Earlier today, Adobe finally released the full non-Beta version of Photoshop for Apple Silicon, and we got a chance to test it out. I will not knock: the criteria are really impressive; it fits whether it is better than Intel-based computers that cost two to three times as much.
We’ve been expecting this version for some time now, as we play around with the Beta version of Photoshop for Apple Silicon and cross our fingers that the final version will take full advantage of the impressive performance of the M1, unlike Lightroom CC. Now we have our answer, and it’s even better for photographers and photo editors than we could have hoped.
How we test performance
When you test the performance of Photoshop in our reviews here on PetaPixel, we use the PugetBench Beta v0.8 benchmark from Puget Systems. Why the older Beta version? Because this is the latest version that included the Photo Merge test: a data point that is unique to photographers, but that Puget has too much trouble incorporating into the latest versions of the benchmark. As you will soon see, it’s good that we’ve kept this older benchmark for testing, because Photo Merge happens to be the M1’s superpower.
The cards below show four computers: M1 Mac mini (Apple Silicon), M1 Mac mini (Rosetta 2), 13-inch MacBook Pro and Dell XPS 17. The idea was to show how x86 Photoshop works. Intel hardware (13-inch MBP and XPS 17) via Rosetta 2 emulation on the M1 Mac mini, and then compare the three scores with the Apple Silicon-optimized version used on the same Mac mini.
Remember that both the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the Dell XPS 17 boast a full 32 GB of RAM compared to the 16 GB of the Mac mini. The XPS 17 also has a 10th generation, 8-core Intel Core i9-10875H, along with a GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU with 6GB of VRAM. In the end, both the 13-inch Intel MacBook Pro ($ 3,000) and the Dell XPS 17 ($ 3,000) we tested cost much more than the fully charged M1 Mac mini ($ 1,700) used for this comparison.
A train…
Results: Apple Silicon vs Rosetta 2 vs Intel
It’s not surprisingly, the M1 Mac mini loses competition in the raw GPU performance, which more or less matches the onboard graphics of the quad-core Core i7 in the 13-inch MacBook Pro (full review here). But even if this score works against it, the Mac mini with Apple Silicon-optimized Photoshop succeeds in achieving the second highest overall score we’ve ever seen from PugetBench.
In addition, none of the computers we checked, not even the most expensive 16-inch MacBook Pro you can buy or the Razer Blade Studio Edition, broke the 100-point mark on the PugetBench Photo Merge test. The M1 Mac mini, which is optimized for Photoshop, reached 130+ in run after run after run.
What does this mean in real terms? An Intel-based 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 2.3GHz quad-core i7 and 32GB of RAM takes approx. 2 minutes and 45 seconds to merge a 6-photo panorama onto the Nikon D850 (full res. NEF Raw files). The M1 Mac mini-run-optimized Photoshop does the same job 1 minute and 14 seconds. Even a fully charged $ 6,700 16-inch MacBook Pro with an 8-core Intel Core i9 and discrete GPU 1 minute and 52 seconds.
All this from a slide that swallows power so slowly that we were able to extract almost 16 hours of 4K video playback from the M1 MacBook Pro that we reviewed in December.
Last thoughts: what does this mean for creative people?
After the faint improvements we saw when we compared Apple Silicon-optimized Lightroom to the x86 version run via Rosetta 2, we did not come with much hope in this test. To see how the scores jump so much, when Rosetta 2 already did such a great job with the x86 version of Photoshop, it was honestly said. I thought the first run was a mistake; By the 6th I had to start believing my eyes.
As a reviewer, you’re always worried that you’ve sold something that really impresses you too much. I said that the M1 MacBook Pro called ‘everything change’ and the M1 Mac mini called ‘the best Mac for most photographers’, and although I was fairly confident, stringy comments can make you doubt your own mind. Criteria like these help prove that none of these statements are as hyperbolic as they initially seem.
When companies like Adobe take full advantage of what Apple has created in the M1, the results are unmistakable.
What remains to be seen is how Intel, AMD and the PC market in general will react. Will ARM-based computers take off now that more and more software companies are taking the time to optimize their applications for Apple Silicon, or are AMD’s latest Ryzen processors efficient yet powerful enough not to make creators jump? And how can Intel possibly wage a war on two fronts, with AMD killing it on x86 and blowing Apple on ARM?
Whether you like Apple or like it is irrelevant. It’s not about Apple Silicon vs Intel vs AMD and whether you’re a Mac or a PC. What is happening here is to rekindle the competition. And when companies compete, the customers win.