2022 Mac Studio M1 Ultra: Assemble Panorama

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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.

2022 Mac Studio M1 Ultra

About

Panorama assembly in Photoshop consists of Auto Align Layers and Auto Blend Layers. The test uses only eight 21-megapixels images—far from a big job.

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Results

See the test notes for details on hardware configuration and software versions.

Consists of: Auto Align Layers, Auto Blend Layers, Flatten Image, Image Size to 75%

When I last tested this in early 2022, the 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max took only 13.7 seconds to get it done. It’s all gone downhill from there.

Seriously broken implementation

Not only is the time required excessive, Photoshop is apparently leaking massive amounts of memory. Which might explain the slow execution time.

Memory usage: MacStudio: 103GB, MacPro: 263GB, iMac5K: 105GB

Even the 2019 iMac 5K running Photoshop CC 2021 v22.5.8 on macOS Mojave shows the issue. However, there was a Photoshop update between then and now, so it looks like things were broken between then and now.

Mac Studio, 20 iterations: average = 30.0 = {28.34, 29.38, 29.52, 28.0, 28.78, 29.48, 29.28, 30.06, 30.18, 29.19, 29.31, 32.26, 30.55, 29.53, 29.59, 29.94, 31.52, 30.38, 34.72, 29.96}
2019 Mac Pro, 20 iterations: average = 57.74 = {57.79, 55.61, 54.88, 54.79, 54.58, 55.69, 55.2, 97.87, 55.52, 55.13, 55.08, 55.5, 55.4, 55.25, 57.82, 59.41, 58.04, 55.88, 52.97, 52.44}
2019 iMac 5K, 20 iterations: average = 24.6 = {23.46, 23.06, 23.11, 22.9, 22.75, 22.76, 22.96, 22.72, 23.0, 22.81, 23.12, 22.73, 26.08, 27.47, 25.6, 28.11, 24.11, 30.82, 23.55, 30.8}

Photoshop CC: assemble panorama
2022 Mac Studio M1 Ultra, 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max, 2019 iMac 5K, 2019 Mac Pro 28-core

2022 Mac Studio M1 Ultra