I know there are designers on here. Anyone use a 13″ Macbook pro retina to design on? (illustrator / Photoshop) Looking at a used one mid 2014 MacBook Pro Retina display 13″ i7 16gb ram. Intel iris graphics.

Far too small unless you intend to plug it into a decent monitor, and occasionally may need some portability so an iMacs out of the question.

I’ve currently got an old 15″ macbook pro and I’m fine on that, although it is slow hence I’m thinking of replacing it. I was wondering if the 13″ was a little small.

13 is too small imo.

I have a late 2011 15″ with the high res screen, i7, 8gb of ram and a 1tb hybrid drive. It flies! Lightroom and photoshop are great on it. I wouldn’t go any smaller than 15″ unless you plan to use an external monitor.

Hybrid drives are great, boot is fast as the most used files of the os are in the ssd portion. Ssd doesn’t affect image processing speeds much as once the image is loaded into memory there is no disk access during editing. An ssd can decrease image export times for example as there is alot more disk access going on, but its not hugely significant imo, particularly as you can just leave say a lightroom export going in the background.

Screen size may be small, but you have the power to run the programs.

I have a 2012 i5 13″ mac and a 2011 i7 15″ mac. They can both run the programs you speek of but i have switched to Affinity photo and Design (licence covers up to 5 computers using the same account and free updates) I still have LR though. The 13″ is just easier to carry back and fourth.

If you can get used to the small screen size on a 13″ than go ahead but you will most likley enjoy the extra inches of a 15″

A lot of people at college and uni manage fine with 13″ 8)

15in every time. 4 cores and the extra graphics card. Handles big CS files (3-10gb) and I can work on HD full res moving image without having to generate proxies.
The screens while great to view stuff on are not ideal for actually working on, a 100% view pixel per pixel is too small so it’s very hard to judge sharpness of images as you need to go to 200% to get to a ‘normal’ screen size and then you are interpolating the screen pixels to make one image pixel.
Also the screens are too contrasty and don’t have a large colour gamut of an Eizo or other graphics monitor.

Anyone who says size isn’t important is lying! 13″ is nowhere near enough for all the palettes you need open using CC. 17″ minimum.

Mind you… I’m like lady muck of cows shit manor recently with two 27″ displays. Feel the girth! 😀

I think a lot of people here would like you to prove your 27″ magnificence.

Or are you wearing your glasses back to front again 🙄

One big screen and a 17 screen just for toolbars for me. My macbook Air us just for quickly checking images on shoots. Laptops aren’t really design tools for mag spreads and bigger layouts in my book. Too much zooming in and out.
Of course when I started with with a Mac Classic I thought that was more than enough for Illustrator 88 and PageMaker or was if Xpress 1.0? I can’t remember..

If you also have an iPad you can use it to extend the screen with duet display. I find the 13″ tolerable, tho I am a web dev so code alot as well as illustrator etc.

I use my missus’ 13″ Air for the odd bit of evening work (day job is a 27″ iMac illustrator/photoshop/flash). 13″ is usable but not ideal. Photoshop is easier as you can turn off the palettes /tools etc and use keyboards shortcuts – illustrator less so. Flash is awful.

Go 15″. Or an iMac.

Using mine as we speak (got it at the beginning of the year, force touch model). I’m a ux designer and use it for illustrator & indesign etc at work, not doing huge complex masterpieces but it copes fine. It’s obviously not as good as my 17″ i7 laptop, but thats my personal one and the mac is my work one. I never find the need to switch to the 17″ though as the mac copes fine.
If you’re using it all day then you’ll want to plug it into a monitor, or if not then go for the 15″. If you’re just doing the off bit of design work then the 13″ will be fine. Or if you don’t need portability then get a desktop!

Thanks for all the feedback. It’s sounds like I should stick to my initial thoughts of getting another 15″. It did sound quite a reasonable deal at £800. It was only really for the odd small job at home, I have a desktop machine with twin monitors at work. I don’t have a home office, so I need something portable. I would probably miss the extra inches of the 15″ so maybe it’s best I pass.