to stay current. Some photographersprefer one computer for all their work, which often has to be a powerful laptop such as the 16”MacBook Pro, while others would rather have a less powerful laptop for field work as well as adesktop machine.
The smaller MacBooks of various sorts are useful for field editing, but underpowered asa photographer’s primary computer, especially if either high-resolution cameras or largerlibraries are involved. There are three fundamental problems with all Apple laptops other thanthe 16” MacBook Pro for heavy-duty photo editing. All of them top out at 16 GB of RAM, whilesignificant work on a large image can easily require more than that. The most recent severalmodels of the 15” MacBook Pro have been available with 32 GB, which is enough for mostwork. The new 16” MacBook Pro is available with as much as 64 GB of RAM, which is more thanenough for almost any use in still photography. The other MacBook models also all feature dualor quad core processors, as photographic applications are increasingly taking advantage ofmore than four cores, and none has a discrete GPU – all depend on poky Intel integratedgraphics.
Sometimes, Apple listens to professional users – the brand-new 16” MacBook Pro maybe such a case. Pokemon games gba download. The previous MacBook Pro had been controversial since its release, and the newone fixes many of the flaws in its predecessor. Logic 8 for mac free download. The two major problems with the 2016-2019MacBook Pros have been a keyboard that many users don’t like (and that has been plaguedwith major reliability issues) and a port layout that consists exclusively of four USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports (plus a headphone jack). No conventional USB, no HDMI, no Ethernet, noSD Card reader. Yes, Thunderbolt 3 ports will adapt to anything – but they also require adaptersfor nearly everything. It was also somewhat behind its major competitors (15” thin-and lightworkstations from HP, Dell, Lenovo and now Razer) in RAM capacity, graphics and a few otherareas.
The new 16” MacBook Pro seems to fix the keyboard – it has a brand-new keyboard,and everyone who has tried one seems to like it – of course, we won’t know about reliabilityuntil the machines have been in the field for several months. It also fixed several of the otherflaws of the previous design – the maximum RAM capacity is now 64 GB, the same as everycompetitor, and the new graphics cards are fully comparable with anything that any othermanufacturer except Razer is doing in a thin-and-light workstation. Apple stuck with the allUSB-C/Thunderbolt 3 port design, and Apple Senior Vice-President Phil Schiller has said“probably not” when asked if we’ll ever see another Apple laptop with a selection of ports.
There are a couple of places where Apple is now notably ahead of their competitors. Nocompetitor offers more than a 2TB high-speed SSD in a thin-and-light workstation, although acouple of them offer dual NVMe SSD slots, permitting a 4TB dual-drive configuration (Lenovooffers it at a price comparable to Apple’s 4TB upgrade, while HP offers it only at huge expense).Apple solders the storage to the motherboard, not allowing user upgrades – but the maximumstorage configuration is an enormous 8TB. While the 8TB storage option is a $2200 upgradefrom a 1TB base, the only other laptops that offer that much internal storage at any price are acouple of >7 lb behemoths that accept four drives.
One challenge that Mac users always face is Apple’s “my way or the highway” attitude.There will be one machine available in a given class, with some variety of configurations in thesame basic design – and that design stays constant for several years. Since Apple is a singlesupplier, there is no option to buy someone else’s compatible machine if you don’t like thedesign. If you want a big-screen notebook, but don’t especially need CPU or GPU power, toughluck – the only Mac notebook with a screen over 13” comes with a top-end CPU and GPU. Ifyou’re willing to carry a 5 or 6 lb computer, but want wired Ethernet and HDMI, that’s notavailable – there are always adapters for the Thunderbolt ports. Want a 4K OLED display? Nochance – there’s only one display, and it’s not 4K or OLED. Right now, the 16” MacBook Pro maywell be a best-in-class portable photographic workstation, but only if you like its particular setof features and compromises.
Looking at Apple’s direct competitors – the thin-and-light workstations from Lenovo, HP,Dell and Razer, the Windows competition offers a broader set of ports, but at the expense ofthe maximum connectivity of the Mac. While those four Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports may beannoying because they require adapters for so many things, they have enormous bandwidth,and they can adapt to nearly anything – there’s even an adapter for RS-232 serial ports, whichgo back to 1960, and one for old-style parallel printer ports that go back to the 1970s. Windowsmachines in the same size range tend to have only one or two of these ports, but add a coupleof conventional USB ports, a HDMI port and perhaps a SD reader. Which is preferable is a toss-up – the Mac’s ports are ultimately more versatile, but the PC port assortment is moreconvenient for a quick connection to a USB key or a projector without an adapter.
Except for the Razer Blade Studio 15, which offers much more powerful GPU options,the thin and light laptop workstations offer GPUs that are comparable to Apple’s choices. Theremight be more options, but the power level will be similar. The reasons for this are battery lifeand cooling – a thin and light case simply can’t cool a massive GPU, and a battery that is legalon airplanes won’t power it for very long. A heavier laptop doesn’t buy a bigger battery,because FAA regulations don’t permit batteries above 99 watt-hours on planes without awaiver, and almost all powerful laptops are already using batteries between 80 and 99 watt-hours. Razer has chosen to sacrifice a significant amount of battery life to squeeze in the morepowerful GPU, which reflects their gaming heritage. All of the other thin-and-light workstationshave put a priority on decent battery life, so they tend to have midrange GPUs.
Besides the direct competitors to the MacBook Pro, PC manufacturers offer distinctivechoices. If you’d prefer a laptop-tablet hybrid, they exist, although very powerful ones aredifficult to find. Some are made specifically for artists, and support Wacom pens for accuratedrawing and retouching. If you want to go even lighter than the MacBook Pro, there arenumerous 15” laptops and even one 17” laptop a full pound lighter than the 4.3 pound Mac –expect much slower processors and Intel’s slow integrated graphics, though.
Conversely, if you’re willing to carry more weight, a 7 lb HP ZBook 17”, Lenovo P73 orDell Precision 7740 can offer up to four internal SSDs, 128 GB of RAM, every port known tohumankind (oddly, except for 10 Gb Ethernet, which would actually be useful), the mostpowerful graphics cards available and pretty much anything else one might find on a midrangedesktop workstation. There are myriad options in between – if you want it, some PC or anotherwill have it. The machines I have mentioned are the workstation-class competitors to theMacBook Pro – designed specifically for professionals using their computers really hard. Each ofthese machines offers hardware quality equivalent to the Macs, excellent design and very goodservice and support. There are also much cheaper laptops designed to hit a price point, andthere are expensive laptops designed specifically for gaming that offer incredible speed andpower at the expense of battery life and sometimes reliability.
An Apple desktop suited for serious photographic use will probably be an iMac of somedescription, most likely a 27” model. Most iMacs are fast and powerful. The most importantconfiguration choice is to get one with all SSD storage – either a hard drive or a Fusion Drive willbe much slower. The 21.5” models are difficult to upgrade the RAM on yourself – it involvestaking off the screen. A huge advantage of the 27” iMac is that it has a hatch in the back wherethe RAM goes – it’s easy to avoid paying Apple $600 for $200 worth of RAM. In the price andpower range where both the 21.5” and 27” iMacs are available, they are actually close to thesame price with 32 GB of RAM, because the savings from the much cheaper RAM come close topaying for the 27” screen. If you need the screen and like the design, a 27” iMac is price-competitive with a high-quality PC.
The current 27” iMac is a 2014 design, and it took years to advance beyond a quad-coreprocessor, which it finally did in early 2019, although suitable processors have existed since2017. The anemic GPU options were supplemented at the same time – the current top-endVega 48 is a competitive midrange GPU. The ultra-slim case still has thermal challenges, whichseem to be at least somewhat improved in the latest models, and many versions still featurehard drive based storage, despite the radical decrease in SSD prices. Its easily upgraded RAMoptions and display remain competitive, although the display is an annoyance to photographerswho want the option of choosing a higher-end monitor from the likes of Eizo, NEC, BenQ orothers. It’ll drive just about any external display, but why pay $800 for a 27” 5K monitor that’sgoing to be a secondary display?
The basics of the 27” iMac are pretty solid. Assuming you like the idea of a screen-integrated computer, it’s a decent value, and the features are a good match for a lot ofphotographic workloads. The CPUs are current and capable, although all the GPU optionsexcept the top-end Vega 48 are severely out of date. If Apple were to get around to updatingthe design, it will probably look quite similar, but it is likely to lose the hard drive option,devoting that space to better cooling of the CPU and GPU. It will hopefully get 10 Gb Ethernet,which all other Apple desktops except the 21.5” iMac have.
The iMac Pro is a powerful, professional machine that would be perfect forphotographers who can both afford it and need its power, except for two annoyances. It’sbasically a 27” iMac with powerful Xeon processors and Vega GPUs, improved cooling and 10Gb Ethernet. Unfortunately, it’s less upgradeable than an expensive, professional desktopshould be (oddly, it’s less upgradeable than the cheaper 27” iMac). its RAM is difficult toupgrade, and its internal storage is (as of this writing) non-upgradeable after purchase. Applecharges a greater than 100% markup on RAM upgrades over what the same RAM would cost onthe open market – since the RAM is standard, comparisons are easy. The SSDs Apple uses areproprietary (and extremely fast), so comparisons to open-market drives are harder. Veryroughly, Apple’s prices are marked up about 30% over high-quality, high-speed NVMe SSDs thatwould be the closest comparison.
Second, its price includes a built-in 27” monitor (the same one as on the standard iMac).At the price and performance level of the iMac Pro, many photographers, video pros and othervisual users will have a preferred monitor brand, or they will already own a monitor they preferover Apple’s included display. The iMac Pro can drive an external display very capably, but the$800 or so price premium for the display is a lot to pay for what will, in many cases, be asecondary display. The situation is worse than with the standard iMac, because buyers ofhigher-end workstations are more likely to have a better display.
It is a $5000 desktop computer that doesn’t make a lot of sense without some upgradesthat push its price closer to $7000-$8000. Right now, the iMac Pro is a notably bad deal,because the Xeon CPUs it uses have just gotten a big price cut in their newer versions, whichApple hasn’t started using yet (the price changes could cut $1000 or more off of manyconfigurations). When a new iMac Pro comes out, Apple could either pass along the price cut orupgrade some other feature so that it becomes more than a somewhat faster iMac with aradically larger price tag. One possibility is a new display with some features from the XDRdisplay Apple is releasing with the new Mac Pro?
The Mac Pro as currently available (the 2013 “Trashcan”) is simply irrelevant for mostphotographic purposes. If it’ll work, so will a modern Mac Mini or any number of iMacs – it’sclearly less powerful than most configurations of the 27” iMac that use SSD storage. The new(and often-delayed) Mac Pro will be an extremely powerful computer when it ships – but anysensible configuration will probably be around $10,000 and up. The starting configuration at$6000 will perform a great deal like a $3600 iMac – the advantage comes from massivelyupgraded versions. HP Z6 and Z8 workstations in the same performance class are equally ormore expensive, but none of them are needed for still photography, except in the mostextreme cases. Maybe panoramic stitching of GFX 100 files? Perhaps dealing with large librariesof 8×10” film scans?
Of course, there’s the computer Apple will never make – call it an iMac without thescreen, a beefed up Mac Mini, or a cut down Mac Pro. When it is discussed on various Macforums, it’s sometimes called an xMac. It’s broadly defined as any Mac desktop without a built-in monitor, featuring upgradeable RAM and storage, discrete (and perhaps upgradeable)graphics, yet less expensive than a Mac Pro.
Apple has, for many years, reserved serious expandability for a Mac Pro (or Power Mac)model more expensive than any iMac. Their vision of desktop computing clearly looks like aniMac, and they are uninterested in offering another option. As the iMac’s capabilities increaseand the price of the top model increases with them, the Mac Pro retreats farther up the priceladder. It’s not always a bad deal if you need what it offers. The trashcan model has beenmassively overpriced for several years, but the new one actually isn’t, although nobody whocan say knows what the upgrades will cost. It’s just an extremely high-end workstation that onlya few people need.
Apple has several reasons for not making the xMac – some of them purely pricegouging, while others actually make a lot of sense given their overall strategy. The pricegouging explanation is that Apple makes huge margins on RAM, storage and GPUs. A machinewhere those parts are easily user-upgradeable will cost them those margins. iMac Pro RAM maybe the most galling example, where Apple’s upgrade prices are between 2 and 4 times the costof the RAM, one of the signature features of the machine is that it accepts a large amount ofRAM, and there’s no easy way to upgrade it yourself.
The legitimate explanation, given Apple’s strategy of selling computers for the rest of us(as Steve Jobs used to say) is that the more upgradeability you have, the more configurationsyou have to support. Macs are reliable in part because Apple controls all the configurations anddoesn’t have to support much of anything that they didn’t originally sell. They can simplyexclude hardware they don’t want to bother with, and they can deliberately not serve marketswith high support costs, or that will make things less stable for other users.
The most prominent example of Apple’s strong control over hardware is their long-standing refusal to work with Nvidia. Nvidia has historically used a two-tier product strategy,where they have a performance-optimized but somewhat unstable gaming-focused driveravailable for their consumer video cards. If you pay two to five times as much for a similar card(with some feature improvements, but often not many), it comes with a much more stableworkstation-class driver that is guaranteed to work with many professional applications, whileomitting some game-oriented features that may be less stable. The gaming cards are a muchbetter value, but the driver ensures that the pros keep paying top dollar.
![Software Software](/uploads/1/2/6/7/126752151/546667502.jpg)
Instead of accepting the gaming driver with its effect on overall system stability orpaying for the highly stable driver, Apple switched video card suppliers to AMD and wrote theirown driver with professional-class stability at the cost of game performance. The details of thefeud aren’t public, but Nvidia might have been unwilling to let Apple write their own driver inorder to protect the high prices of their workstation cards?
With Apple deliberately refusing to make some photographer-friendly Macs (the xMac)and simply neglecting others in favor of new versions of AirPods, watch bands and TV shows, isit time for photographers to explore other options? Can we trust a trillion-dollar pop culturecompany to partner with us in the way a much smaller company did before the iPhone? Apple’sbottom line is now not in creating things, but in consumption of those things. We creativeswere the people who supported Apple through the hard times of the late 1990s, but we arenow a tiny slice of the revenue they make from iconic phones and fashion-oriented products.
There is certainly hardware out there that supports many photographers’ needs farbetter than any Mac presently available. Free ilife 09 download for mac. Powerful desktops without integrated monitors areeasy to find, as is essentially any other type of computer one might want. All of it requireslearning Windows, since the Mac operating system is locked to Apple hardware unless you havethe skills and willingness to experiment to build a “Hackintosh”, which may or may not be legal.
The Windows hardware you can buy in Best Buy is mostly cheap equipment withcompromises Apple would never dream of making – but there is hardware that isn’t (and it’sstill generally cheaper than a Mac, although often not by much). The question is the software.Essentially all photography-oriented software is cross-platform, and what isn’t is as likely to beWindows-only as Mac-only. For people who deal frequently with audio or video, Apple’s owntools (Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro plus their auxiliary programs) are important exceptions. At anoperating system level, Windows has lagged well behind the Mac in color management,although Windows 10 is much better than any previous version.
Windows has much more malware than the Mac, although that gap is closing for threereasons. There is now Mac malware in the wild, which there wasn’t a few years ago. Windowshas gotten much better protected – some years ago, it installed without malware protection bydefault and was almost immediately compromised as soon as it went on the Internet. By thetime you could download something to protect it, it was probably infected. Now, Microsoft’sown competent Defender installs itself with the operating system, and is almost impossible toturn off unless you install something more advanced. Defender will be fine for many users, andthere are plenty of more sophisticated tools available as well. Third, Google’s Android is nowthe “low-hanging fruit”, and many malware writers are now attacking Android instead ofWindows. It’s still not a Mac, but it’s not the headache XP and Vista were, either.
There are now stability-focused, workstation versions of Windows available – althoughthe least secure and stable edition, Windows 10 Home is still the most common edition on PCsbought one at a time. Windows 10 Pro is standard on many higher-end PCs, and a worthwhileupgrade when it’s available if it’s not.
The enormous upside to Windows is hardware choice. Apple doesn’t really make adesktop computer – they offer a more or less sealed Mini, several versions of an all-in-one iMac(which is what they push) and a very high-end workstation. If you’re willing to use Windows,you can buy a cheap desktop for under $300 with plenty of options available for under $500, oryou can pay over $100,000 for a maximum configuration of a HP Z8 workstation. In between,there are an enormous number of high quality PCs available in the $2500-$4000 range that arecapable of handling even very strenuous photographic workloads. For lighter workloads, thereare very capable desktop PCs around the $1500 price point.
If you buy a PC in the $1500+ price range from a brick and mortar store, it will almostcertainly be optimized for gaming – some choices will be very similar to those a photographerwould make, while others could be quite different. Most photographic applications make moreuse of the CPU than games do, while few can take advantage of the highest-end GPUs (althoughthat is slowly changing). Photographic software is gradually beginning to take advantage of allthe cores offered by Intel’s most recent i7 and i9 processors, and by the latest generation ofAMD Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 processors. https://writingnew146.weebly.com/best-mac-app-for-screen-reader-of-pdf.html. Photography wants RAM – 16 GB or more would be agood starting point for most LuLa readers, 32 GB or more if you use a high resolution camera orhave a library in the tens of thousands of images, and 64 or even (rarely) 128 GB could makesense if you have a very high resolution camera or a library in the hundreds of thousands ofimages. Some gaming PCs will be noisier than a machine optimized for photography and somewill use lower quality components that could affect reliability. As a rule, a gaming PC ofcomparable price to a PC built for photography will invest more of the total budget in the GPU(graphics card), while skimping on CPU, RAM and possibly parts quality.
Depending on how you choose to store your images themselves, storage needs couldrange from modest to enormous. If your primary image storage will be on an external device,whether directly connected over USB or Thunderbolt or network-attached, a 1 TB NVMe SSDwill comfortably hold the operating system, a bunch of applications and even fairly largepreview files. If you have a really huge library, 2 TB of SSD may be desirable to handle tens orhundreds of thousands of previews. If you are planning to store images internally, add harddrives or SSDs sufficient to store your library in addition to the fast SSD for operating system,applications and previews. Backup is, of course essential. Except with very modest photolibraries (or very expensive Mac Pros), most Macs require external image storage.
There are a number of online vendors who make PCs built specifically for creativeprofessionals. Puget Systems is one that has been around a while, and they offer optimizedcomputers for a wide range of photo and video software, also performing huge numbers oftests to determine what works best for different applications. Boxx builds computers for a widerange of applications, mostly focused on architecture and engineering, but includingphotography. A Puget PC will tend to be slightly more expensive than a comparable Dell orother mainstream brand, but it will use higher quality parts. There are other custom PC vendorswith excellent reputations – many cater to gamers and have added lines focused onphotographers and other users more recently. Another option is the higher-quality, morecustomizable lines from Dell, Lenovo, HP and other major vendors. If the configuration youwant is available in their workstation lines, quality and support are excellent – businessdesktops are another line to consider. Many lower-end PCs focused on home or gaming usefrom major vendors use questionable motherboards, power supplies or other components.Puget Systems, Falcon Northwest, Boxx and other custom shops often use higher end parts, asdo the major vendors in workstation and higher end business lines. Technically savvy users cancertainly build a desktop for themselves, and there are shops in many major cities which willbuild them to order.
For those of us who have used Macs for years or decades, is it worth learning Windows’different conventions because Apple has turned unresponsive to our needs? Windows hasgotten better in recent years in a variety of ways, and what I’m hearing from Windows-favoringfriends and those who use both systems is “it’s not better or worse, it’s just different”. Is itworth putting in the extra time to maintain Windows – there’s still nothing as easy as a Mac? Ordo we just put up with waiting for Apple to release the computer we want?
I am currently trying to source a long-term test sample of a powerful Windowsnotebook workstation to test against the brand-new MacBook Pro, since I have used MacBookPros for years and prefer to use a single computer. I would like to do a series of articlesreporting on the experiences, especially the differences from the perspective of a 35-year Macuser. These questions are worth asking, especially as Apple is unlikely to become moreresponsive. The new 16” will be the “big” MacBook Pro for the next three to four years, sinceApple only makes two models, differentiated by screen size. There is also a very real chancethat it is the last “real” MacBook Pro – its replacement in three or four years may very well havean ARM processor, running improved versions of iPad apps. Lenovo alone makes five currentlaptop workstations, plus HP’s five, Dell’s three and various others from companies entering thecreative market, often from gaming.
On the desktop side, Apple will continue to offer iMacs as the only reasonable option formost photographers. The iMac options may get more or less enticing as updates arrive or failto, but we are unlikely to see a Mini with anything except Intel’s slow graphics, and we certainlywon’t see a smaller or less expensive Mac Pro. Apple’s “my way or the highway” message todesktop buyers will continue. Maybe we’ll see an iMac Pro with a really wonderful screen in thenext year or two, and we might see a “regular” iMac with improved cooling – but they’ll still beiMacs with built-in screens and limited expandability.
In general, the glory days of the Mac aren’t coming back. Apple’s big product is theiPhone, as it has been for the past decade, and Services is where the new emphasis is going.Macs are only one of three smaller product lines – sharing billing with the iPad and with a grabbag of consumer hardware like AirPods and HomePods, led by the Apple Watch. There is atleast some risk that Apple pushes the Mac closer to iPhones and iPads by moving the A-seriesprocessors from those products into the Mac over the next few years. It might even make sensefor the MacBook Air – but it makes no sense at all for the uses photographers make of ourcomputers.
Like moving off of Lightroom, moving to Windows isn’t something we all have to contemplate immediately – Apple isn’t going to cut off the Mac tomorrow, especially with the update the MacBook Pro just got. On the other hand, we should be becoming aware of the alternatives, and of what the transition might mean. If Macs move to A-series chips and important software doesn’t run (or we get forced to glorified iPad apps), it’s an issue. If Apple becomes even slower to update machines we need, that’s an issue, too. What if they decide to remove the keyboard entirely from some laptops, replacing it with a flat touch surface? They have patents in that direction. What if the next 15” (or 16”) MacBook Pro weighs 3 lbs, but loses the GPU and is using iPad-derived ARM processors?
Dan Wells
November 2019
Apple’s Photos for Mac app is amazing, but it can be limiting. For doing simple photo edits, the tool is perfect, it’s loaded with photo cropper, features for lightening adjustments, setting white balance & a few more things. But if you’re an aspiring photographer, you probably need a powerful Mac Photo Editing App with a wide array of editing tools and other features.
So, whether you want to brighten up your dark dull images, remove a distracting background or use your creativity to the fullest, there’s a dedicated Mac photo editing app to step up your game. Best of all, most of these image editing tools are extremely affordable (& even free), so dive in to find the best tool to fit your personal/professional needs.
Top 10 Best Mac Photo Editing Apps
There are several image editing software available in the market for MacBook, so it becomes really challenging to pick up the best one. To help our readers, we’ve curated the ten useful photo editors (some are paid while some are free) to enhance your photo collection.
1. Movavi Photo Editor
Movavi is a full-featured photo editing tool designed for both beginners and professional users. It offers some amazing features to improve image quality, do photo restoration (remove noise from old images), perform portrait retouching (remove imperfections), erasing unwanted objects from the picture and so on. Aside from these main features, it offers tools for White Balancing, Color Correction, Makeup, Crop/Rotate/Resize, Add Texts/Images, Replace Background, and much more.
Rating’s Breakdown: | |
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Overall: | |
Setup: | 3/5 |
Photo Editing: | 3/5 |
Features: | 3.5/5 |
Ease-of-Use: | 4/5 |
Organizing: | 3/5 |
Help & Support: | 4.5/5 |
Price: | $29.95 |
Movavi Photo Editor is available in more than 10 languages & requires merely 57.2 MB of space on your storage.
Free Downloads For Mac
2. Lightroom
Next on our list of best photo editing software for Mac is Lightroom owned by Adobe Photoshop. Pretty much anything you want to do with your pictures can be accomplished through Lightroom. You can effortlessly blend, merge shadows, add highlights, make images sharper, crispier or even blur in a few clicks. The Mac editing app also allows users to add details & tint of colors to make the picture stand out. The MacBook photo editing tool is available in two versions: Classic (usually more preferred) & 2018 CC version.
Rating’s Breakdown: | |
---|---|
Overall: | |
Setup: | 3/5 |
Photo Editing: | 4/5 |
Features: | 3.5/5 |
Ease-of-Use: | 4/5 |
Organizing: | 3/5 |
Help & Support: | 3/5 |
Price: | Free (In-App Purchases) |
Lightroom is offered free for thirty days to let users decide whether their editing needs are fulfilled or not. After the trial period, users can add the CC subscription for using the complete toolkit.
3. Tweak Photos
As the name suggests, Tweak Photos is one of the best batch photo editing app for Macdesigned to tweak your images in a way to bring the best out of it. The image editing software can also be your best bet for ultimate batch editing, it can alter thousands of photos in just a matter of clicks. The interface is modern and easy-to-use, users can easily pick effects & apply to the entire batch of photos, rename them or convert file formats in just one go. Aside from performing basic editing, Tweak Photos offers features for Resizing, Auto-Correction, Rotate, Flip, De-noise images, Add Watermark, and other images, enhance & control Brightness, Sharpness & more. You can even add gorgeous frames & borders to make your image more aesthetic.
Rating’s Breakdown: | |
---|---|
Overall: | |
Setup: | 5/5 |
Photo Editing: | 4/5 |
Features: | 4/5 |
Ease-of-Use: | 4.5/5 |
Organizing: | 4/5 |
Help & Support: | 4.5/5 |
Price: | $4.99 |
Comprising all the essential editing tools & features, Tweak Photos is an ideal app to edit photos on mac. The tool automatically stamps the images with the original/modified Date/Time as per EXIF info & your choice of format.
4. Wondershare Fotophire
Fotophire by Wondershare is a popular photo editing toolkit designed for both beginners and professional users. The software is available on both the Windows and Mac platforms. The toolkit features more than 200+ effects and has strong capabilities to remove or replace the background or unwanted objects from any photo. The image editor brings a plethora of tools to create professional-looking blur & vignette effects, adjust white balance, saturation & other enhancements. Apart from it has wide file format support & bundle of filters, blend modes & textures to turn your photo into a piece of art.
Mac Lighting Software
Rating’s Breakdown: | |
---|---|
Overall: | |
Setup: | 4/5 |
Photo Editing: | 4.5/5 |
Features: | 4/5 |
Ease-of-Use: | 3/5 |
Organizing: | 3/5 |
Help & Support: | 3/5 |
Price: | $49.9 |
What we like the most about Fotophire is its Batch Processing feature that efficiently processes plenty of images in a determined style. Hence, a real-time saver to edit bulk photos.
5. Pixelmator
Known as one of the greatest alternatives to Photoshop, Pixelmator offers an ideal combination of a modern and simple interface with the ability to work on multiple layers for easy editing. The software has a bunch of editing tools, brushes, effects & other textures to enhance your photo collection. Depending upon users’ needs, Pixelmator offers two versions, Standard & Pro. As the name indicates, the Standard version allows users to perform basic photo editing, it proffers refined selection of tools and other filters. While the pro version is packed with extra brushes, photo effects and other editing features to push your creativity to the next level.
Rating’s Breakdown: | |
---|---|
Overall: | |
Setup: | 3/5 |
Photo Editing: | 5/5 |
Features: | 4/5 |
Ease-of-Use: | 5/5 |
Organizing: | 4/5 |
Help & Support: | 3/5 |
Price: | $29.99 |
Similar to other Mac photo editing apps, Pixelmator allows users to adjust contrast, saturation, color, definition and much more. The software allows you to save your images in different formats like PSD, JPG, PNG, TIFF, PDF and share them directly with your friends and family.
6. PhotoScape X
Amp up your photo editing skills in no time with a little help from PhotoScape X. It features an advanced range of image-related features including Photo Viewer, Batch editing, Collage, Cut Out, Combine, GIF, Color Picker, Screen Capture and more. PhotoScape has a variety of photo filters, effects & other adjustment settings to make your collection stand out. The tool is a popular choice for removing blemishes, moles, red-eye correction, creating fake HDR, liquify, creating a miniature effect, dehaze and more.
Rating’s Breakdown: | |
---|---|
Overall: | |
Setup: | 4/5 |
Photo Editing: | 3.5/5 |
Features: | 3/5 |
Ease-of-Use: | 3/5 |
Organizing: | 3/5 |
Help & Support: | 4/5 |
Price: | Price: Free (In-App Purchases) |
PhotoScape X is available for both Windows & Mac OS & is a very useful tool Batch Photo Editing as well. It proffers various tools to batch format change, batch resizing, batch rename and more.
7. Affinity Photo
Restyle images for a unique look and feel on your Mac with Affinity Photo Editing Software. Its dashboard might seem overwhelming at first, especially for beginner editors. However, once you get the grip, you’ll know that it’s just the application you’ve been looking for. The image editing software features a great bunch of professional editing tools, filters, and other effects to entice the inner artist in you. The best part? The tool features a Before & After view that lets you compare the original picture with the edited one.
Rating’s Breakdown: | |
---|---|
Overall: | |
Setup: | 4/5 |
Photo Editing: | 3.5/5 |
Features: | 3/5 |
Ease-of-Use: | 3/5 |
Organizing: | 3/5 |
Help & Support: | 4/5 |
Price: | Price: Free (In-App Purchases) |
The mac photo editing app supports more than fifteen file types and formats, including PDF, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, RAW and some other less popular ones as well.
8. Photoshop Elements
With complete control over Image composition (from the contrast to brightness), Photoshop Elements is one of the Best Photo Editing Software for Mac. Its interface is intrusively designed while keeping users’ needs & requirements in mind. The large colorful icons with comprehensive texts and graphics tips help both novices and advanced users. All the features are organized in the same way as most other Adobe products are. Apart from providing basic features for editing and adjusting image orientations, Photoshop Elements features Intelligent Selection of areas, scaling, smart cropper, restoration of damaged parts and much more.
Rating’s Breakdown: | |
---|---|
Overall: | |
Setup: | 4/5 |
Photo Editing: | 5/5 |
Features: | 5/5 |
Ease-of-Use: | 4.5/5 |
Organizing: | 5/5 |
Help & Support: | 4.5/5 |
Price: | $99.99 |
Photoshop Elements is one of the most ideal apps to edit photos on mac, as it comes complemented by automatic tools for editing that are only available within itself & not other versions of Adobe Photoshop.
9. DxO OpticsPro for Photos
Let your photos shine with DxO OpticsPro for Photos tool. With a tagline ‘Reveal the RAW emotion’ Dxo offers a simple user-friendly interface with amazing photo retouching features & deep color correction tools. The application aims to analyze your images intelligently, correct orientations, adjust balance & exposure, alter the calibration levels to enhance your collection. It’s Magic photo retouching feature literary works like a charm; just select the photo(s) you want to improve in terms of color or quality & click ‘magic; button to intensify the image.
Rating’s Breakdown: | |
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Overall: | |
Setup: | 4/5 |
Photo Editing: | 5/5 |
Features: | 4/5 |
Ease-of-Use: | 3.5/5 |
Organizing: | 4/5 |
Help & Support: | 5/5 |
Price: | $9.99 |
In addition to basic editing features, DxO photo processing for compatible cameras can easily be managed within the editing mode. DxO OpticsPro acts as a third-party extension for the same. It is capable of applying White Balance Correction, Smart Lightning, applying Optical corrections and so on.
10. CameraBag Photo
An easy to use, lightweight photo editor tool, CaneraBag Photo is an amazing app that brings out the best of your photos. It features a clean and easy-to-use interface, on the right side of the dashboard, you’ll find the whole range of filters & customization tools. Unlike other best photo editing software for mac mentioned in the list, CameraBag Photo features 200+ Default Presets, which allows users to edit the photo(s) on the fly.
Rating’s Breakdown: | |
---|---|
Overall: | |
Setup: | 4/5 |
Photo Editing: | 3.5/5 |
Features: | 4/5 |
Ease-of-Use: | 4/5 |
Organizing: | 3/5 |
Help & Support: | 4/5 |
Price: | $20 |
In addition to photo editing basics: adjust exposure, saturation, contrast, fix the noise, add blur, vignette effect. CameraBag Photo boasts other photo editing utilities like Hue Masking, HSV Mask, adding borders, watermark, fixing dead pixels, color mixer, filtered B+W, split tone and more.
How Do You Edit Your Photographs?
All the aforementioned Photo Editing tools for Mac are well-designed and great looking pieces to easily edit images. However, if you ask us, we recommend using Wondershare Fotophire & Tweak Photos that works suitable for both amateur & pro photographers. Both the photo editing tools have enticing editing feature set to make your photo collection stand out & both have strong capabilities for Batch Editing & Processing!
Do let us know your favorite editing tips, tricks, and hacks in the comment section below. And which Mac photo editing tool is your personal favorite?