A professional photographer tests Apple’s M1 MacBook

As a professional photographer, I was intrigued when Apple dumped Intel’s chips and rather put its own M1 silicone in the MacBook Series. The performance improvements that Apple promised were attractive – as was the supposed improvement in battery life – but I was nervous because I had to run my professional software on a platform that is not yet properly supported by some tools I use every day. .

I have been with the 13-inch M1-based MacBook Pro (with 16GB RAM) and did it through a variety of tests to see how well I can work on it. Is it a safe upgrade for photographers or other creative professionals? Or do you have to wait for promised software updates?

Apple using its own chips may seem like a small change you’ll never have to think about, but it’s a big impact on software performance. For best performance, the programs you use must be rewritten to properly utilize the new hardware.

This may be a problem, as software developers need to support two versions of their products; An Intel version and an Apple M1 version. At the time of writing, Adobe has released an M1 version of Lightroom, but not Lightroom Classic (the version I, along with most photography professionals, still use). The Photoshop standard only supports M1 when you download the beta, and Adobe has not officially given any timeline for all of its Creative Cloud series of apps that will fully support Apple M1.

So it’s useless for photographers?

Not at all. Although these programs have not been optimized, they will still work, thanks to Apple’s Rosetta 2 software, which makes Intel’s versions of software work. This means that any app you’d normally use on your MacBook can still work on the new model without any difference in how it works, and you probably won’t see much in the way of performance degradation, although it varies app by app.

In my practical testing, I found that the M1 versions of Adobe’s programs work very fast. Lightroom ran at lightning speed and enabled very fast editing and exporting. Even Lightroom Classic (the Intel version) still ran well when used via Rosetta 2.

The improvements are noticeable when using M1-optimized versions. I tested how long it took Photoshop (both in Intel and M1 beta versions) to align 19 raw images in full resolution and then merge them into a focus-stacked image. This is a technique I use regularly in my product photography, so it’s important for me to be effective here.

Intel-based Photoshop, via Rosetta 2, took 50.3 seconds to align the layers and 1 minute, 37 seconds to put it together. I compared it to a extraordinarily powerful Windows computer It was built with an AMD Ryzen 9 3950 X CPU, Nvidia RTX Titan graphics and 128 GB RAM, specifically to be a beast with photo editing and 8K video. The computer took 20 seconds to align the layers and 53 seconds to put them together – a clear victory for the computer.

I then performed the same tests on the beta version of Photoshop that supports Apple M1. It took 22 seconds to align the layers and 46.6 seconds to put them together – a faster overall time than my extremely powerful editing equipment could achieve.

In the M1-supported version of Lightroom, the MacBook took 6.4 seconds to import 100 raw images, which reduced the computer’s time by 7.1 seconds to complete the same task.

Total time to complete the focus stack in Adobe Photoshop (align and merge layers)

MacBook Pro (Intel version of Photoshop)

MacBook Pro (M1-optimized Photoshop beta)

The story was similar to the execution of videos in Premiere. The Intel-based version of Premiere took 6 minutes, 25 seconds to run on the M1 MacBook, but the optimized M1 beta version took about half the time, at 3 minutes, 24 seconds. For reference, my desk did the same output in 1:20.

Total time to export Full HD video to Adobe Premiere

MacBook Pro (Intel version of Premiere)

MacBook Pro (M1-optimized Premiere beta)

Other software that has not been optimized still runs normally, and you will never know that you are using ‘fake’ versions of software, as the overall performance of the machine is still excellent. It took 51 seconds to enter 100 raw images into the pro-image editing software Capture One, and the desktop was not ahead for 48 seconds. Capture One said that an M1-optimized version is available in an update, but we do not know exactly when that will be.

Pro video software DaVinci Resolve Studio is also available in beta for M1, and I found it to be very fast to use, with no hassle previewing 4K files on a timeline.

Overall, I was impressed. Even when using non-optimized versions of applications, the M1 MacBook Pro still fights a hell of a battle against a superpowered computer, and the fact that in some tests it can outperform the computer if you use your M1 using optimized beta apps is amazing. I’m definitely excited about what performance improvements we’ll see if more developers fully optimize their software for Apple’s silicone.

If you are a photographer and considering upgrading, I would absolutely say that the M1 MacBook is a safe bet. At the very least, you can use all your current software via Rosetta 2 normally, and over time when the official M1 versions are released, the performance enhancements – and probably the battery life savings as well – will be extremely welcome.

Read more: MacBook Air M1 Review: Big Changes to Apple Silicone and Big Sur