Strategy for installing plugins for native Photoshop ARM64 on Windows

Photoshop
1

Hello everyone,

I’m a Photoshop filters plugin developer currently adapting my product for the native ARM64 version of Photoshop on Windows.

I’m trying to determine the best practice for an installer to handle the architecture choice correctly. The SDK documentation doesn’t seem to cover this installation strategy in detail.

The Core Problem:
Even on an ARM64 Windows machine, a user could have either:

  1. The native ARM64 version of Photoshop.

  2. The x64 version of Photoshop, running through emulation.

This is especially relevant when installing to the common Program Files or AppData plugins directory, which might be shared.

I’ve researched this and received a suggestion (from an AI, to be transparent) about a potential method. It claims that the solution is to install both the x64 and ARM64 versions of the plugin into a specific folder structure, and Photoshop will silently load the correct architecture version while ignoring the incompatible one.

The proposed structure would look like this:

/Plug-ins/MyPlugin/x86/MyPlugin.8bf (x64 binary)
/Plug-ins/MyPlugin/arm64/MyPlugin.8bf (ARM64 binary)

My questions to the community are:

  1. Has anyone else implemented support for Photoshop ARM64 on Windows yet?

  2. Can anyone confirm if this multi-architecture folder structure is the officially recommended approach?

  3. Is it true that the ARM64 version of Photoshop will silently ignore the x86 folder ( the x64 version DOESNT ignore the arm64 folder), or does it show a warning?

  4. Are there any other documented or proven methods for handling this installation dilemma?

  5. Any insights, experiences, or pointers to documentation would be greatly appreciated.

  6. Thank you!