Adobe Lightroom is Now Available on M1 Macs and Windows 10 on ARM

Adobe announced today that it has released Lightroom as a native app on M1-based Macs and Windows 10 on ARM (WOA).

“The latest version of Adobe Lightroom is now a native app for both Apple M1 and Windows Arm platforms,” Adobe’s Sharad Mangalick announced. “We rebuilt Lightroom to take advantage of the newest performance and power efficiency benefits of the Apple M1 and Qualcomm Snapdragon (for Windows 10) processors.”

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The arrival of Adobe Lightroom on M1 Macs and WOA follows last month’s release of a Photoshop Beta on these platforms. But this doesn’t appear to be a beta. Instead, it looks like Lightroom is generally available on both ARM-based platforms.

That said, there’s still work to be done. Adobe notes that it will continue to optimize for WOA and M1 in subsequent releases. And, yes it plans to continue to invest in and improve Lightroom on Intel-based systems, too, of course.

With this release, Adobe says that Lightroom is now available across all the major desktop (Mac, Win, Intel, ARM), mobile (iOS, Android), and web (lightroom.adobe.com) platforms.

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Conversation 16 comments

  • jchampeau

    Premium Member
    08 December, 2020 - 2:49 pm

    <p>This feels a little bit more like a watershed moment to me than the day Apple released the M1-powered machines.</p>

  • wolters

    Premium Member
    08 December, 2020 - 3:16 pm

    <p>I still use my Surface Pro X as my "second/OnCall" laptop due to the LTE. I will for sure give this a try and see how it performs. </p>

  • Chris_Kez

    Premium Member
    08 December, 2020 - 3:48 pm

    <p>Very curious to see how Lightroom runs on SPX vs. the new Macbook Air. My hunch is that it will be faster on the latter.</p>

  • AwkwardSwine

    Premium Member
    08 December, 2020 - 4:10 pm

    <p>Yawn – This is the lightweight "cloud connected" version of Lightroom, not the full featured "Lightroom Classic". It a mobile app subset of what full Lightroom supports.</p>

  • glenn8878

    08 December, 2020 - 5:48 pm

    <p>It takes Apple to get any support for WOA. WOA is better off with an entire new ecosystem of new apps. Leave the past behind. All those Windows utilities aren't good on WOA anyways.</p>

    • behindmyscreen

      08 December, 2020 - 10:29 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#598680">In reply to glenn8878:</a></em></blockquote><p>Perhaps Microsoft needs to say “we are leaving x86 behind. Windows will only be developed for ARM based SoCs starting with 2022 H2. Furthermore we will be preventing Windows from running on any x86 processors newer than whats on the 18 month road map of Intel and AMD”</p>

      • arnstarr

        08 December, 2020 - 11:58 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#598728">In reply to behindmyscreen:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>And on top of that, only add features to Windows 10X for ARM!</p>

        • nerdile

          Premium Member
          09 December, 2020 - 5:33 am

          <blockquote><em><a href="#598735">In reply to arnstarr:</a></em></blockquote><p>You folks are hilarious. I only hope that you are kidding.</p>

          • kb923689

            09 December, 2020 - 7:11 am

            <blockquote><em><a href="#598774">In reply to nerdile:</a></em></blockquote><p>Maybe they do want Linux to thrive…</p>

  • AwkwardSwine

    Premium Member
    08 December, 2020 - 8:02 pm

    <blockquote><em><a href="#598662">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>My point is that this app is not very significant. Photographers have workflow around Lightroom Classic and this is not a viable substitute.</p>

  • sammyg

    08 December, 2020 - 10:45 pm

    <p>Surface X vs M1 MacBook Air Lightroom benchmark!!!</p>

  • nerdile

    Premium Member
    09 December, 2020 - 5:07 am

    <p>I'm probably alone in fixating on this, but it has been a long time since I have seen software advertised as being for "Mac, Win". I mean, we say WinXP and Win10 but "Win" feels nostalgic, like you're buying a box, with a CD-ROM inside, at Best Buy.</p><p><br></p><p>Then they say "Intel, Arm". I wonder if Adobe does this to "Ibm", "Hp", or the "Irs". Kudos to Brad to stylizing it correctly.</p>

  • mikegalos

    09 December, 2020 - 2:00 pm

    <p>It's worth noting that due to Adobe's "Coke Classic" renaming of their top-end photography products, some of the names may be a bit confusing and potentially deceptive.</p><p><br></p><p>For example, the full-featured Lightroom became <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Lightroom </span>Classic and what's now called <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Lightroom </span>was formerly the light version.</p><p><br></p><p>The version of Lightroom available native on M1 and WoA is NOT the "Classic" full-featured version typically used as the professional standard tool.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

  • ronh

    Premium Member
    09 December, 2020 - 10:28 pm

    <p>I stopped using Lightroom over a year ago. They have priced it out of reach for non pro photographers (IMHO). It was always a bit slow, and it took forever to identify people. Using Affinity now and testing Luminar</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      10 December, 2020 - 12:59 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#599002">In reply to RonH:</a></em></blockquote><p>I use CaptureOne and Affinity Photo for my process. CaptureOne isn't cheap, but it is a great piece of software, I find it more comfortable than Lightroom and they have an excellent set of video tutorials that clearly explain the processes. </p><p>I find it somehow "better" than Lightroom, even though they are similar and I can't put a finger on why it is better. I started off on the free version that came with my Sony camera, but I upgraded to Pro this year.</p>

  • John Craig

    10 December, 2020 - 2:03 am

    <p>This might be the start of the good that'll come to WoA with Apple launching the M1. </p><p><br></p><p>Apple's presence in the laptop/desktop Arm world validates Arm as the architecture of choice, and developers will follow them. </p><p><br></p><p>The spin off is that Windows on Arm gets those same apps, ready packaged, rebuilt to work on arm, and good to go. I guess all developers need to do is upload them to the windows store, or at least make them available on their website.</p><p><br></p><p>Side thought…The world needs a single app store.</p>

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