Which Mac for me???

I am going to buying my first apple computer within the next month or so and I was leaning toward getting a Macbook Pro. Would you recommend a Macbook Pro for doing photo editing or would a iMac be better? I debate between having a nice big screen for editing and having something portable in which I could edit while away from the office. Any input would be greatly appreciated

Well, what camera are you going to be using and how important is mobility? An iMac i5 or i7 is going to be much faster than a laptop.

I have the good fortune of having both - an iMac 27" and a MBP 17". I take the MBP with me when I travel but don't do any heavy editing until I get home. I also have a 24" Apple Cinema display that I hook up to my MBP.

The MBP paired with a good quality display is, IMO, a better option because you get the portability of a laptop and the real estate that comes with a large display. It is more expensive than the iMac option.

I love my iMac simply because of the 27" display.

The decision between laptop or desktop is a pretty big one, narrow that down first

Right now I have a 20D but I plan on getting a 5D in the near future....

I have a 17" MacBook Pro and it runs PSE like a champ.

shedberg, what are the specs of your 17" MBP? did you do any upgrades?

A laptop will do fine, a desktop is just better, especially if you do any heavy editing.

i have to ask...what is considered heavy editing? forgive me, i'm a newbie

Large photoshop projects in TIFF, tons of layers. Processing large panoramas.

I even consider fairly 'standard' RAW processing to be relatively heavy depending on the camera - I have an overly powerful system for photo editing alone (needed/wanted the speed for video and audio multitracking, mostly), but processing RAW files from my 5DII does take a bite out of memory and processor resources. I do run DxO most of the time, despite it being slower than Lightroom, because I prefer the results. It also does scale well for multiple threads and processors when it comes down to conversion.

cuteangeleyez31 wrote in post #11386850
shedberg, what are the specs of your 17" MBP? did you do any upgrades?

2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, I upgraded the RAM from 4GB to 8GB, but PSE worked awesome with just 4GB. The RAM upgrade was for running Win7 in Parallels. Also the 256GB SSD.

Just make sure you're using the high performance video card when editing photos, not the low power video card. My MBP is a year old, so you manually select which video card you want to use, I think the new ones might select automatically in which case forget I said anything.

Panorama shots aren't a problem on my MBP either.

cuteangeleyez31 wrote in post #11387025
i have to ask...what is considered heavy editing? forgive me, i'm a newbie

If you plan on using Aperture 3, it uses the video card as well as the CPU to do it's work. That means, the work will be split between the two. The reason I'm mentioning this is because if you plan on going the Adobe direction (Lightroom), it does not take full advantage of the video card and will require a little more CPU power to accomplish it's tasks. If you go with Aperture, you can get by with either an i5 MBP or i5 iMac, but if you went the Lightroom direction then I would go for the i7 (for either/both). In addition, if you want the power of Photoshop, but are not ready to put in the hours (and hours) it will take to learn it, I would highly recommend Pixelmator (link). It's powerful to the point of being a real Photoshop alternative and better, it relies heavily on the video card for rendering. That means, again, an i5 will be sufficient. 8GB of RAM and a fast HDD are always good no matter which you choose though.