Adobe’s popular Photoshop photo-editing software is now officially optimized for Apple’s M1 Macs. The optimization comes after several months of initial beta testing and will deliver performance improvements for Mac users who have the latest devices with the custom ARM-based Apple silicon inside.
According to Adobe, internal tests show that opening and saving files, running filters, and compute-heavy operations in Photoshop can now run up to 1.5 times faster on Apple M1 Macs. That is compared to the speed of “similarly configured previous-generation systems,” which presumably are Intel-based Macs or those running the app under Rosetta 2 emulation. Adobe also notes that some operations are substantially faster on the new chips, though it did not get into detail.
But the work is not done with just Photoshop. Adobe is working with Apple on additional optimizations. “We think our customers using these new Macs will love the difference, too. Don’t blink. You might miss the splash screen launching,” said Adobe’s Pam Clark.
That is because Adobe has not ported all the features of Photoshop on the M1 chip. Invite to Edit, Cloud Documents, Preset Syncing are just a few that are not yet optimized for Macs with the M1 chip. Users who depend on these should consider using the Rosetta 2 version of the app instead. Adobe, though, believes that the performance gains across the rest of the application “were so great” that they “didn’t want to hold back the release for everyone.”
In addition to the Apple M1 news, Adobe is rolling out “Super Resolution” in Adobe Camera Raw. This feature is coming soon to Lightroom (and Lightroom Classic as well) and is designed to use Artificial Intelligence to enlarge photos while maintaining clean edges and preserving important details. Adobe’s Eric Chan explains the science behind the feature in a separate announcement.
Finally, for iPad users, Adobe is announcing the availability of two new features for Photoshop on iPad, including Cloud Documents Version History and the ability to work on Could Documents when offline. These are catered to make editing easier when Wi-Fi is not available. More information is available on this Adobe help page.
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