RAW development on Mac
What are the capabilities of the M2 Pro Mac mini?
I developed RAW files from a digital camera and compared the processing time on three Macs, including the Mac mini 2023 M2 pro.
Table of contents
Test Content
- Phocus development 3FR→FFF 10 consecutive 213MB files
- Phocus development DNG→TIFF 10 consecutive 153MB files
- SPP6.8.5 development X3F→TIFF 10 consecutive 52.5MB files
The file types were increased to 10 by copying one file for each test.
Results were timed manually using a stopwatch.
The test files were taken with the following cameras:
- 3FR files were taken with a HASSELBLAD X2D
- DNG files were taken with a SIGMA SD Quattro H
- X3F files were taken with a SIGMA SD Quattro
Test Result
- The Mac mini M2 Pro recorded the highest speed as expected. In particular, the Mac mini’s processing speed for X3F development is more than twice as fast as that of the Macbook Pro.
| Items | MacBook Pro 2017 | iMac Pro 2017 | Mac mini 2023 |
| OS | Ventura | Monterey | Sonoma |
| CPU | Intel Core i7 | Intel Xeon W | M2 Pro |
| CPU Clock | 2.9GHz | 3.2GHz | – |
| Core numbers | 4 core | 8 core | 10 core（6+4） |
| Memory | 16GB | 32GB | 32GB |
| Strage | 1TB | 1TB | 1TB |
| Phocus 3FR→FFF | 18 | 17 | 13 |
| Phocus DNG→TIFF | 26 | 33 | 11 |
| SPP 6.8.5 X3F→TIFF | 87 | 46 | 36(default) 35(Advance on) |
SSD speed test
- AmorphousDiskMark 4.0.1 was used to measure the SSD speed.
- Measurements were performed with default settings.
- The results show that the M2 Pro’s random writes are particularly slow.
Update history
- 2024.11.25
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