2013 Mac Pro: Photoshop Raw to JPEG

Get Mac Pro at B&H Photo. See also MPG’s computer gear wishlist as well as diglloyd-recommended performance packages for Mac Pro.

A big thanks to Other World Computing for loaning MPG the upgraded 2013 Mac Pro! Ditto for B&H Photo for loaning the 6-core Mac Pro. 64GB memory kit for 2013 Mac Pro provided by OWC.

Introduction

This test might be near and dear to the hearts for any pro who shoots raw on assignment but needs to deliver JPEG output on a short schedule.

128 Nikon D800E NEF files (14-bit lossless compressed format, 5.8GB of originals) were converted to max-quality JPEG. (3.56GB output size). Thus there is significant I/O involved, but given the very fast SSDs, this should be a very minor influence (well under 10 seconds).

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Results

See the test machine configurations.

The 8-core 2013 Mac Pro shows beats out the 12 core 2010 Mac Pro with a ~26% reduction in running time both in Photoshop/ACR to JPEG and the Lightroom import tasks.

The 6-core 3.5 GHz Mac Pro lags the 3.3 GHz Mac Pro by only ~11% or so, suggesting that it would nearly match and possibly beat Apple’s 3.0 GHz 8-core.

At ~4.1 to ~4.4 seconds per raw file, Nikon D800E files are no trivial task. There is ample room for improvement if Adobe could put both GPUs of the 2013 Mac Pro to work.

The MacBook Pro acquits itself very well in this context.

2013 Mac Pro: convert 128 Nikon D800E raw files to highest quality JPEG