By the way, PhotoSuite is just a stolen copy of my project www.photopea.com , which I have been working on for 8 hours a day for the past ... 14 years? :D
It was discussed here on HN yesterday and then, the anonymous person behind it removed the "Issues" section completely from their Github
I think people aren't thinking enough about the second-order effects of this.
The immediate reaction is to ask whether any of these would be good enough to replace Photoshop (or Pixelmator or whatever). That's a first-order question and it's an open one --- you probably couldn't replace a real workflow with vibe Photoshop today, but I wouldn't bet against that being the case a year from now.
But the second-order questions include consideration of the people who can't use Photoshop, either because of cost or (to me, more importantly) because of lack of platform support.
In a world where 90% of the functionality of things like Photoshop and Word are replaceable with personal apps, how much does platform support matter anymore? How much do platforms matter anymore? I'm a committed macOS user and have been since the TiBook. Will I be 5 years from now? I'm deeply uncertain, but one thing I'm pretty sure of is that if I'm not a macOS user, I also won't be a Windows or Linux user.
Plus, most people don't use 90% of Photoshop. How does the saying go? "The average user only uses 10% of a software's features, but every user uses a different 10%."
Now, you can just prompt the 10% you need and not even have to use up your computer's resources with the rest of Photoshop. I didn't like a single one of the many Android TV video player apps. Most of them were way too big, had all kinds of features I didn't need, took a while to launch, had stupid "libraries" that you had to populate your videos into, and relied on third party lookup services to get things like movie posters and other metadata. Pre-2020 I would have just picked the least bad one and lived with it. Now, I just vibe-slopped a player app with only the features I want and nothing else.
I agree, this is the right direction to be thinking in. I’ve made a bunch of tools for myself with AI, been interested to see if I could release it, and found 10 open source projects that do some flavor of what I made, but with zero traction. I feel like the unlimited personalization of these types of apps is what’s going to prevent there from being “the free photoshop”, I think that everyone will just have their own personalized vibecoded photoshop that does exactly what they need.
I predicted something a few years ago that I still believe will come true: in time, you won't search YouTube for an existing, pre-recorded video that solves your itch, instead you'll describe a problem and a video will be generated in real-time, on the spot that meets your needs. This video will (legally, with consent) use the faces and voices of "YouTubers" (humans who have signed up their personality) to communicate with you. If you don't have subscriptions or the system wants to show you new "creators", then it'll still do what it does today plus generate new personalities that fit your profile - gay/heterosexual, male/female, 20-25 years old, etc.
The same applies to software: you'll describe a problem and a network of agents will write a solution faster than you can Google it, download it, install it, and start using it. It'll work with your accessibility requirements out of the box; it's UI will be in your language; the data will be stored where ever you like; and so on.
Will all these platforms just disappear? I think that the real winners will adapt to this new AI world, evolving their platforms around agent-based workflows.
Those who won’t will be just left behind (sadly)
Because of IP laws, I believe. Even China can't rip Apple's trackpad tech and copy it because they _really_ like having iPhones made and sold in China... can't rock that boat. But if the latter wasn't true, you'd have 500 brands with an Apple-like or better trackpad.
I don't know if I believe that. Nobody seems to be reaching for absolute top shelf quality anymore. You have Apple, then you have every other computer maker battling it out to try to win the "low cost plastic junk" market. A few of them have a "premium" tier which itself is still comparatively low-cost and sub-par.
I feel like a major problem here is that people are more interested in vibeslopping their own Photoshop clone than contributing to an existing one. This results in a situation where theres a million clones that split the market and don't gain any traction.
You can view it as a problem, or a point on a trend line where building software becomes ever easier and cheaper. If you follow that trend far enough, when you need for something Photoshop-shaped, you ask for it, and you get exactly the functionality you need. If you need it to do something PS doesn't, that capability just appears.
I've said it in other venues, but we're reaching a point where using someone else's software is like chewing someone else's gum.
One thing I don’t get about “personal software” is - why would you want something photoshop shaped, when you can describe what your image should look like? Most common issue - passport photos with specific background requirements and aspect ratios. Just take a photo on your phone, ask Gemini to meet the specs - you are done.
Yes. None of these developers are seemingly as interested in the project as they are in the fiefdom. It’s a widespread problem in AI-driven development.
Nobody really needs a perfect Photoshop clone, they need an image editor for their particular workflow. Photoshop excels, in a way, because it handle almost every potential workflow -- one product for many users.
But if I'm vibe-coding an app for myself, I only want it to what I want it to do. One product for one user.
"An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust".
They also have:
VectorCraft Vector illustration;
FilmCraft Video editing, color and sound;
LightCraft Photo library and raw development;
PrintCraft Reading, organizing and protecting PDF;
EffectCraft Motion graphics and visual effects;
DesignCraft Page layout and publishing
For people interested in a Photoshop clone, https://www.photopea.com/ was amazing long before LLMs existed. It runs in the browser and was built by a single person!
So far it’s GPU accelerated (GPUI), cross platform, supports 95% of excel functions, supports charts, is about 40x faster than Numbers, and can render 240fps.
I thought I’d leave this process with a new appreciation for manual dev/details. I haven’t found that yet. I’m getting more into architecture details, writing more benchmarks, testing more. I know there are limits, but I’m still trying to find them.
It would be absolute garbage if I wasn’t already and engineer. It probably is absolute garbage in ways I don’t know because I haven’t read the code. But the app is… quite good.
Honestly, if this topples Adobe from its unearned throne then fantastic. Adobe’s monopoly is a disgrace to design software and their apps should’ve gotten a lot more attention throughout the years than they have enjoyed historically—especially in the age of AI, where everything they do seems to be focused entirely on their useless Firefly being shoved into every corner of every app, bloating the hell out of already bloated as fuck software.
I’m forced to use Adobe’s apps because they are the golden standard at the moment but I wish with all my heart this to not be the case anymore.
Adobe fucking sucks.
Side-note to whomever attempts to build a new Photoshop: workshop better names. The ones on the article are woefully bad to the point of hilarity.
Adobe's unearned throne? Monopoly?
There's much to criticize with Adobe but what makes you say these specific things? They made the best software for their specific field and have been reaping the rewards for a long time. I feel like that throne is(was?) pretty earned.
And how are they in a monopoly position? Is this about proprietary formats or something else? Genuinely interested to know about this if it wasn't just hyperbole.
By the way, PhotoSuite is just a stolen copy of my project www.photopea.com , which I have been working on for 8 hours a day for the past ... 14 years? :D
It was discussed here on HN yesterday and then, the anonymous person behind it removed the "Issues" section completely from their Github
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49972730
https://replayweb.page/?source=https://archive.org/cors/gith...
Photopea is a great tool. I am sorry about the ripoff by PhotoSuite.
Hey, huge fan and user of photopea. You are not far behind the VLC guy, u/jbk in my personal world view :)
If I may ask, if you were to do this all over again in 2024 - 2026, would you choose SSR?
edit: if so, Sveltekit?
I think people aren't thinking enough about the second-order effects of this.
The immediate reaction is to ask whether any of these would be good enough to replace Photoshop (or Pixelmator or whatever). That's a first-order question and it's an open one --- you probably couldn't replace a real workflow with vibe Photoshop today, but I wouldn't bet against that being the case a year from now.
But the second-order questions include consideration of the people who can't use Photoshop, either because of cost or (to me, more importantly) because of lack of platform support.
In a world where 90% of the functionality of things like Photoshop and Word are replaceable with personal apps, how much does platform support matter anymore? How much do platforms matter anymore? I'm a committed macOS user and have been since the TiBook. Will I be 5 years from now? I'm deeply uncertain, but one thing I'm pretty sure of is that if I'm not a macOS user, I also won't be a Windows or Linux user.
Plus, most people don't use 90% of Photoshop. How does the saying go? "The average user only uses 10% of a software's features, but every user uses a different 10%."
Now, you can just prompt the 10% you need and not even have to use up your computer's resources with the rest of Photoshop. I didn't like a single one of the many Android TV video player apps. Most of them were way too big, had all kinds of features I didn't need, took a while to launch, had stupid "libraries" that you had to populate your videos into, and relied on third party lookup services to get things like movie posters and other metadata. Pre-2020 I would have just picked the least bad one and lived with it. Now, I just vibe-slopped a player app with only the features I want and nothing else.
I agree, this is the right direction to be thinking in. I’ve made a bunch of tools for myself with AI, been interested to see if I could release it, and found 10 open source projects that do some flavor of what I made, but with zero traction. I feel like the unlimited personalization of these types of apps is what’s going to prevent there from being “the free photoshop”, I think that everyone will just have their own personalized vibecoded photoshop that does exactly what they need.
I predicted something a few years ago that I still believe will come true: in time, you won't search YouTube for an existing, pre-recorded video that solves your itch, instead you'll describe a problem and a video will be generated in real-time, on the spot that meets your needs. This video will (legally, with consent) use the faces and voices of "YouTubers" (humans who have signed up their personality) to communicate with you. If you don't have subscriptions or the system wants to show you new "creators", then it'll still do what it does today plus generate new personalities that fit your profile - gay/heterosexual, male/female, 20-25 years old, etc.
The same applies to software: you'll describe a problem and a network of agents will write a solution faster than you can Google it, download it, install it, and start using it. It'll work with your accessibility requirements out of the box; it's UI will be in your language; the data will be stored where ever you like; and so on.
Will all these platforms just disappear? I think that the real winners will adapt to this new AI world, evolving their platforms around agent-based workflows. Those who won’t will be just left behind (sadly)
People are already vibe-coding some of my extremely niche open source projects onto other platforms.
That kinda depends on another manufacturer making a laptop with MacBook-level: battery life, screen, touchpad.
Which is apparently impossible.
Because of IP laws, I believe. Even China can't rip Apple's trackpad tech and copy it because they _really_ like having iPhones made and sold in China... can't rock that boat. But if the latter wasn't true, you'd have 500 brands with an Apple-like or better trackpad.
I don't know if I believe that. Nobody seems to be reaching for absolute top shelf quality anymore. You have Apple, then you have every other computer maker battling it out to try to win the "low cost plastic junk" market. A few of them have a "premium" tier which itself is still comparatively low-cost and sub-par.
Throwing my conspiracy theory in here...
Who does Jony Ive work for now?
Oh, I assume I'll still be using a Macbook.
I feel like a major problem here is that people are more interested in vibeslopping their own Photoshop clone than contributing to an existing one. This results in a situation where theres a million clones that split the market and don't gain any traction.
I'll stick to gimp I guess.
You can view it as a problem, or a point on a trend line where building software becomes ever easier and cheaper. If you follow that trend far enough, when you need for something Photoshop-shaped, you ask for it, and you get exactly the functionality you need. If you need it to do something PS doesn't, that capability just appears.
I've said it in other venues, but we're reaching a point where using someone else's software is like chewing someone else's gum.
One thing I don’t get about “personal software” is - why would you want something photoshop shaped, when you can describe what your image should look like? Most common issue - passport photos with specific background requirements and aspect ratios. Just take a photo on your phone, ask Gemini to meet the specs - you are done.
Yes. None of these developers are seemingly as interested in the project as they are in the fiefdom. It’s a widespread problem in AI-driven development.
Nobody really needs a perfect Photoshop clone, they need an image editor for their particular workflow. Photoshop excels, in a way, because it handle almost every potential workflow -- one product for many users.
But if I'm vibe-coding an app for myself, I only want it to what I want it to do. One product for one user.
What workflow do you have that no existing image editing application will suffice?
I'm just going to leave this right here: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft
"An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust".
They also have: VectorCraft Vector illustration; FilmCraft Video editing, color and sound; LightCraft Photo library and raw development; PrintCraft Reading, organizing and protecting PDF; EffectCraft Motion graphics and visual effects; DesignCraft Page layout and publishing
For people interested in a Photoshop clone, https://www.photopea.com/ was amazing long before LLMs existed. It runs in the browser and was built by a single person!
One not mentioned in the article, but being built by someone I know is https://schist.app/
Photoshop is currently offered for $260+ per year, hard to imagine a world where this stays the same 12 months from now.
I’m vibecoding an excel in rust, for roughly the same reason in this post: what can’t be done, what are the limits.
https://github.com/scosman/freecell
So far it’s GPU accelerated (GPUI), cross platform, supports 95% of excel functions, supports charts, is about 40x faster than Numbers, and can render 240fps.
I thought I’d leave this process with a new appreciation for manual dev/details. I haven’t found that yet. I’m getting more into architecture details, writing more benchmarks, testing more. I know there are limits, but I’m still trying to find them.
It would be absolute garbage if I wasn’t already and engineer. It probably is absolute garbage in ways I don’t know because I haven’t read the code. But the app is… quite good.
>If anyone can now vibecode their own software, why haven’t we seen any viable replacements
Then
>can this be done” at all? (...) The mere existence of these tools is proof that it can be done.
Then
>DISCLAIMER: I obviously can’t know whether any of these projects were definitely “vibe-coded”, but it also doesn’t matter
..????
We’ve vibecoded internal photoshop capabilities for enterprise graphics design teams for the last 6 months
Opus et all are able to do everything needed client side
Honestly, if this topples Adobe from its unearned throne then fantastic. Adobe’s monopoly is a disgrace to design software and their apps should’ve gotten a lot more attention throughout the years than they have enjoyed historically—especially in the age of AI, where everything they do seems to be focused entirely on their useless Firefly being shoved into every corner of every app, bloating the hell out of already bloated as fuck software.
I’m forced to use Adobe’s apps because they are the golden standard at the moment but I wish with all my heart this to not be the case anymore.
Adobe fucking sucks.
Side-note to whomever attempts to build a new Photoshop: workshop better names. The ones on the article are woefully bad to the point of hilarity.
Adobe's unearned throne? Monopoly? There's much to criticize with Adobe but what makes you say these specific things? They made the best software for their specific field and have been reaping the rewards for a long time. I feel like that throne is(was?) pretty earned.
And how are they in a monopoly position? Is this about proprietary formats or something else? Genuinely interested to know about this if it wasn't just hyperbole.
> Honestly, if this topples Adobe from its unearned throne then fantastic.
Why is their throne unearned? They created and continue to maintain their software, which is, as you said, still considered the gold standard.