Adobe rolls out a version of Photoshop optimized for Apple Silicon, claiming a 1.5X performance improvement over most Photoshop tasks on Intel Macs
Adobe says there are a ton of speed and performance gains — Lightroom was the first Adobe creative app to make the leap to Apple Silicon …
Context & Ripple Effects
Adobe had already put Photoshop on Arm in beta for both Windows and Apple M1 systems; the production optimization turns that early Arm-native Photoshop effort into a performance-focused release. Lightroom had led Adobe’s Apple Silicon transition, making Photoshop the next consequential creative-workflow app to move over.
The release also sits alongside Adobe’s push to add compute-heavy image features such as Camera Raw’s AI-based Super Resolution, where native access to the new Mac architecture matters more than simple compatibility.
First-order effects
- Photoshop users on Apple Silicon Macs receive an Adobe-claimed 1.5x performance improvement over Intel Macs for most tasks, while Intel Mac users become the comparison baseline rather than the leading platform.
- Adobe extends its Apple Silicon optimization beyond Lightroom, reducing reliance on translated or beta software for a central Creative Cloud application.
Second-order effects
- Adobe’s later rollout of native Lightroom Classic and Illustrator versions indicates that Photoshop’s release establishes a repeatable migration path for more Creative Cloud apps.
- Creative professionals choosing between Intel Macs and Apple Silicon Macs gain a workflow-specific performance signal, increasing pressure on Adobe to carry native optimization across its app suite rather than leave individual tools behind.
Third-order effects
- If Adobe continues to pair native architecture support with AI image features, creative-software performance will increasingly depend on how closely applications are tuned to the hardware they run on.
- The shift points toward heterogeneous creative workflows: major application vendors will need to maintain performance across Arm-based Macs, Intel Macs, and Windows Arm systems rather than treat desktop hardware as a single target.
The trend: Creative-software vendors are moving from basic Arm compatibility to native optimization as hardware architecture becomes a direct part of workflow performance.