Photoshop ran just fine on the new computer, as you’d expect of software from a major vendor such as Adobe. I migrated most of my old software over, and installed Photoshop 2021 from my Creative Cloud subscription. But my old Macbook was definitely approaching the twilight years, and with the amount of presentation and travel in my calendar, a new laptop became compelling, and I went for an Apple MacBook Air that uses the new M1 chips. I subscribe to the “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” school of life. Personally, I am a bit of a troglodyte when it comes to upgrading my computer gear. So, what does this all have to do with me? (Or you?) I’m glad you asked. At least in theory, there should be some negative performance consequences to running in emulation mode (because instructions are passing through an additional processing layer). Older programs written for the Intel chips will still run on an M1 computer, but they need to run in emulation mode using a program that Apple calls Rosetta.Įmulation means a kind of translation program, from commands meant for one set of chips to the comparable commands that the other set of chips uses, in this case from Intel to Apple M1. I don’t want to make your eyes glaze over too much, but the M1 is based on a RISC design-if you are interested, you can read more about RISC here.įrom the viewpoint of the end user, what you need to know is that applications-such as Photoshop-need to be re-written to run on the new design. If you are in the Apple computing world, as many photographers are, you’ll likely know that Apple recently changed its underlying chip-set from an Intel-based processor to the Apple-designed M1 (“Apple Silicon”). Maybe I can spare someone else the grief. One ignores them at one’s peril, just as ignoring chemistry in the wet darkroom didn’t work very well for most serious photographers in the film era.īut I break with my relative deprecation of the topic of computers and software in this story because finding a simple answer to a basic problem important to photographers was painful, and took far too long. That said, computers and software are a fundamental part of digital photography. I don’t these days write much about computers, and I also like to say (when asked) that the only software I have written in the last decade is my LAB Action for Photoshop.

Photoshop elements 2021 m1 mac