I have a MacBook Air (2017) with 8G of Ram. I use it exclusively for photo editing with LR CC (Cloud version). I have 1 T of cloud storage on both LR AND google photos. I just started shootings in Raw and JPEG. I cannot upload photos because computer tells me I do not have enough memory in my hard drive. In total, I have less than 7,000 photos stored on that computer and only about 1,000 of them are both Raw and JPEG.

I am really frustrated. I will buy an external hard drive, but don’t I have to load photos onto computer first? or can I buy an external hard drive that will accept the SD card to store photos so I don’t have to put them all on the hard drive? I am soooo confused. Please help!

I will keep this in mind, you and I have the same computers, mine is late 2013 8gb 1TB HD, I read through the service guide and it does look like something I could handle but then again it also looks a little nerve wracking as you said. I just recently picked up a 2015 MacBook Pro with i7 processor, 16gb Ram, and a 1TB SSD drive so I think that the MacBook will probably become my primary computer for processing. Having said that I did bookmark the iFixit repair guide page for that computer, upgrading the RAM for less than $150 sounds like it may be worth it. It is really disappointing that Apple made that computer so difficult to upgrade, on many of the other models it is as simple as removing a cover.

Thank you for providing the resource, I probably would not have know that such resources were out there.

I have a MacBook Air (2017) with 8G of Ram. I use it exclusively for photo editing with LR CC (Cloud version). I have 1 T of cloud storage on both LR AND google photos. I just started shootings in Raw and JPEG. I cannot upload photos because computer tells me I do not have enough memory in my hard drive. In total, I have less than 7,000 photos stored on that computer and only about 1,000 of them are both Raw and JPEG.

I am really frustrated. I will buy an external hard drive, but don’t I have to load photos onto computer first? or can I buy an external hard drive that will accept the SD card to store photos so I don’t have to put them all on the hard drive? I am soooo confused. Please help!

I have a MacBook Air (2017) with 8G of Ram. I use it exclusively for photo editing with LR CC (Cloud version). I have 1 T of cloud storage on both LR AND google photos. I just started shootings in Raw and JPEG. I cannot upload photos because computer tells me I do not have enough memory in my hard drive. In total, I have less than 7,000 photos stored on that computer and only about 1,000 of them are both Raw and JPEG.

I am really frustrated. I will buy an external hard drive, but don’t I have to load photos onto computer first? or can I buy an external hard drive that will accept the SD card to store photos so I don’t have to put them all on the hard drive? I am soooo confused. Please help!

I have a MacBook Air (2017) with 8G of Ram. I use it exclusively for photo editing with LR CC (Cloud version). I have 1 T of cloud storage on both LR AND google photos. I just started shootings in Raw and JPEG. I cannot upload photos because computer tells me I do not have enough memory in my hard drive. In total, I have less than 7,000 photos stored on that computer and only about 1,000 of them are both Raw and JPEG.
I am really frustrated. I will buy an external hard drive, but don’t I have to load photos onto computer first? or can I buy an external hard drive that will accept the SD card to store photos so I don’t have to put them all on the hard drive? I am soooo confused. Please help!

You need more ram to process jpegs and tiffs than you do for raw files. Lightroom will work just fine with 8 gb ram, provided that ram is not shared for graphics - in other words you'd need a discrete graphics card with it's own vram.

Storage space is not the same as ram. If you don't have enough hard drive space you'll need to add more storage space, and an external drive is what you will need to get. You will attach your card reader to the computer, and load the images onto the external drive using the computer, as if it were internal storage. Lightroom doesn't care whether your storage that is part of your computer is internal or external.

TriX's advice is on drives 100% solid - follow it.

A tip: unless there is a really compelling reason to shoot raw+jpeg - don't. it wastes space and prevents you from leveraging the full benefit of shoot raw. In many high contrast situations, a correct exposure for raw will often yield an unusable jpeg.

See the two versions of the same file below - first is the unprocessed raw file - which is the "best" exposure for a jpeg. Any more exposure I would have lost the sky, any less the walls and walkway would have been lost. If I had only jpeg to work with, I would have not wasted my time taking the shot. As it is, there is nothing remarkable about it - but there are many situations where you have wide dynamic range where a raw file, exposed correctly for highlights - as this was - will result in a decent image. Something to think about.

I would also consider a more suitable computer for editing images. If you are married to the Apple ecosystem, but you need portability, a MacBook Pro with 32 gb ram (in the event you will start using Photoshop) is what you'd want. Cost is almost always a factor to consider with Mac gear - it runs about 50% more than a similar performing Windows computer - be it laptop or desktop. But the Apple stuff sure is cool-looking. . .

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