



When Lightroom for M1 was released in December 2020, we found meager performance gains above and beyond what M1 could already do via Rosetta 2 emulation of the Intel version. Our experience with Apple Silicon-optimized apps from Adobe has been 50/50 so far. The latest version of Lightroom Classic was up to 25 percent faster on the M1 than on our more expensive Intel-based Mac. Could Apple’s M1 processor deliver a hefty performance boost for photographers? In short: yes. Our hopes were high for a program so famously sluggish. This morning, Adobe unveiled the long-awaited version of Lightroom Classic that is fully optimized for Apple Silicon devices, and we had a chance to test it out before release.
