Adobe releases M1 native version of Lightroom Classic and other updates

(Image credit: Adobe)

Apple is steadily moving to its new M1 processor and away from its old Intel chip, and while existing software will run just fine under emulation, Adobe has been working on new ‘native’ M1 support across its Creative Cloud apps in order to fully exploit the enhanced processing speed of the M1 chip and harness Apple’s new Neural Engine for its own AI-driven Sensei tools.

• Best photo editing software
• Best video editing software
• Best MacBook
• Best iMac

This latest update brings M1 native version of Lightroom Classic, InDesign and Illustrator – Lightroom Classic benefits particularly as it doesn’t have the best reputation for speed!

Read more: Adobe M1 speed tests!

On top of this, Adobe has rolled out a whole list of updates for its photography apps. As ever, these are free as part of a Creative Cloud subscription and the Creative Cloud app should prompt you to download the updates automatically.

Adobe June updates for photographers

• Premium presets: All of the Adobe photography apps now come with Premium presets designed by “a diverse and talented set of contemporary photographers”. Categories include Portraits-Deep Skin, Portraits-Medium Skin, Portraits-Light Skin, Cinematic, Futuristic, Vintage, and Travel, with more to come. These will also vie available in Adobe Camera Raw.

• Lightroom, Lightroom mobile and the Lightroom web app (not Classic) already let you invite others to add photos, and now you can invite them to edit photos too. Other people’s edits will be stored as Versions within an image alongside your own.

• Lightroom and Lightroom Classic now get the Super Resolution tool first offered in Adobe Camera Raw. This uses Adobe’s Sensei technology to double the width and height of your photos so that a 10MP image becomes a 40MP image. Our initial Super Resolution tests suggest it’s probably the best upsampling tool out there.

• Tethered Live View is now available for certain Nikon cameras in Lightroom Classic.

• And AT LAST, Lightroom enables you to set your own custom crop ratios.

• Creatives using Photoshop for iPad can now download “hundreds” of custom brushes, and it’s now possible to draw lines with pixels, not just vectors.

• Photoshop is only one of many Adobe mobile apps. Another is Photoshop Express, and this gets a whole new set of Retouch tools, including correction and enhancement tools like skin smoothing, content aware healing and face aware liquify, but also fun effects such as caricatures.

Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com

Adobe June updates for photographers

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