Adobe Updates Illustrator, InDesign, and Lightroom Classic to Run Natively on M1 Macs

Adobe today announced the release of major updates across its Creative Cloud software suite. Most notably, its Illustrator, InDesign, and Lightroom Classic apps now run natively on Macs with the M1 chip, resulting in faster performance.

adobe m1 chip
Creative Cloud apps are on average over 80% faster on an M1 Mac compared to an identically configured Intel-based Mac, according to Adobe.

Additional notable new features and workflow improvements in today's releases, per Adobe:

  • Lightroom Ecosystem: New Premium Presets, collaborative editing capabilities, Super Resolution in Lightroom and Lightroom Classic (previously available in Adobe Camera Raw), and custom crop aspect ratios in Lightroom
  • Powerful new retouching features in Photoshop Express, including skin smoothing, content aware healing, face aware liquify and caricature
  • Custom brushes in Photoshop on iPad
  • Rotate View in Illustrator on desktop
  • New styling tools in Adobe XD: Inner Shadow, Outline Stroke, and Angular Gradient

Premiere Pro with native support for the M1 chip remains in beta, with a public release coming soon, according to Adobe.

Popular Stories

airpods pro 3 purple

New, Higher End AirPods Pro Coming This Year

Tuesday January 20, 2026 9:05 am PST by
Apple is planning to debut a high-end secondary version of AirPods Pro 3 this year, sitting in the lineup alongside the current model, reports suggest. Back in September 2025, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that Apple is planning to introduce a successor to the AirPods Pro 3 in 2026. This would be somewhat unusual since Apple normally waits around three years to make major...
smaller dynamic island iphone 18 pro Filip Vabrous%CC%8Cek

iPhone 18 Pro Leak: Smaller Dynamic Island, No Top-Left Camera Cutout

Tuesday January 20, 2026 2:34 am PST by
Over the last few months, rumors around the iPhone 18 Pro's front-panel design have been conflicted, with some supply-chain leaks pointing to under-display Face ID, reports suggesting a top-left hole-punch camera, and debate over whether the familiar Dynamic Island will shrink, shift, or disappear entirely. Today, Weibo-based leaker Instant Digital shared new details that appear to clarify the ...
iOS 27 Mock Quick

iOS 27 Will Add These 8 New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday January 18, 2026 3:51 pm PST by
iOS 27 is still many months away, but there are already plenty of rumors about new features that will be included in the software update. The first beta of iOS 27 will be released during WWDC 2026 in June, and the update should be released to all users with a compatible iPhone in September. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that iOS 27 will be similar to Mac OS X Snow Leopard, in the sense...
14 inch MacBook Pro Keyboard

MacBook Pro Buyers Now Facing Up to a Two-Month Wait Ahead of New Models

Sunday January 18, 2026 6:50 pm PST by
MacBook Pro availability is tightening on Apple's online store, with select configurations facing up to a two-month delivery timeframe in the United States. A few 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro configurations with an M4 Pro chip are not facing any shipping delay, but estimated delivery dates for many configurations with an M4 Max chip range from February 6 to February 24 or even later. At...
Liquid Glass App Store Feature

App Store and Apple TV Experiencing Outage

Tuesday January 20, 2026 4:36 pm PST by
Apple's App Store, iTunes Store, and Apple TV service are experiencing an outage at the current time, according to Apple's System Status page. Apple says that some users may be experiencing issues with the App Store and iTunes Store. Apple also says some users may be seeing intermittent issues with Apple TV. The Apple TV Channels feature is down too, and users may be unable to access some...

Top Rated Comments

mystery hill Avatar
60 months ago

Creative Cloud apps are on average over 80% faster ('https://www.pfeifferreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Creative_Cloud_on_Apple_Silicon_Benchmark_Report.pdf') on an M1 Mac compared to an identically configured Intel-based Mac, according to Adobe
RIP Intel.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MauiPa Avatar
60 months ago

My testing of an After Effects (running through Rosetta of course) render on an M1 mini compared to iMac Retina 5k 27-inch Late 2015 does not show 80% improvement. More like 2%.

Admittedly I'm not a professional tester, but it was a real world test - no plugins.
Seriously? You think that is equivalent? You even stated Rosetta. so a low power M1 processor beats a full on desktop CPU while running an emulator, and you are not impressed? the article specifically said that "NATIVE", which are faster than emulated, BTW is 80% faster. so there you go
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
davidwes Avatar
60 months ago

My testing of an After Effects (running through Rosetta of course) render on an M1 mini compared to iMac Retina 5k 27-inch Late 2015 does not show 80% improvement. More like 2%.

Admittedly I'm not a professional tester, but it was a real world test - no plugins.
Umm, the article is about the apps now being native and therefore being 80% faster. Of course rosetta would be slower.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MiG007 Avatar
60 months ago
According to Adobe (Adobe M1 status ('https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2020/12/21/now-in-beta-premiere-pro-premiere-rush-audition-for-apple-m1-systems.html#gs.2ttjax')) a release version of Premiere Pro is supposed to be available first half of 2021 -- within 22 days?

And they will begin work on a native version of After Effects this year.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
djphat2000 Avatar
60 months ago

My testing of an After Effects (running through Rosetta of course) render on an M1 mini compared to iMac Retina 5k 27-inch Late 2015 does not show 80% improvement. More like 2%.

Admittedly I'm not a professional tester, but it was a real world test - no plugins.
The new one should not be running under rosetta. So the fact that it was still 2% faster than an old 2015 iMac shows just how close emulation on M1 is to the real thing. You may see more like double the performance once you run the native version of the apps on your M1 system.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
otternonsense Avatar
60 months ago
There is no reason these apps can't be running just the same on M1 iPads –other than Apple's arbitrary reasons to drive a wedge between the two platforms.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)