Photoshop beta released for Apple Silicon M1 Macs

As announced by Apple during its November 10 event, Adobe is planning to release its major Creative Cloud apps optimized for Apple Silicon M1 starting in early 2021. Most recently, Adobe released a limited beta version of Photoshop.

The beta release will allow owners of a Surface Pro X or Apple’s new M1-powered MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini to run Photoshop natively on their machines.

Adobe releases first beta of Photoshop on Apple Silicon

In a blog post, Adobe said that Photoshop is running natively on Apple’s M1 processor. The beta release isn’t officially supported but is available to gather feedback from users:

“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. 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.”

It is important to note that the beta is not fully functioning at the moment and will get features over time, it will only install and work on Arm hardware meeting minimum system requirements and there is a long long list of missing features that users will have to miss out on in the meantime. Adobe also warns users that, “several features are running slower on M1 native devices.”

The features that are not yet included range from several filters and brushes, to certain video and file formats. There are also features that are included but so far have “limitations or bugs,” such as 3D functions and support for Lightroom Photos.

Here is a full list of features that are not present in this version of Photoshop:

Camera RAW
Select Sky/Sky Replacement
Refine Hair (in Select and Mask)
Liquify Filter: Face Aware features
OilPaint filter
Video timeline and file format support
All CEP-based Panels (CC Libraries panel, 3rd party extensions)
Adaptive Wide Angle
Shake Reduction
Face Detection underlying Color Range skin tones and Content Aware Move functions
Match Font/Font Similarity
Rich Tooltips, Coach marks for Discovery Panel tutorials
Microsoft Dial support
File Info Panel
Layer > Smart Objects > Stack Mode menu item disabled
Content Aware Fill
Content Aware Scale
Content Aware Move
Focus Area
Auto-Blend Layers
Photomerge
Spot Healing Brush
Patch Tool
Healing brush
Some File formats not supported