Photoshop for Apple Silicon is Here: Adobe Releases Beta

Adobe today released new ARM versions of Photoshop in beta for macOS and Windows. The new Mac version of the image editing app will run natively on Apple’s new line of computers, which features its new in-house M1 chip.

MacOS

After Apple’s Mac announcements on November 10th, Adobe warned that its popular suite of apps isn’t officially supported on Apple’s new Macs running Rosetta 2 emulation (which is for running apps compiled on the Intel chipset).

Adobe did promise that native support would be on the way, and it turns out photographers didn’t have long to wait.

The new Beta version of Photoshop for Apple Silicon is a work-in-progress that doesn’t fully support all of the features in the current version of Photoshop.

“This early version of Photoshop for Apple Silicon offers many of the core Photoshop features that you’ve come to rely on for your day to day editing needs, and we’ll be adding more features in the weeks to come,” Adobe says.

Popular features not available yet in the beta include things like Camera RAW, Content-Aware Fill, Spot Healing Brush, and more. A full list of missing tools and features can be found here.

Adobe says it’s releasing an early beta version of Photoshop so soon to give developers the opportunity to test their extensions, especially as Photoshop is migrating away from Common Extensibility Platform (CEP) to Unified Extensibility Platform (UXP).

“Note that Beta software is not officially supported yet by Adobe, but we want to hear from you, and this is the place to let us know how it’s going.”

If you have a new ARM Mac with Creative Cloud Desktop installed, you should be able to find the beta version installer by checking for updates.

Windows

Adobe has also released the first Beta release of Photoshop that runs natively on Windows ARM devices.

As with the Mac beta, the Windows beta is missing a long list of features and tools. Others that are present may also have limitations or bugs that need to be resolved in future builds.

If you have a Surface Pro X, you should be able to download the new beta via the Creative Cloud Desktop update system.

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