Photoshop 2020 on MBP 14 M1 Pro Issue with Opening Images.. is it normal because it’s using Rosetta 2?

[o’bluetouring]

My friend has some issues with using Photoshop 2020 on his new MBP 16 with M1 Pro, and I’m wondering if it’s a computer issue or Rosetta 2 issue.

I posted the other day that I’ve installed the latest Parallels with W11 ARM version, and have had success running programs like AutoCAD and Revit. I also installed Photoshop and did some light editing with no issues (other than the program used up most of the 10gb ram I assigned to the VM). So with these successful, I convinced a friend to switch to MBP Pro 16 but he’s having issues with Mac version of Photoshop 2020.

He brought his laptop over so we can diagnose the issue. First we tried to open up 200 photos saved on his desktop (so it’s already on his internal drive). These are non-raw pictures taken by either iPhone 12 Pro or 13 Pro a few weeks ago. Well, it took his MBP M1 Pro with 10C CPU & 16 GPU 30 minutes (yes 30 minutes) to open up 200 pictures.

During the whole time the beach ball was spinning and the black/white rotating pointer was spinning too. We tried uninstalling/reinstalling and restarting the computer a few times but it always took around 30 mins. Looking at the Activity Monitor when the beach ball was spinning, I noticed Photoshop started out using 2GB of ram, but after 30 mins and when all pictures are opened, it showed that the software is using about 13GB of ram.

I realized Photoshop 2020 (version 21.x) is the old (Intel) version so it’s relying on Rosetta 2 to run on his M1 Pro MBP, but I thought 30 mins was too much, since it took me about 1 min to open the same photos on my M1 Pro running Parallels VM, and even on my old 2014 MBP i7 2.5 it took only 2-3 minutes.

So is this a normal behavior when using intensive software via Rosetta 2? Or do you think it’s a computer issue that he might need to exchange to a different one?

Thanks for the help and feedback!!

 

[Chancha]

1) why are you using the 2020 version, when I think 2021 is already Universal Binary, and the current 2022 version is even more optimized?
2) if iCloud Drive is enabled (which is by default), the Desktop is a special directory where everything is instantly mirrored to the cloud. If you try to open files on the Desktop that was only recently copied there it may mean an upload of the same files is happening concurrently. Also if even slight changes happened to the files and is saved, that file needs to be uploaded again and it queues up if the previous uploads weren't done
3) are you opening 200 photos at once? Is this just for benchmarking or do you have a realistic need to do so, such as batch action or stacking?

That said, just tried opening 200 JPEGs at once with PS 2022 (ver 23.0.0) on my Base 14". Files were outputted from Lightroom Classic, sized down to 1920x1280, stored on internal SSD (not desktop just a folder inside user home).

It took less than one minute to complete loading (the first file shows up and then I can select freely to the other 199)

 

[thunng8]

My friend has some issues with using Photoshop 2020 on his new MBP 16 with M1 Pro, and I’m wondering if it’s a computer issue or Rosetta 2 issue.

I posted the other day that I’ve installed the latest Parallels with W11 ARM version, and have had success running programs like AutoCAD and Revit. I also installed Photoshop and did some light editing with no issues (other than the program used up most of the 10gb ram I assigned to the VM). So with these successful, I convinced a friend to switch to MBP Pro 16 but he’s having issues with Mac version of Photoshop 2020.

He brought his laptop over so we can diagnose the issue. First we tried to open up 200 photos saved on his desktop (so it’s already on his internal drive). These are non-raw pictures taken by either iPhone 12 Pro or 13 Pro a few weeks ago. Well, it took his MBP M1 Pro with 10C CPU & 16 GPU 30 minutes (yes 30 minutes) to open up 200 pictures.

During the whole time the beach ball was spinning and the black/white rotating pointer was spinning too. We tried uninstalling/reinstalling and restarting the computer a few times but it always took around 30 mins. Looking at the Activity Monitor when the beach ball was spinning, I noticed Photoshop started out using 2GB of ram, but after 30 mins and when all pictures are opened, it showed that the software is using about 13GB of ram.

I realized Photoshop 2020 (version 21.x) is the old (Intel) version so it’s relying on Rosetta 2 to run on his M1 Pro MBP, but I thought 30 mins was too much, since it took me about 1 min to open the same photos on my M1 Pro running Parallels VM, and even on my old 2014 MBP i7 2.5 it took only 2-3 minutes.

So is this a normal behavior when using intensive software via Rosetta 2? Or do you think it’s a computer issue that he might need to exchange to a different one?

Thanks for the help and feedback!!

Not normal at all. When photoshop was intel only there was only approx 20-30% performance penalty and because the m1 was so fast, it was still faster than my previous intel mac.

In any case, just open the creative cloud app and click update and it will download and install the latest version which is a universal binary.

 

[o’bluetouring]

Thanks for the feedback!!

Yeah I have no idea why he’s running 2020. I’ll ask him to update and try again.

I thought something might be wrong because my 2014 intel MBP could open those same 200 photos in 2-3 minutes.

Oh yes opening 200 photos is just for benchmarking and compare it against my Windows version in VM (and my old intel MBP).