Creative and professional application developers have been excited to see the potential of the new MacBook Pros. Pixelmator, Affinity Suite updates, and exciting news from Adobe that should make designers and other artists smile.
Supports shortcuts and fast, very fast
First, Pixelmator presented its version 2.2 nicknamed “Carmel” with support for macOS Monterey and its shortcuts. It is also capable of using all the cores of the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips in its processes, and it respects the portrait effect that we can use in our Mac’s FaceTime camera when importing photos from of the.
The update is free for those who already have an app license, which costs 39.99 dollars in the Mac App Store. Here is an example of what has already been tested with these Twitter shortcuts:
With @pixelmatorNew support for shortcuts, 11 actions are enough to take a photo, add branding and custom text, edit, resize and crop for web and social media. It’s time for everyone to get on the Shortcuts bus. pic.twitter.com/VMaFEcx8fM
– Justin Cox (@justincox) October 26, 2021
On the Affinity side, they confirm that their three applications are already ready to work with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. Apple itself has confirmed that the working speed increases 5 to 8 times more depending on the chip used, and in Affinity, they promise very good results with the color profiles of the mini-LED screen and its 120 Hz maximum of ProMotion.
Affinity has made its own references to the MacBook Pros and they claim the M1 Max is the most powerful GPU they’ve ever tested:
The # M1Max is the fastest GPU we’ve ever measured in the @affinitybyserif Photo reference. It outperforms the W6900X – a $ 6,000, 300W desktop part – because it delivers immense compute performance, immense on-chip bandwidth, and immediate data transfer in and out of the GPU (UMA). pic.twitter.com/iPg3L56y2u
-Andy Somerfield (@andysomerfield) 25 October 2021
Finally we have the arrival of After Effects optimized for Apple Silicon chips hand in hand with Adobe, although currently in beta. Nevertheless, this should represent a very significant increase in performance compared to Intel chips.
All of this should be a good appetizer for those of you releasing one of those new MacBook Pros and wanting to take your first tests with professional software. From there, we should also start receiving more information about the rest of the apps being updated to be able to take advantage of these new chips.
