[jddwoods]

Hello All

This question is specific to those of us who have Mac computers. I had planned to load Lightroom 6 on my I Mac computer, I noticed that my Mac meets or exceeds all requirements, except one. I do not have sufficient video memory. The program calls for 1 GB VRAM and my computer has 256 MB. So its on to plan B and that is to get Adobe Photoshop elements or just stick with Photos which is included in the operating system. My computer is running Mac OS Sierra and I have plenty of RAM (12GB) to run either program on my Core I3 3.06 GHz machine.
Do any of you have any comparative experience with Photoshop Elements versus Photos? Is photoshop elements a worthwhile upgrade or should I just stick with Photos? I would just like to have more photo editing capability than I have with Photos.

Any comments welcome

Thanks, John

[Paul the Sunman]

Try LR. It'll probably work. They always overstate the requirements. I think you can get a free trail version before buying/signing up.

[MJSfoto1956]

Hello All

This question is specific to those of us who have Mac computers. I had planned to load Lightroom 6 on my I Mac computer, I noticed that my Mac meets or exceeds all requirements, except one. I do not have sufficient video memory. The program calls for 1 GB VRAM and my computer has 256 MB. So its on to plan B and that is to get Adobe Photoshop elements or just stick with Photos which is included in the operating system. My computer is running Mac OS Sierra and I have plenty of RAM (12GB) to run either program on my Core I3 3.06 GHz machine.
Do any of you have any comparative experience with Photoshop Elements versus Photos? Is photoshop elements a worthwhile upgrade or should I just stick with Photos? I would just like to have more photo editing capability than I have with Photos.

Any comments welcome

Thanks, John

I've been using Affinity Photo v1.4x since early this summer and only once needed to go to Photoshop for something odd. When v1.5 comes out in about a month, I will likely stop using Photoshop entirely. Give it a try. Free trial here: Sign up to download a free trial of Affinity Photo

Michael

[JCCharles]

John,

I have a core i5 Mac Mini that I upgraded to 16gb of RAM. I've worked through Elements to Aperture to Photos and landed on Photoshop/Lightroom CC for $9.99/month. I love it! There was a bit of adjustment software wise, but it's been worth it, especially considering I'm am doing initial work on site with LR on my iPad and it automatically goes to LR on my computer for finishing. Go with Lightroom CC and get Photoshop in the bundle and so many of the free Adobe iPad apps work seamlessly with them. That is my humble opinion...

JC Charles

[boriscleto]

I'm using Lightroom CC on a 2009 mini. It works just fine. Just make sure you turn off the hardware acceleration in preferences. Even if it is disabled by default because of insufficient hardware support, turning it off manually will help with stability. (My mini fails on OpenGL support)



Download the trial of Luminar by Macphun and try it with Photos...

Photo Editor for Mac - Luminar - Best Mac Image Editor | Macphun

[Kiwi645hauler]

Have you thought about using Phocus by Hasselblad? Its free to anyone, not just Hassy users, AND it supports over 200 different RAW profiles including Pentax!

[runswithsizzers]

Hello All

This question is specific to those of us who have Mac computers. I had planned to load Lightroom 6 on my I Mac computer, I noticed that my Mac meets or exceeds all requirements, except one. I do not have sufficient video memory. The program calls for 1 GB VRAM and my computer has 256 MB. So its on to plan B and that is to get Adobe Photoshop elements or just stick with Photos which is included in the operating system. My computer is running Mac OS Sierra and I have plenty of RAM (12GB) to run either program on my Core I3 3.06 GHz machine.
Do any of you have any comparative experience with Photoshop Elements versus Photos? Is photoshop elements a worthwhile upgrade or should I just stick with Photos? I would just like to have more photo editing capability than I have with Photos.

Any comments welcome

Thanks, John

I have a 5 year old iMac (2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, OS 10.11.6) - with the AMD Radeon HD 6750M video card, which has 512 MB of VRAM. It runs Lightroom just fine. Note that this card is not one which Adobe says supports video hardware acceleration for Lightroom, and in fact there is a check box where that can be (and should be) disabled.

Since I have Lightroom CC, I also have access to Photoshop, but I've used Ps much less than Lightroom. What little time I've spent with Ps, I did not notice any performance issues.

Until I got Lightroom I did almost all my post processing with Adobe Elements v.10. If your goal is to make your photographs look as good as possible, and if you are not doing a lot of text, compositing, and illustration work, then don't let anyone tell you Elements is inferior to Photoshop. Honestly, I wish I could get a CC subscription to Lightroom plus Elements rather than Lightroom plus Photoshop. Now my old version of Elements has some issues with the newer Mac OS, and I'd like to upgrade to a recent version of Elements, but it doesn't make sense for me to buy Elements when I'm already paying for access to Photoshop, does it? So after five yeas of getting comfortable with Elements, I now need to start learning Photoshop again.

Actually, Lightroom will do 95% of what I want to in post, plus the catalog function, plus a solution to upload directly to my SmugMug site from within Lightroom - it adds up to a pretty tidy package, for me. Not to say I didn't struggle plenty to learn enough to start using Lr (and I still have MUCH to learn), but the more I use Lr, the better I like it.

Tried Affinity Photo, but not enough to get close to being comfortable. I really wanted to like it, but always felt lost. For anyone starting out from zero, I believe Affinity Photo is an excellent way to go, but it's hard for me, as a longtime Adobe user to switch. What little progress I made with Affinity convinced me it will do far more than I'll ever need at a very reasonable price.

I don't believe many photographers (as opposed to snapshot shooters) will find Apple's Photos to be satisfying in the long run. However, I added an Affinity Photos module to Apple Photos, and it's pretty good. Don't remember how I got the Affinity module grafted on to Photos. It might be that if you added enough 3rd party extensions to Apple Photos it would be powerful enough for you, but I really prefer the Adobe interface. Many controls which are sliders, only, on Apple, can also be controlled with arrow keys or numerically on Adobe, which is much less fatiguing. Also, it's fussy to try to reset an Apple slider back to it's default, but a quick double click will reset most Adobe controls. By any criteria you can come up with, Apple Photos is just no where near to being in the same league as Affinity and Adobe, and that includes Elements.

OK, I thought of one. Not sure if Affinity has any potential for cataloging, adding captions and keywords; Apple will do that. Before Apple killed iPhoto, I did all my post in Elements, then used iPhoto for it's catalog functions. But now Lightroom does it all for me, and does it well. I should add that Elements also has catalog functions, but when I first got Elements, I already had 1000s of photos cataloged in iPhoto, so I just stayed with that.

To really do a proper comparison between 2 different advanced photo editing applications would take months for most people. Rather than dabbling in 2 or 3 different applications, my recommendation would be to pick one: Elements, Lightroom+Photoshop, or Affinity - and stick with it long enough to get competent.

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Last edited by runswithsizzers; 11-29-2016 at 09:39 PM.

[Alex645]

Try LR. It'll probably work. They always overstate the requirements. I think you can get a free trail version before buying/signing up.

I agree with Paul. If you have a large high res monitor, less VRAM will be problematic, but on a laptop or 21.5" iMac I think youʻll be fine with LR6. Photos and Elements are okay for simple jpeg work, but LR is the way to go with RAW files.

[Saltwater Images]

I'm using the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Package (Lightroom & Photoshop). My OS X is El Capitan, Processor is 2.9 GHz i5, 16 GB RAM and the Graphics Memory is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M with 512 MB. No issues.

Why don't you test with a 2-week trial download?

[boriscleto]

Photos and Elements are okay for simple jpeg work, but LR is the way to go with RAW files.

Photos with an extension like Infinity Photo, Macphun Luminar, or ON1 Photo RAW can be just fine for RAW too.

[sbh]

Well, Affinity Photos in it's coming version 1.5 (currently in Release Candidate) will be supported with all of it's features as a plugin to Photos. That's what one of their video tutorials stated.

So if you cannot run a Raw converter with cataloging (like LR, Capture One etc.), an alternative could be Photos + Affinity Photo 1.5. Although there are some limits in Apple Photos like jpeg-only and flattening after converting from raw and using plugins (afaik).

Previously I used Affinity Photo only occasionally because it missed some Features like focus stacking. This update was rather big and my last edits with the rc was a good experience. I'm sticking with it because it's easier to use in some ways. Now it even has some interesting advanced stacking features for bracketed shots and also 32bit mode for those who want to go extreme. Also you can use it as a standalone raw converter if you don't need cataloging.

[GolNat]

I've been using Affinity Photo v1.4x since early this summer and only once needed to go to Photoshop for something odd. When v1.5 comes out in about a month, I will likely stop using Photoshop entirely. Give it a try. Free trial here: Sign up to download a free trial of Affinity Photo

Michael

+1

I have never used Photoshop but did the free trial of Affinity Photo and though it was great. Ended up buying it (it is a 1 time fee, not monthly subscription like Photoshop). I think it is excellent and have not yet discovered all it can do. The benefit to Photoshop is that there are lots of tutorials on how to use it but I find that I can still use them for Affinity.

For picture management I downloaded iPhoto Buddy (free) which allows you to create unlimited libraries to organize your photos. It may not be as stream lined as Lightroom but it gets the job done for cheap.

[jddwoods]

After reading all of the posts and checking the websites I decided to go with Affinity Photo. It was available from the Apple App store and it cost $39.99 for version 1.5.1. A quick 5 minute download and it is up and running. There are a lot of tutorials and I am just getting started and I can easily pull photos from my photos library. So far it looks like it will have everything I could want. I also like the idea of keeping everything on my computer instead of relying on a subscription with a monthly fee.
Thanks to everyone for your advice.