My MacBook Pro has enabled a new photographic workflow that should allow me to select and process my photos faster. Prior to buying my MacBook Pro I had the following issues:
- My iMac was more powerful than my 13″ MBP so it was my main editing machine. That meant that the majority of my photo editing occurred in the office.
- My image library is stored on an external RAID drive so I always have a backup. An external RAID isn’t very easy to carry around with you.
I tried editing new photos on my 13″ MBP and then loading them onto my iMac but it was excruciatingly slow. I also tried dumping the photos on my iMac, generating Lightroom Smart Previews, and using Adobe’s cloud editor but it was terrible. Another solution would have been to generate Smart Previews for my entire library but I’d need to store the library on my Mac (might be too large) and would be editing images that weren’t full quality. Inefficient. Luckily my 15″ MPB has rectified that.
Now I have two very similar workflows:
- Import new photos onto MBP > edit on MBP > import photos + edits into library on external drive
- Export a subset of photos from external drive > copy to MBP > edit on MBP > re-import onto external drive
In addition I purchased an eSATA to USB 3.0 converter so I can plug my RAID drive directly into my MBP when I need to sync. No need to use the iMac anymore unless I want a bit more screen space. In addition, eSATA over USB 3.0 is about 2x as fast as Firewire 800, which is really helpful.
Relatively Ambitious 