You can't do a clean install under Big Sur because Big Sur doesn't support 32-bit code. Lightroom 6 has 32-bit installer and activation components. PS I'm also still using my old Lightroom version 6 which needs to work too but I would consider reluctantly subscribing to the latest version if neccesary if I can not continue with the old version There may be more thorough performance tests elsewhere on the Internet, if you Google hard enough for them. But there were some posts on a third-party site that are encouraging: I didn't see anything on the Topaz site about performance on the M1, but I didn't look all that hard. If you have that, you can run Photoshop and the Denoise AI plug-in natively! However, Topaz now has a M1-native version of the Denoise AI plug-in. Rosetta 2 can't run applications in 'mixed mode' (e.g., M1 Photoshop with an Intel plug-in), so if you have older, Intel-only versions of the Topaz plug-ins, you'd have to run Photoshop under Rosetta emulation to use them.
I was wondering as the latest Topaz are not native M1 apps if they run quickly in Rosetta mode?
