Pixelmator pro on gpu-less Mac mini or MacBook 12” 2017 i5 or MacBook Air 2019

Talk about Pixelmator Pro, share tips & tricks, tutorials, and other resources.
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2019-08-23 16:47:45

Per photo shoot I want to select the best of about 200 raw images (from canon 60d) and then do some light editing, like rotating and cropping. ML Enhance looks like a very nice extra.
How does this perform on the mentioned devices? Especially MacBook is quite attractive now, since prices are very low.
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2019-08-24 15:48:18

Until a few months back, my only machine was a 2015 MacBook with 8GB RAM. Running Pixelmator Pro on it is functional but not fast. It tends to get bogged down in large images with multiple layers. The biggest bottleneck I find to be memory so, if you get the opportunity to buy a 16GB model I'd strongly recommend it. With 8GB I was often closing everything I didn't need just to get a bit more speed.

If you want a measure of how fast the machine will be (and if you have an Apple Store nearby) I'd recommend trying out a machine in store. I don't think they'll let you install Pixelmator Pro on a display model but they might let you load up a sample RAW file. On my MacBook, opening a RAW file in Pixelmator takes about 1.5 times the time it takes to export it full size from Apple Photos.

Hope this helps.

- Stef.