Re: Which Mac mini to get for photo editing (from window user)
mikegao wrote:
Hi:
I accidentally pour coffee to my laptop that I use primary for photo editing. The keyboard become sticky and won't work even with an external keyboard. It was a gaming laptop that still running on Window 10 professional that I update to 64 GB ram and 1TB of internal SSD. I also have 3 external SSD (combine 15 TB of storage and two of them are full) that are attached to the laptop for photo storage. I look around for Window replacement, but none of them look good or cheap. I check the Mac mini seems like it will fit the bill.
As for my usage, I don't do a lot of heavy duty photo editing. The most demanding job is to use Negative Lab Pro to convert negative. I have a M11p and Z8, so the file size I normally have are large, and that's why I use up external SSD fast. I haven't done any video editing yet.
I have a MacBook Air (M2 with 8GB ram) lying around, so I hook up Lightroom Classic and move two years' worth of photographs to my MacBook Air. To my surprise, it works rather well. Even the Negative Lab Pro conversion is faster than my Window laptop. Moreover, the pictures look sharper which I believe is due to the video engine does a better job to communicate with my external monitor.
I wonder if my MacBook Air is already doing the job, if I should still update to a Mac mini with 24GB of Ram and 512GB of SSD hard drive. Also, I wonder if M4 vs M4 pro will net me any improvement if I don't do video editing. I just purchase a 22TB external SSD for Mac (my other were setup for Window so it is not writable).
What do you guys think? Thanks in advance for any of your input!
A few things:
If your Macbook Air seems to be working for you, perhaps just stick with that at least for a while. (I live the form factor o fthe Air models and I owned several, though I don’t have one any more. The last one I had bogged down eventually running Adobe apps.) I do think that the 8GB of memory in your Air is not truly sufficient, and that you’d ultimately want more.
If you do want to update to a current Mac Mini, that can be a fine option for almost anyone doing photography work. I would increase your specs a bit though. 512GB of memory is quite minimal for photography and other work these days, and going forward you may well run out of space during the lifetime of the computer. I’d consider the 1TB option. (2TB is unlikely to be necessary if you are using attached storage for your files.)
I’d also go for more than 24GB of internal memory — I think that 48GB is currently the sweet spot. In particular, I see my Adobe products — especially Photoshop — happily sucking up over 30GB of memory after I use it a bit.
Do you need the PRO version of the M4 mini? That’s a good question and I don’t have a definitive answer. The non-PRO processors are actually pretty decent, and if you aren’t pushing the computer too hard they can work fine. I have the M4 PRO mini and it is plenty fast for some relatively serious Photoshop work.
I have not read the thread yet to know if this happens here, but you’ll often read people saying that you really need one of the (excellent) Mac Studio machines. They are excellent, but unless you are doing a lot of video, etc, or really need all of those extra ports… the mini is going to work great for photography processing.
My system these days is a M4 Pro mini with 2TB SSD (my needs are different than yours) and 48 GB memory, connected to several external storage systems (multiple 16B drive units) and a pair of Apple 27” monitors.
Jul 26, 2025 at 10:36 AM
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