Adobe has released major new updates for Adobe Illustrator and InDesign with native support for Apple Silicon Macs. Thanks to the powerful M1 chip, the apps are faster than ever, with Illustrator showing a 65 percent increase in performance and InDesign showing a 59 percent increase in performance, compared to their performance on Intel Macs.
Adobe Illustrator for M1 Macs
Adobe Illustrator was released as a beta for M1 Macs in April 2021. Adobe Photoshop is already available as a native Apple Silicon app.
Illustrator is one of the most popular vector drawing tools in the world and can be very demanding in terms of performance. With the new M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, users can launch and create documents up to 4 times faster than before, as per an independent Pfeiffer research study. In various workflows, users see the following gains:
- Scroll performance when editing complex vectors is is improved by 390 percent
- Opening a new file with 31 complex artboards is 119 percent faster
This means that artists can take full advantage of the power that is on offer from their M1 Macs.
Adobe has also included a new Rotate View for the canvas which allows users to easily rotate it to their liking and usage, similar to rotate feature in Illustrator for iPad.
Adobe InDesign for M1 Macs
InDesign is a popular app for creating eBooks, PDFs, magazines, or even print publication layouts. With the new M1 Macs, the app gets major performance improvements:
- Graphics heavy files open 185 percent faster
- Scroll performance on text-heavy documents (100 pages) is 78 percent faster
This means that users can open and start working on their InDesign files faster than ever before, completely changing their expectations of what computer performance should be like.
Photoshop for iPad
Photoshop for iPad, which had a rocky start right out of the gate, is continuously seeing major feature additions. With the latest update, Adobe has added custom brushes to the app. Users can use the same custom brushes that they use on Photoshop for desktop, on their iPad. Many brush packs are also available from artists like Kyle Webster, which can be download and added to Photoshop for iPad.
If you use the Adobe Capture app, you can even create your own original brushes and save them as .abr files to share online or use them on Photoshop for iPad or desktop.
Adobe has also added support for drawing lines as pixels, instead of just vectors in Photoshop for iPad. Transform warp guidelines in the app also see improvements with the ability to turn gridlines on or off by default, and customize the grid size, line density, line color, and opacity.
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