Adobe's Illustrator, InDesign, and Lightroom Classic now native on M1 Macs

Lightroom in the Mac App Store
Lightroom in the Mac App Store (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • Adobe has announced native M1 versions of Illustrator, InDesign, and Lightroom Classic.
  • Some new features are also present in the June update.

Adobe has today announced new versions of Illustrator, InDesign, and Lightroom Classic that now run native on Apple's M1 Macs – including the new M1 iMac.

The updates will be available for download soon and Adobe promises speed increases of more than 80% on average across the entire Creative Cloud suite.

The updates include some new features to go with that huge speed increase as well, but it's the pace at which the apps run that I suspect will be of most interest to heavy users. That said, everyone can look forward to the following as part of Creative Cloud's June update.

  • 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

Those still waiting for Premiere Pro to get support for M1 Macs will have to wait a little while longer. It's currently in beta testing and Adobe says that we should be able to get our hands on it "soon."

With Apple's M1 Macs so blindingly fast, isn't it time you upgraded? These are the best iMac deals we've come across – just so you don't have to pay full price for your colorful new Mac.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.