Pixelmator Pro's ML Super Resolution feature absolutely flies on M1 Macs

Pixelmator2.0 Copy (Image credit: Pixelmator)

What you need to know

Pixelmator Pro introduced its ML Super Resolution feature last year and timed how long it took to run on a few machines.
But the new M1 MacBook Air is obscenely fast.

Apple released its M1 Macs this week and we're already hearing some pretty amazing reports in terms of how quickly they can churn through just about any task. The folk behind Pixelmator Pro have shared a tidbit of their own – and it's going to have you wishing for an M1 Mac even more.

In December of last year Pixelmator Pro gained a new feature called ML Super Resolution which took images and then upscaled them without destroying the quality. That, obviously, takes a bit of horsepower to do properly and an announcement post compared how long it took to complete on a number of Macs. All was right with the world.

And then the M1 MacBook Air arrived and the same process was re-run on the incoming machine. The result? Crazy talk. That's what resulted.

Absolute madness.

When we released ML Super Resolution about a year ago, we compared how quickly various Macs upscale a 0.3-megapixel image (500x600 pixels) to 3 times its original size.

The oldest Macs took ~1 minute. Our 2017 iMac Pro took 0.56s.

The M1 MacBook Air does it in 0.51s. pic.twitter.com/3xl2srYB1KWhen we released ML Super Resolution about a year ago, we compared how quickly various Macs upscale a 0.3-megapixel image (500x600 pixels) to 3 times its original size.

The oldest Macs took ~1 minute. Our 2017 iMac Pro took 0.56s.

The M1 MacBook Air does it in 0.51s. pic.twitter.com/3xl2srYB1K— Pixelmator Team (@pixelmator) November 19, 2020 November 19, 2020

So an iMac Pro completed the process in 0.56s. A MacBook Air does it in just 0.51s. That's... insane.

But this isn't the first time we've been told the M1 is insanely quick, either. Various tests have shown similar results. And you get longer battery life out of these machines than anything that came before.

It seems – and bear with me here – that Apple might be on to something with this M1 chip.

Just, maybe.

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.