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Archive 2015 · Will a lower monitor resolution speed up Lightroom?

  
 
robts
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Will a lower monitor resolution speed up Lightroom?


I ask because I've been editing on a MBPR for almost two years now and am getting a little tired of the neck and arm strain from trying to raise my laptop into any kind of ergonomical position that benefits both my arms and neck, and am considering Apple's aging Thunderbolt display.

Why? Because I really enjoy Apple's ecosystem and approach to cord minimalism. Not to mention that their peripherals are better designed to keep the laptop battery from overworking when it's plugged in for longer periods. I also don't want an iMac because I do a lot of work on the road and can't justify owning two fully functional computers when I could have one.

I know there are dozens of cheaper 4k monitors out there, but I'm honestly more interested in speed and usability. Sharpness is determined in the culling process which can be easily done on the retina screen, and after that I'm looking for speed when editing a 1200-1500 image wedding collection. If the lower resolution of the Thunderbolt display will help LR render changes faster, I'll buy one today. If not, I'll probably hold out until Apple upgrades the display.



Sep 09, 2015 at 05:13 PM
Lauchlan Toal
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Will a lower monitor resolution speed up Lightroom?


I don't think you'd notice the speed difference. There might be a slight advantage in how fast the screen refreshes when you open a new window or switch to a different photo, but even that would be negligible. The time it takes to perform edits would be totally unchanged, since that's all about the RAM and Lightroom's internal software.


Sep 09, 2015 at 06:28 PM
robts
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Will a lower monitor resolution speed up Lightroom?


I know that the 5k iMacs have trouble running LR at max resolution, but I suppose that is a much bigger difference than 2560 x 1440 vs 2880 x 1800.

I guess I'll play the waiting game. Thanks for replying.



Sep 10, 2015 at 07:24 AM
mdude85
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Will a lower monitor resolution speed up Lightroom?


I doubt you'd notice a huge difference.... As far as power consumption is concerned, a new monitor is probably going to be better for your overall power usage than an older monitor since the newer monitors are more power efficient. The older Apple cinema displays ... I think they pull about 65-150 watts of power (depending on size). Newer LED monitors will only pull about 25-40 watts. Doesn't really matter how good Apple says its monitors are at conserving battery life (sounds like a marketing gimmick more than a technical feature) ... just look at the wattage pull.

As far as GPU pull is concerned then it depends on your graphics card. You don't need a 4K monitor just for basic photo processing. I doubt 99% of people will need anything more than 2560×1440 (aka Quad HD).

One thing you should probably do is plug your MBP into power when you are doing intensive processing; these Intel processors will try to reduce power consumption when on battery and thus will clock at lower speeds.



Sep 10, 2015 at 09:59 AM
elkhornsun
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Will a lower monitor resolution speed up Lightroom?


Laptops unless they have solid state drives will have slower RPM hard drives as they consume less power and the battery charge will last longer. These slower drives will slow performance with applications like Lightroom. Another factor is having data on an external drive or NAS device as the data is loaded to the CPU, processed and possible written to scratch disk space on the hard drive, temp files are created on the hard drive, the image is processed again and then saved to the external device.

I get optimum performance on a Mac tower where the apps are on one drive, the data on two mirrored internal drives, scratch disk is a fourth drive, and the output is going to a fifth internal drive. I can't do that with the new trash can Mac desktop computers so am doing most of my work now on a HP tower which has 4 internal drives.



Sep 17, 2015 at 11:30 AM
elkhornsun
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Will a lower monitor resolution speed up Lightroom?


There is an old song with the line 'how hopeless it all becomes when you seek all the answers in one" and it applies to most things in life. No single lens or camera or light source or computer is going to provide a perfect solution. I use two laptops and two workstations and an iPad. Each has their strengths and their weaknesses.

I use a workstation as then I can add multiple internal hard drives, add new gen I/O ports, and add new video display cards, and have 4x as much RAM. Laptops involve many compromises to provide maximum battery life and to be as light as possible. SSD primary drive will help performance in some areas but are still not ideal for batch processing of hundreds of image files.



Oct 18, 2015 at 01:42 PM





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