Adobe Says Photoshop on M1 Runs 50% Faster Than 2019 Intel-Based MacBook

[MacRumors]

This week, Adobe updated Photoshop with official support for Apple silicon, offering customers native support on Apple's latest M1-powered Mac computers. In an interview with Computerworld, Photoshop Product Manager Mark Dahm promoted official Apple silicon support, saying that Photoshop runs 50% faster on an M1 MacBook compared to last year's Intel-based MacBook.

Speaking to the team's challenges during the transition to Apple silicon, Dahm said that performance was of utmost priority. Adobe wanted to ensure that it matched Photoshop's performance on older architectures for customers running Apple silicon.

Photoshop has been fortunate enough to have been serving Mac customers for over 30 years and having lived through the transition from Power PC to Intel chips in the 2005/2006 timeframe, a few familiar considerations came to mind as the Apple silicon announcement was made.

For one, performance is top-of-mind for our creative professional customers, so we wondered how long it might take for us to match the years of performance-tuning that ensured smooth operation for Photoshop's sophisticated blending and rendering capabilities.

Apple is encouraging all developers to build and recompile their apps with official support for Apple silicon. Until apps get updated, they run on Apple silicon using Apple's Rosetta 2 technology, which enables apps built for Intel processors to run on the newer architecture. Dahm said that Photoshop ran sufficiently with Rosetta, in some cases even faster than it did natively on Intel Mac computers.

Fortunately, Apple's Rosetta mode allowed Photoshop to run reliably and fast on M1 devices on day one, without requiring significant changes to the code base. And many features were running as fast, or even faster than on the previous systems, so those earlier questions about performance were being resolved quite satisfactorily.

In its testing, Adobe found that Photoshop on an M1 MacBook runs 50% faster compared to Photoshop on a 2019 Intel-based MacBook with similar configurations. Even with the significant jump in performance, Dahm claimed it's just the beginning.

We compared an M1 MacBook to a previous-generation MacBook similarly configured, and found that under native mode, Photoshop was running 50% faster than the older hardware. These great performance improvements are just the beginning, and we will continue to work together with Apple to further optimize performance over time.

The power of the new M1 chip motivated the team to push features that have become a staple of Photoshop even further, said Dahm. Features such as Content Aware Fill, Auto Select Subject, Sky Replacement tools, and others were re-energized thanks to M1.

We were eager to tap into the more specialized aspects of the M1 chip to see how they could re-energize some of the seemingly magical features that have since become staples of the Photoshop experience over the years; features like Content Aware Fill, the healing brush, specialized filters and even relative newcomers, like the machine-learning-based Auto Select Subject and Sky Replacement tools.

Moving forward, Dahm said Adobe is looking forward to "bringing even more performance gains and Photoshop magic to life" on future Apple silicon chips. Dahm also said that the continued evolution of the Apple silicon platform will enable Adobe to constantly tune and optimize Photoshop to run at peak performance without the need to rely on Rosetta.

Article Link: Adobe Says Photoshop on M1 Runs 50% Faster Than 2019 Intel-Based MacBook

 

[Neepman]

Yep, It speedily eliminates sectors of your SSD as fast as it can.

 

[CapnPhoton]

Dahm, that's pretty impressive.

 

[MrDerby01]

This is good news! I hope more devs will write their software to work natively.

 

[farewelwilliams]

if only Adobe would be 50% faster in delivering updates.

 

[Kung gu]

Yep, It speedily eliminates sectors of your HHD as fast as it can.

only if u have 8gb of ram. 16GB models are fine. People who do 4k video editing a lot on an 8gb machine should expect swap to occur.

 

[jeanlain]

Dahm, that's pretty impressive.

I don't find a 50% speedup impressive, given that an M1 Mac runs most tasks at least 2X faster than the intel Mac it replaces.
Unless Adobe is referring to other intel Macs with beefier CPUs.

 

[Acidsplat]

All of this being possible on the cheapest, low-end MacBook Air with no cooling fan makes M2 and beyond even more exciting.

 

[LeadingHeat]

only if u have 8gb of ram. 16GB models are fine. People who do 4k video editing a lot on an 8gb machine should expect swap to occur.

Do you have a source for that? I thought I remember seeing that even with 16GB variants swap still occurs, prematurely wearing out the SSD.

 

[MrDerby01]

All of this being possible on the cheapest, low-end MacBook Air with no cooling fan makes M2 and beyond even more exciting.

Can you imagine a high end tower style workstation. Say.. 12 - 24, 36 core models

 

[LeadingHeat]

I don't find a 50% speedup impressive, given that an M1 Mac runs most tasks at least 2X faster than the intel Mac it replaces.
Unless Adobe is referring to other intel Macs with beefier CPUs.

Agreed, I don’t think it’s anything to boast about. But at least it’s still better haha. They did mention that it was compared to a similarly-spec’d Mac though.

 

[jz0309]

Excellent ... better to see actual application performance improvements vs benchmarks!

 

[MrDerby01]

Agreed, I don’t think it’s anything to boast about. But at least it’s still better haha. They did mention that it was compared to a similarly-spec’d Mac though.

I would agree. Props to them for making the code run native and with that said.. This is new turf for everyone involved. They can only improve as they start to understand more on how the ARM processors works.

 

[jz0309]

if only Adobe would be 50% faster in delivering updates.

well, I have the plan that includes Lightroom nd Photoshop and I get updates very regularly, at least once per month but I think more as they install automatically

 

[cmaier]

Do you have a source for that? I thought I remember seeing that even with 16GB variants swap still occurs, prematurely wearing out the SSD.

Article came out yesterday saying the "premature wear out" thing is nonsense in any case.

 

[chabig]

This can't make Intel very happy.

 

[cmaier]

This can't make Intel very happy.

Intel doesn't care. As they correctly point out, if you want a collectable "intel inside" sticker you have to buy a PC with their processor in it. Everyone loves stickers.

 

[MrDerby01]

This can't make Intel very happy.

It's 2021.. We really need to get away from the same old X86 architecture. Thank God Apple took this leap! If I were Nvidia or AMD I would be working with Apple to integrate my GPU for additional processing power that might attract more gamers.

 

[Wando64]

Yep, It speedily eliminates sectors of your HHD as fast as it can.

I am sure I have an old Intel machine running Lion somewhere that I can sell you for a good price.

 

[Razeus]

Intel ought to be ashamed of themselves.

 

[saudor]

It's 2021.. We really need to get away from the same old X86 architecture. Thank God Apple took this leap! If I were Nvidia or AMD I would be working with Apple to integrate my GPU for additional processing power that might attract more gamers.

Who knows. Apple might come out with something like a G1 that makes the RTX 3090 look like an iGPU by comparison lol.

 

[MrDerby01]

Who knows. Apple might come out with something like a G1 that makes the RTX 3090 look like an iGPU by comparison lol.

Remember the G5\G6 having 128bit bus lanes? That would be very very nice to have again.

 

[Kung gu]

Do you have a source for that? I thought I remember seeing that even with 16GB variants swap still occurs, prematurely wearing out the SSD.

yes people with 16gb has less swap and less writes to the drive

 

[PlasmStudios]

It's 2021.. We really need to get away from the same old X86 architecture. Thank God Apple took this leap! If I were Nvidia or AMD I would be working with Apple to integrate my GPU for additional processing power that might attract more gamers.

I would love for Nvidia to come crawling back to Apple lol. Better for the rest of us in the long term

 

[carl varley]

Do you have a source for that? I thought I remember seeing that even with 16GB variants swap still occurs, prematurely wearing out the SSD.

Swap occurs on all major current operating systems and all macs regardless if M1 or intel and ram allocation. Some degree of swap will occur. For almost all users a modern SSD will last over a decade before critical wear will be a problem, even a base system. There have been the same handful of examples that have been cited over social media and forums without much other information to see if this a wide spread problem (1%+). If premature is 15 years for £699 then I'm ok with that.