Mac M1 and Photoshop - joke of the year.

that is very true (about making business sense)

This is no joke.

I have been struggling with a completely new system necessitated by a collision of events which includes three different companies, all of which I have been in contact with. Wacom, Adobe and Apple. I upgraded because it was time. I was using a 2013 MacPro, a 2014/5 15" Macbook Pro Laptop, a Cintiq21 Touch and an additional monitor.

Between the updates by application and by OS, I was running slower and slower. It was my hope that the M1 would drastically speed up operations. I thought I would simplify, using the M1 16" Macbook to drive the new Cintiq and the other external monitor and no longer rely on a Desktop "tower" for use of the CIntiq. I was told that the new 16" macBook would drive all the monitors, and be much faster. Instead I am faced with freezes, and other system-generated interruptions to workflow.

I have been using Photoshop and other apps from the Adobe Suite for a very long time, beginning in the late eighties.

The new upgrades were dictated by the hardware companies adoption of USB-C interfaces, this certainly being the case with Cintiq. But, unfortunately I have had a great deal of freezes since this major upgrade. I am use to painting in Ps have completed three hundred individual portraits of the people of my small village, for example, including producing three books of these portraits (InDesign/ Illustrator/Ps). The portraits were done from 2012 forward, but the process was pretty straight forward.

Specifically the upgrades have translated into a great deal of time cleaning up drawings now.

-Spurious markings made by the placement of my palm while drawing or independently of any simultaneous marking with the stylus. There is no Preference box to click or unclick in either Ps Prefs or in the WACOM Prefs for pressure sensitivity of stylus that actually can be substantive. It seems to also affect Tools. In the former configuration, I used the touch capacitance capabilities to ROTATE while drawing. While the new CINTIQ can actually live rotate as a monitor, there is a workaround. But this is classic 'don't fix what aint broke' forcing a new learning curve, time from established workflow for the experienced user. Of course, there is always some re-learning on a large-scale rebuild but it is a collossal time sink to suss out WHY stuff isn't working.

-The "ellipsis" tool which sometimes, when holding down the almost impossible to accurately enable "triangle" in the lower right of the Tool icon (because it is so small), does not always make available the many other tools, like gradient tool, e.g. because it sticks on the tool that may have been previously used.

- Older third party brushes don't seem to work as well.
- The opacity of the brush seems to not be as supple when varying pressure with the stylus.
- The magic wand doesn't function properly as it makes a marquis around areas not specific to the selection. It precipitates using the option -clicking method of the Lasso to make an active marquis for creating a working path. This is slower than the magic wand selecting a specific area quickly for conversion to path.
- Tools in the toolbar ( like the Zoom tool) can not be relegated to the "ellipsis" group. Zoom seem to be a beginner's tool as most experienced users have a drawing pad or touch sensitive monitor, like the Cintiq, the iPad, ( in Apple) or a trackpad to zoom in out, and perform a wide range of haptically enabled, more intuitive movement. All of this would suggest that the Tool box should be more customizable. Early on I used Painter for many years until it became a Corel product. But they had detachable-from-the-toolbox icons for individual brushes, which one could drag closer to the area of the drawing that you were working in. This sped up workflow, emulated REAL WORLD artistic use, and was dynamic.

These may appear to be insignificant problems and too isolate to the "smaller market of Professionals" but they do negatively influence efficient workflow and to me, signal some kind of overall impact on ease of use/ usability. As I mentioned before, there are three companies, Apple, Adobe and WACOM who all have a role in this and I always feel like I am in a partial consultation with Support with two of the companies missing at a time. Between diagnostic protocols set up by management for the entry-level support tech, which in the past would elevate to higher level tech, a lot of time is used up in the process of trying to solve these issues, with many simply never being solved or they are MAYBE addressed in future OS/ version upgrades.

I am a leading edge/ early adopter user. Transitions like this major upgrade are not for timid. I am not sure I can return to other (older) versions as I am not sure of the interchangeability of those apps given all of the system changes. But stability is a major draw.



Jon Goldman