Hello,
I need a new laptop for on the go, where the main focus is on making initial adjustments rather than batch-processing 1,000 images right away. Of course, I’ll be using AI masking on the images and, eventually, DeepPrime denoising, so it’ll be slower than on a really powerful machine. The only question is—can you actually work with it, or is it an immediate nightmare?
Hey,
I’m running PL10 on an Air with M5 and 16 GB RAM, mostly working on RAWs from my Fuji x100vi. I guess wether or not you can work with it is highly subjective, so I will give you my highly subjective answer.
tldr: You can work with it.
Compared to Lightroom, PL is noticeable slower, e. g. when generating previews while moving sliders. It even becomes a performance nightmare sometimes, for example when you rotate an image, which contains masks, in the crop view.
But afaik, these are performance problems you see on almost any hardware running PL. That’s kind of how PL “is”.
Comparing the performance of PL between my MacStudio M1 Max / 32gb and the Air, the Air is quicker by round about a factor of two when exporting photos. Generating AI masks works “quickly enough” for me. The initial AI analyzing of a photo takes about 5 seconds.
So in summary, I’m fine with PL10 on the Air. But as mentioned above: This is highly subjective. If you would like to get some numbers/benchmarks, feel free to tell me your scenario and I’ll start the stopwatch.
I use PL10 with a M5 MacBook Air, 32GB RAM, and it’s fine, though I generally have Deep Prime rendering off when making adjustments. I came from a M1 Mac Mini with 16GB, and the M5 is subjectively much faster, especially when exporting. I’m working with 20mp Micro-4/3rds raws - YMMV.
This might seem like a “no brainer” but I sometimes suffer this on my system.
I tend to turn off masks entirely, make my global adjustments etc., then turn the masks back on. It’s one toggle, so not too hard.
That said, it’s better still to get your cropping done before editing everything else.