2012 Macbook Pro 13 inch with Lightroom 4?

My 2008 Core 2 Duo imac has been showing its age for a while now and after switching to Lightroom 4 photo processing is so slow it's painful.

It's a 2.66 Ghz C2D with 4GB RAM and my RAW files are on an external USB drive and I shoot with a 7D. I don't know whether the slowness is down to the processer, RAM, the USB 2.0 drive or a combination of them all. For all other uses it's fine and I'll keep it as a second computer but for photos..............no way.

Anyway I've decided I need a new machine to edit my photos on and I think I'd quite like a laptop. I like the look of the recently released higher end 13 inch Macbook Pro with a 128 GB SSD and the photos on an external USB 3.0 drive. I could hook it up to budget IPS 23 inch screen (such as LG). I would upgrade the RAM to 16GB myself. The rMBP looks great but is a little out of my price range as are the non retina 15 inch models.

I have a couple of questions which more knowledgeable folk than me could hopefully answer.

1. The processer. How important is the fact that the processer on the 13 inch MBP is a dual core and not a quad core like the 15 inch models? I guess it'll be slower (of course) but how much will this affect photo processing?

2. The Graphics Card. There is no discrete GPU on the 13 inch models, shpould I worry about this? I don't play games and rarely do any video editing.

I'll be using Lightroom 4, Elements 10 and DPP mainly and like I said before whilst photo processing it'll be hooked up to an external monitor. I'm not a pro and primarily I'll be culling, sorting and organizing the RAW files and only very rarely doing any batch editing. I want to select my favorite images from the 000's I've accumulated and work on them individually.

You are pointing out why I am getting to maxed out rMBPs for the wife and I on tax free weekend (first weekend in August). First we get the great retina display to do LR4 editing in the field. We will also have over 600GB of SSD storage for the images during our trips. When we get home the files will be uploaded to thunderbolt RAID 1 pair. And the rMMBP has the quad core horsepower to run LR4, or other application, without any extra delay (like you would see from a 2 core netbook or laptop). I understand the cost of retina MBP can be real problem. In such case, strongly consider the new regular 15" MBP with at least 8GB of memory. It will be good in the field, and also back home as a desktop replacement.

MCAsan wrote in post #14705920
I understand the cost of retina MBP can be real problem. In such case, strongly consider the new regular 15" MBP with at least 8GB of memory. It will be good in the field, and also back home as a desktop replacement.

Thanks for the reply, yes the cost is a problem, the wife just lost her job and cash is tight. I looked at both the regular 15 inch MBPs but to be honest once you start customizing them with a SSD/more RAM/matte screen they cost almost as much as the rMBP.

I may also look at some of the much more affordable Dell laptop options or wait for the imac refresh (which must be soon) and just get another desktop.

Anyone using a 13inch MBP for editing?

I run Lightroom 4 on my 2012 MBP 13" with SSD and 8GB of RAM without any problems. It doesnt run as fast as my desktop PC does, but then it didnt cost even a third as much. Still Id say its a pretty capable little machine. And for the most part a graphics card isnt going to help you a whole lot with lightroom photo editing.

My understanding is that LR is more CPU centric while Aperture can take advantage of the GPU. Personally have not used Apeture.

LR is totally CPU centric and does not use the GPU.
Aperture is a lighter simple program that leverages the CPU and on some Macs (those with Open CL support) the GPU.
All of which generally make it a faster program on a lower spec computer, or something that has to compromise performance like a Laptop.