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Adobe Photoshop ships on Macs with Apple Silicon
- keyle 6y agoFor how long? Every new generation of computer has been "woooo look how fast photoshop starts cold now! And Illustrator, so fast!" ... 6 months later <waaaaat is it doing?!>
- thejohnconway 6y agoI swear Illustrator takes longer to launch now from a fast SSD than it did from a slow laptop HDD 15 years ago. Input latency is awful. Something's gone crazily wrong with the bloat in Adobe applications. I would jump on an optimised version of Illustrator with the feature set from 10 (or more) years ago.
- dunnevens 6y agoI bought Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign CS2 a long time ago. Still use it since it's mostly for hobby and very occasional freelance. There's a tiny bit of jank running it on Windows 10, but otherwise it starts quickly and runs perfectly. The only thing I'd change if I could is to have a 64 bit version. This one chokes occasionally on very large files. But I don't deal with those enough to invest in the subscription.
- vetinari 6y agoFor Mac, CS2 was PowerPC binary. It ran on the first Intels with Rosetta, but that's not usable for a long time now. Mac users, if they want Photoshop, they must go for subscription.
- LegitShady 6y agoThere were a few versions of the suite in between CS2 and subscription. I have CS5 here non subscription. Wouldn't there be an equivelant on mac?
- Doctor_Fegg 6y agoCS6 was the last. But even on Intel processors, running it on Catalina or later is crash-prone and requires a fair bit of hacking around. The main problem is that there were still chunks of 32-bit code in there and macOS has stopped supporting that.
- martin_a 6y agoI feel this every time I start up my old Adobe CS4 on my private (somewhat older) Thinkpad. While the work notebook (Dell Latitude whatever) is faster than the Thinkpad, the current Adobe CC surely takes longer so start than the CS4.
- Ellipsis753 6y ago> I would jump on an optimised version of Illustrator with the feature set from 10 (or more) years ago. Genuine question, can't you just install an old version of Illustrator?
- IntelMiner 6y agoNot anymore! Adobe has been taking the activation servers offline for its older products for some time now. Newer versions as I understand it are the service model "Creative Cloud" meanwhile
- throwaway743 6y agoYou can, just not an official version :/
- folkrav 6y agoSo... it was basically a subscription all along.
- throwaway743 6y agoOther issue is version compatability if you're working on a team
- vimy 6y ago> I would jump on an optimised version of Illustrator with the feature set from 10 (or more) years ago. The iPad version?
- pentae 6y agoFigma? Sketch?
- Doctor_Fegg 6y agoThis. I'm keeping a Mac mini on Mojave specifically to run Illustrator CS6. The price of an Intel Mac mini on eBay is fairly competitive with 2 years of Illustrator CC payments.
- dbspin 6y agoBuy a USB cd ROM drive (around 30 dollars / euro), buy an old copy of illustrator, say 5 or 6. Use offline activation using the included code.
- tartoran 6y agoNo need for a drive, a virtual image would do as well
- user-the-name 6y agoAffinity Designer?
- kitsunesoba 6y agoYeah I know it varies from person to person but for me the addition of useful features I use with any regularity stopped at like… CS2. And if I’m being honest, I’d have no issue getting along with CS1 or even pre-CS 6.x/7.x.
- coldtea 6y agoHasn't been my experience. Photoshop, for all its clunky UI decisions (at some point it had Flash-driven panels too e.g.), has always been very fast, and fastest than the competition in large image processing.
- amelius 6y agoExactly. In the 90s PCs jumped from a few 100MHz to 3GHz in a few years. Now that was impressive. This on the other hand is just plain old evolution of technology.
- phaemon 6y agoI'm afraid you're remembering incorrectly. The Pentium 100Mhz was released in 1994. The last Pentium released in 1999 was the PIII 800Mhz. There wasn't a 3GHz release until 2010. And that's just clock speed. Compare any 2010 chip to something like a Ryzen 5800x and see how the benchmarks scores look.
- robin_reala 6y agoNo, no, much earlier than 2010. First 3GHz Pentium was 2002: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1031 https://www.anandtech.com/show/1031 . That’s only 8 years after the 100Mhz Pentium.
- phaemon 6y agoHuh, you're right, I must have been looking at the wrong line. Thanks! My point on comparing CPUs remains, and is even more pronounced against a 2002 CPU!
- anthk 6y agoThe gap from a Pentium with MMX and a Pentium 4 with SSE2 is many more times bigger than the first i3 to the current i7.
- tedunangst 6y agoThough people forget the 100mhz pentium was a 10W chip.
- canadianfella 6y ago“Few hundred Mhz” Pentium 2 came out in 1997 233MHz
- mhh__ 6y agoI also wonder whether a lot of M1 Anecdata is biased because it's a new computer at the end of the day
- Eric_WVGG 6y agoI suppose that would depend on how many of those machines were set up with Migration Assistant, which transfers nearly all the cruft from an old machine, all the way down to Homebrew packages and other CLI tools. Doesn’t really feel like a “new computer” when you’re greeted with the same desktop and console. My anecdata last weekend was 60% to 90% JavaScript benchmarks from a loaded 15” to an M1 Air, that coupled with no fans screaming at me sure felt new.
- tinus_hn 6y agoWhat Andy giveth, Bill taketh away https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law
- rhacker 6y agoI know it's a different thing, but my SSD based systems (at this point it's all of my systems) still boot in ~10 seconds.
- matthewmacleod 6y agoGenerally I dislike this kind of view and find it not to be true. But in this case… man, it feels like Adobe deliberately try to slow down Photoshop and the wider CS suite. I used to use these a lot back in early CS days, but I've used the trials recently and by far the biggest offenders are some of the bad UIs that they've slapped on top of things like creating new documents, or Photoshop's "Home Screen". They're slow as molasses, provide minimal useful features, and there is an explicit option to turn them off and use the legacy versions (usually a massive red flag to me that a feature is shite).
- ceejayoz 6y ago> there is an explicit option to turn them off and use the legacy versions I had no idea this existed. THANK YOU!
- AuryGlenz 6y agoThey changed their rendering engine for Photoshop a couple of years back and ever since it’s been slow as hell. I’m in Photoshop at least 20 hours a week and I’m still using Photoshop 2019.
- keyle 6y agoMan it's that bad I've literally stopped my Adobe subscription and moved on to Affinity products. It's 95% as good. (Better than how you'd compare DDG to Google for example). And so much cheaper. Also Adobe has so much crapware on my computer.
- jp555 6y agoI heard Jim Keller say on a podcast recently that many computation problems are N^2, so if unoptimized and run on silicon with 2x the transistors, it runs 4x slower.
- crazygringo 6y agoFifteen years ago Photoshop took 2-3 minutes to load on an average computer. These days it takes 8-15 seconds on a non-M1. Filters that used to take 50 seconds to run now finish in just a couple. The point you're making is true with some software. But not Photoshop.
- 1f60c 6y ago// TODO: Uncomment after keynote demo // Thread.Sleep(5000); /s
- Shadonototro 6y agoah the microsoft people, they are easy to spot :p
- beyondcompute 6y agoDoes it feel like it took surprisingly long to port it?
- thinxer 6y agoI expect Photoshop to contain many highly optimized function routines for photo processing. These routines are optimized by hand and usually use architecture-specific features such as SSE/AVX which is not portable. Unoptimized (more portable) versions of theses routines exists, but I suspect they will perform well even with M1.
- unicornfinder 6y agoIndeed. It's why Photoshop for Mac won't run an Ryzen systems - it's optimised to the point where it relies on specific Intel CPU instructions.
- dannyw 6y agoKinda a cool benefit of having a Mac. Serious optimisations by developers.
- xxs 6y agoThe windows one likely have them, except they have the codepaths for all processors.
- oauea 6y agoYeah, restricting the hardware your software can run on is super cool!
- dylan604 6y agoThis happens in Linux apps as well. Vendors like Discrete will have restrictions on what kernel version, which distro, what hardware that is really no different. With a Mac, you just don't have a choice on the hardware to install. On Linux, you have a choice, but only from the 2 options listed and you have to build it yourself.
- hadrien01 6y ago> Our internal tests show a wide range of features running an average of 1.5X the speed of similarly configured previous generation systems. What are 'similarly configured previous generation systems'? Do they mean i5, i7, i9? What GPU?
- addedlovely 6y agoSure it won't take long for them to add more bloat and slow it down. Wish I could cancel my creative cloud subscription but there is still prevalent use. Sketch and Figma do a much nicer job of things. Seems Adobe end up copying some of their features but always buried a few more clicks deep.
- BurnerBotje 6y agoI've just canceled my subscription this morning after i've received a reminder that it would be renewed. I don't know where you use CC for, but if it is just for photoshop, you might give https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ a try.
- laurent123456 6y agoI switched to Affinity Photo as an alternative [1] and quite happy with it. It's similar enough to Photoshop that I'm not lost, more polished than Gimp, and only a fraction of the price. Their forum is also quite good for support. 1: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/
- sbarre 6y agoI'll second this. Affinity Photo and Designer are great tools, they are cross-platform (although you have to purchase them separately), and regularly go on sale (I bought both for 70$ total). I have yet to find a task I used to use Photoshop or Illustrator for that I can't do with these. I am not a hardcore or super advanced user, but that's why it works for me.
- Cullinet 6y agoNikon have just published a complete free and quite sophisticated photo software suite, most useful summary of which here : https://bythom.com/newsviews/nikon-launches-new-software.html https://bythom.com/newsviews/nikon-launches-new-software.htm... Ed; "Everything is there: stills, video, image browsing, NEF processing, Lightroom-like capabilities, cloud integration, image ingest,and much more."
- cactus10 6y ago50% Faster (according to Adobe, who want to sell new copies).
- ErneX 6y agoThey sell subscriptions only now.
- chrisseaton 6y agoBut Adobe don't sell copies - it's a subscription that works on whatever platform and they gain nothing from people switching architecture. So what are you on about?
- ksec 6y agoHere [1] is an actual test and benchmarks. Showing M1 is faster than a Laptop with Nvidia Discrete GPU. Quite amazing. [1] https://petapixel.com/2021/03/10/real-world-test-photoshop-for-apple-silicon-is-a-game-changer/ https://petapixel.com/2021/03/10/real-world-test-photoshop-f...
- arghwhat 6y agoThey write that any GPU workload scores similar to the intel internal graphic[1]. For the total scores, they're intentionally using an old beta of the benchmark as it includes an older CPU workload that the M1 happens to excel at. Seems a little like they're cherry picking results. Interesting, but a little dishonest. ---- [1]: Quoting the article: > Unsurprisingly, the M1 Mac mini loses to the competition in raw GPU performance, more-or-less matching the onboard graphics of the quad-core Core i7 that’s in the 13-inch MacBook Pro (full review here).
- danlugo92 6y agoFact check: even if the M1's gpu performance matches that of an i7 as opposed to a discrete gpu it: 1) Is an entry level chip matching a high-end's performance. 2) it does so in around a 5th of 6th of the thermal workload.
- danlugo92 6y agoThermal load *
- africanboy 6y ago1) macs are not entry level, entry level is a 350$ laptop mounting an i3 2) it doesn't matter unless you work with the laptop sitting on the bare skin of your legs EDIT: sorry! forgot the basic rules: don't dismiss bitcoins, don't engage with Apple users. My fault.
- ben-schaaf 6y agoThe thermal load matters for battery consumption.
- akmittal 6y agoNot as slow as earlier is more relevant title
- hahahahe 6y agoCan’t wait for Mac Pro.
- williesleg 6y agoYeah their downloads are quite a bit faster on those M1's. Now benchmarks and regular use, well that's a lot slower.
- matsemann 6y agoIs it faster on the M1 chip because they made a proper build for it compared to before on the M1 chip, or are they saying it's 50% faster on M1 than on other hardware? Edit: Title is now edited from what it was, it included a statement about speedup I couldn't find explained the same in the post It contains this quote though > Our internal tests show a wide range of features running an average of 1.5X the speed of similarly configured previous generation systems. So I guess it's faster than on other systems, but still vague about compared to what.
- adioe3 6y agobut they still can't make a version for Linux :'-(
- jordache 6y agoWhat business case would they have to do such a thing?
- amelius 6y agoKeeping FOSS from building a serious competitor.
- jordache 6y agowhat is FOSS?
- amelius 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software
- jordache 6y agoAh thanks. However the need has to be there first. Linux users who need to use the suite of Adobe products on Linux will likely never represent a critical mass, that will nudge the FOSS community to build alternatives on-par with the Adobe suite.
- shortstuffsushi 6y agoDid anyone else read this as "Adobe Photoshop comes preloaded on Macs with Apple Silicon?" If I recall correctly, this was the case 15 (?) years back, I thought perhaps as a marketing gimmick, they were trying it again. Seems it would be a benefit to both of them - Apple can sell more hardware and Adobe can try to drive more people to purchase subscriptions with their app preloaded.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sergeykish 6y agoI've red as "Adobe Photoshop ships on Mars with Apple Silicon"
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoI read your comment as “I’m a redditor and I need to delete my HN account”
- gumby 6y agoFinally! We live in a networked world now. These regional publishing restrictions have to go!
- ant6n 6y agoAlbedo Photodrop-ships on Mars with Apple-Silicon.
- marshmallow_12 6y agoi did read that the mars rover uses Apple processors. It's good to know that it can also send funny pictures back to Earth, now.
- gumby 6y agoYes, it should read “for Macs with”
- 1f60c 6y ago
- wukerplank 6y agoAmazing accomplishment considering how long they struggled when the PowerPC->Intel transition happened.
- dylan604 6y agoThe 32bit->64bit transition was emabarassing for Adobe too
- robertoandred 6y agoAnd the OS 9 -> OS X transition.
- Gaelan 6y ago> There are still a few features we haven’t finished porting to run on the new M1 chip, primarily a couple of those we most recently shipped (Invite to Edit Cloud Documents, Preset Syncing, most notably). This is an interesting detail—I'm surprised that either of these features are things that wouldn't "just work" when compiled for another architecture.
- juusto 6y agoWith Apple Silicon I wish Apple and Adobe would bang their coconuts together to bring the full versions of Lr/Ps to the iPad.
- BooneJS 6y agoIt was my understanding that apps without special x86-only inlined assembly would be straightforward to port. This could hint that LR, as slow as it is, actually has special vectorized or otherwise performance-boosted sections of code.
- ibraheemdev 6y agoAnd here I am still waiting for Photoshop to come to Linux.
- preommr 6y agoThis is never going to happen.
- wheelie_boy 6y ago2021 is the year of linux on the desktop, I just know it
- lostgame 6y agoPlease explain how putting development resources into firstly, porting; and secondly, supporting, a fourth (MacOS, iPadOS, Windows and then Linux) platform that ~1% of non-server computers use works, business-wise? Especially then they're not selling the products for several hundred to start, and moved to a subscription model... From what I've experienced and read, the cost of supporting a platform has to be greater than its sales. The second issue with this is that many people use Linux to specifically avoid using closed-source software. No part about Photoshop on Linux makes sense, from any sort of serious business end. They haven't even done an Android tablet port of full-fledged Photoshop, and I haven't really read any plans to support it. If WINE wasn't a thing, or GIMP wasn't a thing...well, even then; no. This would never happen. XD
- pixelbath 6y agoGood luck. I had enough and dropped my Adobe paid subscription because they decided Windows 8.1 was a verboten platform for some reason. Not Windows versions prior to 8.1, mind you, because Windows 7 and regular Windows 8 was still supported. Also the same day I purchased all the Affinity products (which, incidentally, cost as much as 1.5 months of Creative Cloud subscription): https://twitter.com/pixelbath/status/1268767475685945344/photo/1 https://twitter.com/pixelbath/status/1268767475685945344/pho... Completely baffling to me, and I've built a huge chunk of my design career using Adobe tools.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoObligatory comment about how fast my M1 Mac is and how the battery lasts forever.
- williesleg 6y agoApple Macintosh with ALL NEW velocity engine! Go get em!
- dillondoyle 6y agoThe last year of Mac Photoshop has been a PITA. Specifically it has a horrible horrible draw/render bug. it blanks out with grey for 90% of the image after switching a tab and some other tasks. You have to zoom in or out for it to re-display the entire canvas. The recent 2021 install has the same problem. I have the highest upgraded 2019 16"
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoDon't worry it's total trash on Windows these days too, I use both platforms and its a complete jank-fest on both with dog slow UI redraw and even basic painting app functionality that ran fine on systems 20 years ago is now slow and glitchy. (recent Intel MacBook Pro and high end multi-GPU workstation PC) Adobe started to rest on their laurels about 6 years ago and the results of that choice get more prominent each year as bitrot sets in. Nothing about their software is empowering anymore it's actually just limiting when you see what your computer is truly capable of in software that is written to make use of its modern power. Within 5 years every piece of Adobe software will be displaced and people will be looking back in disbelief asking "How could they fall so far, they owned the market?" Also gonna do my part to help their downfall, if you (unfortunately have to for work) pay £49.94 a month to use full Creative Cloud you're being ripped off, I've only paid £30.34 a month for 4 years now, when it's renewal time just keep telling them you're cancelling and it's too expensive and after about 5 minutes of pushing they'll knock a lot off.
- jacurtis 6y ago> it has a horrible horrible draw/render bug. it blanks out with grey for 90% of the image Oh so that wasn't just my hardware? I didn't realize it was a widespread issue. I've been experiencing that bug for at least a year now. I could go on, but there aren't enough hours left in the day.
- dillondoyle 6y agogood to know it's not just my machine either! i have had the board replaced because the screen did this weird pixels/green thing.
- jordache 6y agoAt first, I thought the OP wrote a bad title.. This is the same heading from the adobe blog. Terrible copy writers, and terrible publication approval process over there.
- s_dev 6y agoWhat happened to that war Steve Jobs declared on Adobe?
- leadingthenet 6y agoIt only happened in your imagination. The only war declared was on Flash, and they've won that ages ago.
- usui 6y agoHow has the relationship been between Apple and Adobe ever since Steve Jobs declared war on Adobe Flash and effectively being the final nail in the coffin for Flash? Seems like there would be a lot to repair when even Adobe snarked back
- jacurtis 6y agoWell that was a decade ago (2011)... Welcome to 2021. Adobe and Apple have been working together for a long time since then. Appearing in keynotes, doing demos on screen, and directly referencing eachother's products. Whatever hatchet they had with eachother (if they ever did) is buried.
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoI can't be the only one who read the list of features that are not finished porting yet and thought "Yeah makes sense". Current day photoshop feels like a duct taped ball of random systems and frameworks that somehow function within the same app, until you get a few too many OS updates ahead then parts of that system start breaking.
- dear-leader 6y agoBe
- scotth 6y agoI have no stake in this, but at the mention of Photoshop I have to say...I bought Affinity Photo a couple weeks back, and it's fantastic. Runs without issue on my underpowered MacBook Air, and cost less than $40. I'm super happy to see such a strong competitor in this space. https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/