Adobe Photoshop updated for native Apple Silicon support - with caveats
Mike Wuerthele
Adobe has updated the venerable Photoshop app for Apple Silicon — but it also says that there are "minor feature differences" when running natively.
With the March 2021 update, Adobe claims that the Apple Silicon version of Photoshop runs at "1.5X the speed of similarly configured previous generation systems." But, there are missing features, and some issues with work-arounds.
Adobe has provided a list of the features that are not available to Apple Silicon Mac users.
- Import, Export, and playback of embedded video layers
- Shake Reduction filter
- Preset Syncing
- Share an image button / Quick Share
- Create new Library from document / Libraries Panel menu command
- Home Screen > Shared with you and Invite to edit / Collaborative Editing features.
- Opening or placing U3D formatted files
- Starting Bridge from Photoshop menus
In addition to the features that aren't available, Adobe is aware of known issues with the M1 version of Photoshop.
- Issues when exporting SVG files
- Merge to HDR Pro workspace is too large when maximized
- Adobe Stock purchases will take place on the Adobe Stock web site
- Multi-app workflows, such as Copy and Pasting or Editing in Photoshop from Lightroom, between native and Rosetta emulation versions of Adobe applications will not work
- 3D features are not optimized for native performance
- Black Screen when viewing a 3D document
Adobe suggests using Rosetta workflows to deal with 3D performance issues, and SVG export. Contradictorily, it also says that the company recommends against running Photoshop in Rosetta for one workflow and natively for another.
Furthermore, Adobe says that even running under Rosetta, there are some compatibility issues. Specifically, there may be differing selection results when using "Select Subject," some formats like GIF and SVG cannot be export targets, appearance of magenta artifacts when using some filters, and crashes with some actions and tools.
The company notes that unsupported and legacy versions of Photoshop were not "designed or tested" to work on Apple Silicon, and compatibility is not guaranteed. In regards to the "minor feature differences," the company says it is "hard at work to reduce these feature differences in future updates."
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Amber Neely
Andrew Orr
21 Comments
In other words it doesn’t work yet natively. Premature announcement makes me not trust this company in the least
The missing features are relatively minor and unlikely to get in the way of most user's workflows. The Beta from last year however was embarrassingly short of common features.
To be honest I would just be happy if they would fix the years-long file saving bug that highlights both the filename and file extension when you save. It might sound like a minor thing but you have to type out .psd .jpg .png etc... every single time you save a file. When you save a load of files per day it drives you CRAZY and slows down production hugely. Thousands of people have been complaining about this since back in Mojave and it's still not fixed.
Photoshop is just a 30-year-old bag of spanners at this point. I think the time is now right for an alternative.