Adobe Photoshop is now available natively on M1 Macs

Since ditching Intel's chips for its own, Apple's M1 Macs are getting optimized apps all the time that tend to perform better than those put through its Rosetta 2 emulator. Today marks another major native release as Photoshop has officially come out of beta packing quicker speeds for many tasks. Adobe says the changes should be immediately noticeable from the time you launch the native app, with the splash screen vanishing in an instant. Overall, the new Mac app can run tasks up to 1.5x faster than previous generation systems. In general, that should apply when opening and saving files, running filters and compute-heavy operations like "content-aware fill" and "select subject."

However, some of Photoshop's latest features have yet to make the jump as Adobe wanted to get the native app out as quickly as possible. So, you'll have to wait for things like "invite to edit cloud documents" and "preset syncing" — or you can switch back to Rosetta 2 emulation if you can make do without them. Adobe has been quick to embrace Apple's latest Macs having previously released its Premiere Pro and Lightroom apps for the new range.

Along with the new M1 app, Adobe is also releasing an update for Photoshop on iPad that packs two new features. They include cloud documents version history, which lets you browse and revert back to older files that were auto-saved in the past 60 days, and the ability to download cloud documents locally so you can work on files offline. The same feature also lets you free up space on your iPad by making a document online only.

In addition, Adobe is adding its "super resolution" feature to the Camera Raw plugin in Photoshop. By tapping into your graphics card, the machine learning-powered software lets you scale up an image without losing out on quality. Super resolution will also be available on Lightroom and Lightroom Classic soon. Adobe has been sprinkling AI-enhanced features throughout Photoshop including a tool that lets you spruce up landscape images, neural filters that mimic art styles and a sky replacement option.