Vuescan plugin not working with Mac M1 chip

[behruznassre]

Hi everyone;

I have used the Vuescan adobe plug-in for years without any issues. I recently added a new MacBook Pro with M1 chipset and installed Adobe CC and the M1 version of Vuescan. However, when I copy the plug-in file to the Adobe plug-in folder, it is not showing up under the import menu as the Intel version.

Has anyone got the Vuescan plug-in to work with the newer Mac computers?

thank you

Behruz

[jane-e]

@behruznassre 

Hamrick says VueScan works with the M1 chip.

https://www.hamrick.com/blog/vuescan-on-apple-silicon.html

This is not a Photoshop question. Here is the support page for Hamrick; there is a "Contact Us" link at the bottom. You will get the best answer from them. 

https://www.hamrick.com/support/

Jane

EDIT: This actually is a Photoshop question.

[behruznassre]

thank you Jane. Yes Vuescan software does work. This question was related to the photoshop plugin.

I have worked with Hamrick for several months, and they cannot fix the issue. I was just asking the photoshop community to see if anyone them has gotten this to work.

Behruz...

[jane-e]

Thank you so much for clarifying, @behruznassre! I use VueScan, but have not moved to M1 yet. 

Jane

[Conrad C · Accepted solution]

I use VueScan on an Apple Silicon Mac. Although I don’t normally use the VueScan plug-in for Photoshop, I had an idea about a solution.

In the Creative Cloud desktop app, when viewing All Apps, click the options ( … ) menu for Photoshop, and choose Open (Intel). This will open Photoshop using its Intel code.

With Photoshop running as Intel, the VueScan plug-in appears in the Photoshop Import submenu.

Important: “Open as Intel” through the Creative Cloud app applies only to the current session of the application. If you open Photoshop normally next time, it will open using Apple Silicon code and the VueScan plug-in will not load. If you want Photoshop to always open using Intel code, follow the Apple instructions (under “Which Apps Need Rosetta?” on that linked page) to enable Open Using Rosetta.

However, it might be best to open Photoshop normally most of the time, and only open Photoshop as Intel when you want to scan into Photoshop through VueScan. The reason is that when you open Photoshop as Intel, you do not have all of the high performance advantages of Apple Silicon.

In the long run, Hamrick needs to update their plug-in for the current Photoshop plug-in architecture on Apple Silicon.

[behruznassre]

thank you @Conrad C your solution works perfectly. I will send this to Hamrick. I looked at the plug-in file included in both the Intel and M1 Vuescan packages and they are identical. I suspect he needs to at least compile it for the M1 processor to see if that works.

Behruz...

[Conrad C]

There is a second transition that Photoshop plug-ins are going through. Adobe is modernizing them from ExtendScript/CEP to UXP. Now, I am not enough of a techie to explain what that is about or to know if it’s part of this problem, but it’s something that’s happening. Chances are Hamrick Software probably already knows about UXP,  I only bring it up because it is another plug-in compatibility change in addition to Intel vs Apple Silicon.