2022 Mac Studio M1 Ultra: Convert RAW Files to JPEG With Adobe Camera Raw (Nikon D850)

2022-06-22 • SEND FEEDBACK •
Related: 2019 iMac 5K, 2019 Mac Pro, 2020 iMac 5K, 4K and 5K display, Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Mac Studio, Apple Silicon, computer display, iMac, iMac 5K, laptop, Mac Pro, MacBook, Macs, Nikon D850, Other World Computing, Photoshop

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MPG tested the $7999 Apple Mac Studio M1 Ultra 20-core CPU / 64-core GPU/ 128GB / 8TB SSD , provided on loan for review by B&H Photo, an authorized Apple Mac dealer. Please buy your gear at B&H Photo and OWC/MacSales.com using any link from this site.

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2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max

This test is a real-world task relevant to Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom: batch convert raw files to JPEG.

Disk I/O is not a significant factor, the files being small relative to the workload, and on the fast internal SSD.

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Raw file conversion to JPEG — Nikon D850 45-megapixel NEF lossless compressed

Nikon D850 raw files are compressed in a way that reduces parallelism (processing harder to use multiple cores on each raw file).

The Mac Studio M1 Ultra processes 45-megapixel Nikon D850 raw files in just under one second each.

Adobe has improved raw file conversion considerably since early 2022. That is evident in the very slow results from the 2019 iMac 5K running Photoshop CC 2021 v22.5.8.

Convert 100 Nikon D850 45-megapixel raw flies to JPEG
2022 Mac Studio M1 Ultra, 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max, 2019 iMac 5K, 2019 Mac Pro 28-core

2022 Mac Studio M1 Ultra