NLP and MacOS Big Sur, Lightroom Classic, M1 Macs... Compatibility?

Has NLP been tested with Lightroom Classic running on MacOS Big Sur? Has NLP been tested with Lightroom Classic running on MacOS Big Sur running on the new M1 Macs?

I’m about to pull the trigger on an M1 MacBook Pro, but I don’t want to lose NLP in the process!

Check:

Hi there, I’m also trying to make sure this works. From Adobe’s help article, Lightroom Classic runs in compatibility mode (which is fine), but it does say plug-ins aren’t supported:

CAN I INSTALL PLUG-INS ON APPLE M1 COMPUTERS?

Currently, you cannot install plug-ins on Apple M1 computers. So, the Marketplace tab is not available in the Creative Cloud desktop app installed on these devices. We are working to ensure plug-in support for Apple M1 computers. In the meantime, we recommend that you install and run your plug-ins on Apple devices with Intel processors.

Just want to confirm that NLP will work on a new M1 Mac Mini!

But have you actually opened the latest version of Adobe Lightroom CLASSIC and used the latest revision of NLP with it, on any of the M1 Macs?

I could care less what Adobe says. I want real-world test results. No hypotheticals or Adobe officialdom.

If Nate’s listening, have you tried NLP on the M1 yet?

Check out the screenshot above.

Yes, it will work on new M1- at least on the most current version of Lightroom Classic as of writing this (v10.1). This version of Lightroom Classic is still using Rosetta 2, so nothing has really changed for Lightroom Classic at the moment for M1 users.

When Lightroom Classic is updated to work “natively” on M1 chips, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were some “kinks” to work out to make sure everything is still working with plugins.

So I would recommend turning OFF any kind of “automatic updates” from Creative Cloud, and when Adobe does release an M1 native version of Lightroom Classic, you may want to hold off upgrading for a bit while the kinks are worked out.

I personally don’t have an M1 machine, but I’ve had at least 3 users confirm that it is working fine on M1 + Lightroom Classic, and I wouldn’t expect otherwise because Lightroom Classic is still using Rosetta 2.

Thank you @nate - that’s super helpful! We can revisit when the native version comes out.

Nate, THANK-YOU.

Yes, it makes sense that it would work under Rosetta 2. Even after the LrC app goes Universal/Native, it should be possible to set LrC to open under Rosetta 2 instead of natively (ARM). Many other applications are offering that option (Right-click on the application in Finder — Applications Folder, choose Get Info, and set the option in that dialog). For instance, some audio editing apps require that to work, since some popular audio processing plug-ins are not yet re-engineered to work with the M1 natively.

gents, I am contemplating getting an Apple MacBook Air M1 or Lenovo X1 Nano as a new work/daily machine which should also serve as my LR workhorse to digitze a few thousand negatives.

Tried searching the forum but haven’t really seen an answer to this - how is the actual performance of the NLP itself under M1? is it miles ahead the intel based system as M1 apps often are for heavy workload or is this something neglibilbe for this use case?

thank you!

Lightroom Classic runs fine in Rosetta 2 on my son’s M1 MacBook Air… faster than it does on most Intel Macs.

But it also runs plenty fast enough for me on my Late 2013 Intel iMac with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD.

NLP currently runs in x86 LrC as x86 code. So I can’t see a reason to worry about performance. Most x86 apps run very smoothly.

thank you for sharing the experience - I’m not really worried the performance to be poor, the thing is one keeps reading about how great the M1 performance is so my expectation is that it should be noticably better on M1 chip than on any other intel (be it Mac or Win).

I was wondering whether this is something noticable while i.e. converting the negatives. If not so much then I’ll probably stick to win for another year or so and see what M2/M1X in new Air brings :slight_smile:

Lightroom Classic is still an Intel application and runs on Rosetta 2.
I expect a speed bump, once Lightroom is optimized for Apple Silicon.
Photoshop is at least partially optimised and the difference is noticeable.

Other than that, it’s sensible to stick to hardware as long as possible for ecological reasons.

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Whether an M1 machine is faster with LrC and NLP than what you have depends upon what you have. If your current machine is five to seven years old, then you’ll see a dramatic difference. If your current machine has a conventional startup hard drive, then you’ll see a dramatic difference. If your current machine has a lower end Intel processor, then you’ll see a dramatic difference.

Watching some reviews on YouTube may help you decide. The MaxTech channel is a good start. Watch some of their comparisons of the latest Dell and LG Windows laptops with the M1 MacBooks, and you’ll get a sense of the speed. They test Lightroom Classic in most of them, along with running various benchmarks and applications for video editing.

We won’t know how good the M1 machines are with LrC and NLP until both applications are completely M1 native. I can imagine Nate is waiting for a release version of LrC to ship before he builds an M1 native NLP plug-in.

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