Are Lightroom Classic and Photoshop ready for the Apple M2 chip?

[michaelm50945980]

I am interested in upgrading my old Macbook Pro with an Intel chip to a new Macbook Air with the M2 chip.  Is Lightroom Classic and Photoshop ready for the new Apple M2 chip?  Or would I have to run in Rosetta?

[Michael J. Hoffman]

Lightroom and Photoshop both run on the M1 chip, and therefore will certainly run on M2. That said, the M2 systems are brand new, so at this point, I'd say you would be on the cutting edge, using an M2 for real work with PS and PrC right away. There are likely to be hiccups and gotchas until we see a couple of updates. It's up to you and your appetite for discovering new issues before anyone else...

[Terry26411434udlv]

so to cut to the chase....LR and PS DO run with the M2 chip on an Macbook Air?? Yes???

[JohanElzenga]

so to cut to the chase....LR and PS DO run with the M2 chip on an Macbook Air?? Yes???

By @Terry26411434udlv

Yes. Is "Thanks for the link to the YouTube.  It was very helpful and the moderator showed that Lightroom Classic does run on the M2 chip." still not enough for you to believe it?

[Conrad_C]

so to cut to the chase....LR and PS DO run with the M2 chip on an Macbook Air?? Yes???

By @Terry26411434udlv

At this point the M2 has been sold to many Mac users over the last few months, and the one thing we know for sure is that there has not been a flood of problem reports about Photoshop and Lightroom on the M2. Because the M2 is rarely mentioned on the forums, we might assume that the M2 simply falls within the normal Apple Silicon system requirements of Photoshop and Lightroom, as all the variants of the M1 do.

[ddnothappy]

No, they really don't run on the M2 chip on Macbook Air but I believe the issue comes from Ventura.  Two updates ago, the computer finally worked flawlessly and then I updated to Ventura because of not being able to see preview icons in finder and that solved that problem.  The next day Adobe did updates to 2023.  Ever since updating I can not look at my images in preview and import them to PS without crashing.  I generally have to shut down and reboot 5 times a night.  This has been a nightmare.  Very surprised that Adobe is not acknowledging this issue yet.

[DdeGannes]

At ddnothappy, there are issues with macOS 13 Ventura, see the link below,

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-macos-ventura-compatibility/

[Ian Lyons]

If you haven't already done so, then upgrade to LrC 12.0.1, which contains fixes for the main issues affecting LrC after upgrading to macOS Ventura.

If upgrading to 12.0.1 doesn't fix the issues you're experiencing, then start a new thread and include a copy of your 'System Info', which can be obatined from a menu item of the same name found under the LrC Help menu.

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

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@michaelm50945980 wrote:

Or would I have to run in Rosetta?

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The Rosetta Translation Environment is only for apps written with Intel code. Because the current versions of Lightroom Classic and Photoshop are already rewritten for Apple Silicon, they will already work with M2 which is still Apple Silicon.

It is possible that there might be some minor optimizations that could be done for the M2, but on the whole it’s so similar to the M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra that there should be few to no problems. Lightroom Classic and Photoshop are two of the most frequently shown applications in the many videos and articles by people doing M2 reviews and performance tests.

[michaelm50945980]

Thanks, Conrad.  You got me going in the right direction.

[Ian Lyons]

Just to clarify what Michael and Conrad have already indicated, LrC no longer requires Rosetta 2 except for camera tethering. Therefore, if you don't need/use tethering Rosetta 2 won't be used.

If you haven't already done so, I recommend that you watch the M2 related videos at https://www.youtube.com/c/ArtIsRight/videos 

[michaelm50945980]

Thanks for the link to the YouTube.  It was very helpful and the moderator showed that Lightroom Classic does run on the M2 chip.

[bobolary]

Lightroom classis DOES run on the M2, but I want to tether.  My MBpro obviously needs Rosetta, but it will not load nor run it so I can proceed.  Am I too far ahead of the curve?   All My Apple and Adobe productsw are running the letest updates....   Help please for us tetherers using the M2 chip.  🙂

[DdeGannes]

@bobolary, See the list of supported camera models on Lightroom Classic. If you are using a Nikon Camera make sure you are running LrC 12.2 on macOS 13.2.1 Ventura.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/tethered-camera-support.html

Note you also need to grant LrC "Full Disk access" in your Apple > Preferences > Security and Privacy.

[bobolary]

Thanks Dennis. Rest assured, I've done all those suggestions, and My Nikon Z7ii is listed as working with Lightroom Classis tethering as of Version 12.2 After 20 minutes on Adobe support they determined a bug with Lightroom Classic actually invoking Rosetta to make the tethering work, so its an Adobe bug awaiting LR Classic V12.3  to fix it. This is also specific to the M2 MacBook Pro chipset.  My Mac Studio Pro M1 chip tethers perfectly well with my Z7ii.   Obviously no one on Kelby here as tried to Lightroom tether with their Mac M2 chipset yet......  🙂    Bob O'Lary

[bobolary]

I received my new M2 
Apple Macbook Pro 2023 yesterday, and after hooking up the tethering cables, LRc requests Rosetta. Click to re-start under emulation.  Click,  LR re-starts and the entire operation starts again.  Tetheriung requires Rosetta, but re-startingLightroom Classis does not download nor re-launch it with Rosetta on board.  I'm stuck,  I really want to tether!   Bob O'Lary

[aceb12068212]

Im having the same issues, I upgraded to a M2 pro and tethering crashes the app completely everytime I press "ok" to tethering. 

[carol33458220gro1]

I just purchase a macbook air with an M2 chip and LR will not run on it, is there an upgrade available and if so how do I find it ?

[JohanElzenga]

Lightroom Classic runs fine on M2 MacBook Pro's for most people. What exactly does (not) happen when you try to run it?

[Dennis271]

Initlally Lightroom seem to work but would hang on Quit. (I used Migration Assistant, hard drive backup, to move from an Intel iMac to an M2 MacStudio). Also, the Creative Cloud app would not work at all: Rosetta required! I figured there must be M2 native apps available so my plan was to delete old apps, install new. However the creative cloud cleaner would not run: Rosetta required! After an unsatisfactory interact with Adobe Support ( although they did provide a link to a universal installer for Lightroom), I wiped the apps and attempted to run the 'universal' installer. OOps, install failed, NO error code. What's up with that? I'm in a real WTF mood at this point. You would think a multi-million dollar corp would have this sorted out

[Dennis271]

fyi also updated to Sonoma 14.4

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

Was it a copy of Lightroom migrated from a much older Intel-based Mac? Because an old Lightroom version might not run on a newer Apple Silicon-based Mac.

The last several versions of Lightroom Classic and Lightroom run very well on Apple Silicon (many of us here use it every day on M1/M2), so it might be that all you have to do is upgrade.

[Dennis271]

Does the M2 require an uninstall the intel based app, then reinstall for m2 app or will an update work?

[JohanElzenga]

You do not need a reinstall nor an update. These apps contain the binaries for both Intel as well as Apple Silicon.