Working with photoshop on a new Mac mini

[Silver Baby]

Thanks so much for all interesting posts here about the new mac mini and eGPUs, esp. to F-Train.
But still I can’t decide if I should buy a new mac mini (with an eGPU) or wait for the next mac pro.

I’m still working on a Mac Pro from 2006 - Dual Core Intel Xeon 3Ghz, 18 RAM with a Radeon HD 5770.
Of course the silver baby or cheese grater is getting old but still reliable.
Working means: 8 hours a day with Photoshop and Capture One.
So I don’t need the new mac for gaming, rendering or movies.

I would like to know your experiences when it comes to huge files, lots of layers, masks, gaussian blur or liquify in photoshop on the new mac mini.
Can you work with it (even without an eGPU) or is it slow or even very slow?

Let's try a comparison:
If I switch off the AMD Radeon Pro 455 on my Mac Book Pro (from 2016, 2,7Ghz, i7, 16GB RAM) and continue working in Photoshop only with the Intel HD Graphics 530
it’s getting really slow with all the tasks that need a graphic card for example Blur or Liquify. I could not work without the AMD.
Is this comparison correct? Is the mac mini with Intel UHD 630 as slow as a Mac Book Pro with a Intel HD 530?

Next comparison: The new mac mini will be faster than my mac pro cheese grater. But is the Intel UHD 630 faster than the Radeon HD 5770?


Thanks for reading!
Silver Baby

 

[Ploki]

UHD630 is not as good.
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compa...ffee-Lake-i5-i7-vs-AMD-HD-5770/m356797vsm7752
https://technical.city/en/video/Radeon-HD-5770-vs-HD-Graphics-630
But not terribly worse imo.

It's better than HD530, but not that better...

I only worked in Affinity Photo on a couple of RAW 12bit files, so I don't know about photoshop. It worked fine in Affinity..

I think an eGPU would definitely benefit your workflow.

 

[macdos]

I would like to know your experiences when it comes to huge files, lots of layers, masks, gaussian blur or liquify in photoshop on the new mac mini.
Can you work with it (even without an eGPU) or is it slow or even very slow?

Opening up a 1.2 GB .pba takes 2 secs, and it pans just fine.

In general, PS doesn't take much advantage of the GPU. iMac Pro is for video, not photo.

 

[Silver Baby]

Opening up a 1.2 GB .pba takes 2 secs, and it pans just fine.

In general, PS doesn't take much advantage of the GPU. iMac Pro is for video, not photo.

[doublepost=1548085229][/doublepost]

Opening up a 1.2 GB .pba takes 2 secs, and it pans just fine.

In general, PS doesn't take much advantage of the GPU. iMac Pro is for video, not photo.

Thanks for writing.
As I am working with calibrated Eizo Monitors I am not interessed in an iMac.
[doublepost=1548085493][/doublepost]

UHD630 is not as good.
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compa...ffee-Lake-i5-i7-vs-AMD-HD-5770/m356797vsm7752
https://technical.city/en/video/Radeon-HD-5770-vs-HD-Graphics-630
But not terribly worse imo.

It's better than HD530, but not that better...

I only worked in Affinity Photo on a couple of RAW 12bit files, so I don't know about photoshop. It worked fine in Affinity..

I think an eGPU would definitely benefit your workflow.

Thanks! I‘m really curious about affinity and hope I can give it a try very soon. If you check the faq, it supports egpu accelaration. That is what I call „up to Date“.

 

[Ploki]

Designer vs Illustrator is like night and day, although Designer still has a few features missing, it works so much better than Illustrator it's beyond belief.
It's really blatantly obvious one was written from scratch for modern hardware, and one has more than decade of old code lingering around.
Something as trivial as smooth zooming and navigation was a band-aid on illustrator

 

[DomC]

Thanks so much for all interesting posts here about the new mac mini and eGPUs, esp. to F-Train.
But still I can’t decide if I should buy a new mac mini (with an eGPU) or wait for the next mac pro.
Silver Baby

I'm somewhat in the same boat with a 2008 MacPro used primarily for Photoshop and Lightroom. I've read through the threads as well and have looked through other forums.
I've also read through the official Adobe links to discover what really uses gpu:

Features that require a GPU for acceleration

• Artboards
• Camera Raw (more information)
• Image Size – Preserve Details
• Select Focus
• Blur Gallery - Field Blur, Iris Blur, Tilt-Shift, Path Blur, Spin Blur (OpenCL accelerated)
• Smart Sharpen (Noise Reduction – OpenCL accelerated)
• Perspective Warp
• Select and Mask (OpenCL accelerated)

I use many of these a lot. Most responses I've read regarding the Mini and PS have stuck with basic uses (opening/panning) of PS but haven't really mentioned extensive use any of these particular features.

I'm currently mulling a Mini, see how the onboard works in my workflow, then decide whether an eGPU is needed. I have a feeling that even with one added, the price will still be lower than what the new MacPros will cost. I also wouldn't be surprised to have Adobe offload more things to the GPU in the future, but that's just a hunch.

I've peripherally looked an iMacs, but I'm leery about the all-in-one setup especially since upgrading them is not an easy thing to do, if at all. Plus I have monitors I already like.

 

[macdos]

I'm somewhat in the same boat with a 2008 MacPro used primarily for Photoshop and Lightroom.

Then I can assure you Mac Mini will be much faster in standard configuration. I dropped my cMP 2008 with a HD 7950 3GB for MM.

 

[new.girl]

Thanks so much for all interesting posts here about the new mac mini and eGPUs, esp. to F-Train.
But still I can’t decide if I should buy a new mac mini (with an eGPU) or wait for the next mac pro.

I’m still working on a Mac Pro from 2006 - Dual Core Intel Xeon 3Ghz, 18 RAM with a Radeon HD 5770.
Of course the silver baby or cheese grater is getting old but still reliable.
Working means: 8 hours a day with Photoshop and Capture One.
So I don’t need the new mac for gaming, rendering or movies.

I would like to know your experiences when it comes to huge files, lots of layers, masks, gaussian blur or liquify in photoshop on the new mac mini.
Can you work with it (even without an eGPU) or is it slow or even very slow?

Let's try a comparison:
If I switch off the AMD Radeon Pro 455 on my Mac Book Pro (from 2016, 2,7Ghz, i7, 16GB RAM) and continue working in Photoshop only with the Intel HD Graphics 530
it’s getting really slow with all the tasks that need a graphic card for example Blur or Liquify. I could not work without the AMD.
Is this comparison correct? Is the mac mini with Intel UHD 630 as slow as a Mac Book Pro with a Intel HD 530?

Next comparison: The new mac mini will be faster than my mac pro cheese grater. But is the Intel UHD 630 faster than the Radeon HD 5770?


Thanks for reading!
Silver Baby

I'm photographer (till now I was using Macbook Pro mid 2014) and I have Eizo monitor with Mac Mini 2018 but to be honest I didn't work on it yet as had an issue with screen.... I wanted to use HDMI on both ends but it didn't give me resolution I was after. So ordered USB-C and DP cabel and just connect it yesterday to find it working fine. Will be testing this weekend so then I can share my experience. I went after 16MB memory and i7 processor.

 

[Silver Baby]

I'm photographer (till now I was using Macbook Pro mid 2014) and I have Eizo monitor with Mac Mini 2018 but to be honest I didn't work on it yet as had an issue with screen.... I wanted to use HDMI on both ends but it didn't give me resolution I was after. So ordered USB-C and DP cabel and just connect it yesterday to find it working fine. Will be testing this weekend so then I can share my experience. I went after 16MB memory and i7 processor.

Sounds very good to me! So please let us stay in contact.
Thanks for writing and good luck to you with your new equipment and cables.