Toronto Photography Meetup Group

So next week I'm picking up either a macbook pro or a Imac 24" same price generally but I dont know which is smarter to get.. I have a toshiba laptop right now its not bad but the screen sucks to edit ... Should I get an imac and use it as a desktop or should I scrap the toshiba and get a macbook pro... any ideas??

I am getting i5 and saving $400 for something else

Yeah but I want a good operating system haha I kid. I love macs to death !

yea also saved urself so much hassle and time from a good OS too
i'd love to have a 27" if my PC die.. i also have a 15" unibody mbp

honest opinion Laptop you think is the better route?

For image editing, I don't think you're going to do better than a desktop (stable location, more power/cost), but the MBP is still quite viable. It all depends on how you want to deal with portability.

I'm using a 2yr old iMac with Aperture, and a 4 year old 12" Powerbook for portability.

if you want longevity i'd say the imac 27" quadcore makes the best bet as it's expandable to 16GB and should do most of what you need to do right now. Macbook Pro makes you mobile though which is useful when you're on location. So it really depends on how you want to use it and how you want to view your images.

I now own a Macbook with only 4GB and it can handle several simultaneously opened 21MB image files. I do notice a slow down when I have multiple things happening (i.e. LR2 and Photoshop simultaneously with several opened DNG files). I recently purchased imac 27 quadcore with only 8GB for now. My budget just allowed me to stretch it that far. I'll get the another 4GB x 2 next boxing day. lol

I say if you don't need the portability of a laptop, I'd say get the iMac 24". One of the presidents in my company bought the 27" iMac for Christmas. I started getting motion sickness from all the eye scanning when we were installing some apps etc for him but DAMN it's sweet! It's ridiculously sharp! The Magic Mouse is pretty cool!

i really wish the i5 and i7 were in the 24" model. Any way that being said i think the 24" iMac would be great the new screen is much better than the old ones and better than a laptop will be too. If you need a laptop there isn't much you can do to get around that. However if you really just new a fast nice computer and you're using it at home most of the time the iMac will be a better value to you.

The display on the iMac can reproduce many more colours than the MacBook Pro display can. The iMac will be faster as well (7200 RPM hard drive vs 5400 RPM, faster processor, front side bus, RAM, better video card........)

The MacBook Pro is a great machine, but, if portability is not a necessity or you are willing to sacrifice performance for portability, get the iMac.

P.S. Get the $1599 version which has the better video card (ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics with 256MB) than the entry level model (NVIDIA GeForce 9400M). In addition to the better video card you also get a 1TB hard drive versus a 500GB HD.

I have mbp, and never post processing on my laptop screen. I always use an external monitor for that. The mbp is my main computer and for my use, its fine.

Its all personal opinion on what you want. If you want/need portability, get the mbp with an external monitor. If you don't need the portability, then get the Imac.

are the monitors on the mbp not good to edit with??

They are good, but, not as good (# of colours that can be displayed) as the iMac displays.

Hmmmm I definatley need to put that into consideration

I have an older (pre-unibody) MBP, and I have found that the screen does not calibrate properly; it's almost impossible for my screen to hit the right luminance target, the brightness setting is too coarse.

I too use an external screen for editing.

How do you calibrate your monitor?

With a display calibrator. Many choices, but I personally use a Datacolor Spyder 3.

colours aside... on my mac laptop I have a nearly impossible time figuring out whether things are well exposed or not since the slightest angle of the screen alters this significantly.. I avoid doing photo work on my laptop as much as I can.. even if it means trudging through the snow to the office to work on the desktop.

oh yeah, and I don't want to imagine how bad the situation is with reflections on the glass panelled MBP screens. If I had to go with a laptop, I'd definitely go with a matt screen.

We recently got 15 MBP a couple weeks before Christmas for a hardware refresh for our users. Of course being in IT has it's privileges and when I assigned one to myself I noticed a very slight variation in colour that I couldn't easily adjust. I went through 3 units to find one that looked neutral (at least to me). I totally agree what others have said about the reflections from the screen and viewing angle that can probably skew your adjustments. If you do go the MBP route, you'll probably end up buying an external LCD display.

thus, you're better off buying the imac

+1
I have a pre-unibody MBP, and I use it with a calibrated external display.

The imac's are some what portable. If you're willing to lug it around with and extention cord or with one of those Canadian Tire battery packs!

So I went with the MBP Mainly for schooling and portability purposes .. the colours are so Wierd not to my liking at all. How do I fix this? Purchase a monitor calibrator? or can I se the mac profile calibrator although I tried myself and was not successful.. any suggestions on getting my colour better? I am currently using the srgb profile

Too much blue/green? Don't use the sRGB profile. Use the color LCD profile inbuilt. The color LCD profile is good enough, until you get yourself a display calibrator. I don't know how well the new screens can be calibrated, but if it is anything like the pre-unibody spec, don't waste your money on a calibrator until you get an external monitor.

the built in lcd profile is so off I don't like them at all

i have a new MBP 15" and a pantone huey pro calibration unit. i calibrate both my LED LCD on the MBP and the external LCD display i have. both calibrate to the exact same colour range with the MPB being slightly better just due to the age of my old 19" here. from all tests when printing, profiling and sending to others with calibrated monitors, everything is perfectly fine. it calibrates beautifully.