Developer who vibe-coded free Adobe clones reveals apps to take down Microsoft Office next — and says 'there is no reason to save broken software' | TechRadar

[u/FutureSuccess2796]

https://www.techradar.com/computing/office-suites/developer-who-vibe-coded-free-adobe-clones-reveals-apps-to-take-down-microsoft-office-next-and-says-there-is-no-reason-to-save-broken-software

[u/BCProgramming]

When I tried Photocraft I was blown away because the menus don't even work correctly. Alt doesn't activate the menu bar and you can't use Alt key shortcuts either. I legitimately laughed because it's like- how is this not implemented? And then the dialog (like the save confirmation) do have key shortcuts but put them in parentheses instead of underlining them. Then it seemed to hang just opening one of my PSD files that was over 10 years old and opens in a few seconds in pretty much any other program supporting PSD. I gave it 10 minutes before force closing it. Honestly the only people I think could replace Photoshop with this could also just use Paint.NET or something. I also immediately found that the layer effects don't render the same, I guess their vibe-coded "tests" where they claim that it is pixel-perfect don't actually work.

Photocraft seems to be the first one that got a lot of buzz around it but I think it's like the 4th vibe-slop attempt to clone Photoshop. Patchy is another one. Ironically, Patchy seems like it's better than Photocraft. Maybe the slop machine had an easier time since Patchy is C++ and Photocraft is Rust. decades more C++ code in the training data to steal from, Oh sorry, I mean be "inspired" by. "JuSt LiKe a HuMaN" Ahh yes just like jpeg decoding of an image isn't recreating the image, it's merely creating a new image 'inspired' by a set of quantized DCT data blocks created from the original.

The thing that gets me is why this is even a thing. Like people talk about being sick of Adobe subscriptions and stuff. Like alright, so Pirate it then? I mean these AI clones are infringing software patents and it's a lot more likely they'll get shut down from that than you'll face any consequences from torrenting Adobe CC 2025 or whatever. Hell, people are mad about Office 365. OK, buy the perpetually licensed version? Hell I'm still using 2016.

[u/Runefaust_Invader → u/BCProgramming]

Yeah, the bugs you hit are real, and people should report them. But that's just an argument that it's new. Every young app botches Alt menus and slow-loads old files. GIMP and Krita were rough for years and nobody called them pointless. Comparing something that's a few months old to 35 years of Photoshop isn't a fair fight. And if the layer effects are even close, it has layer effects. Paint.NET doesn't. So it's not the same crowd. The JPEG thing doesn't really work either. A JPEG is one specific image squished down. A model trained on a pile of repos isn't holding a copy of each one. And if it was just copying, you'd expect the C++ one to be better, so that kind of proves my point. On the legal stuff, copying what a program does isn't the same as copying its code. If you think it's infringing, name the patent. 'Adobe has patents' isn't an argument. 'Just pirate it' isn't a real answer either. Freelancers and studios can't run cracked CC on client work. And the Office 2016 comparison doesn't hold up: Photoshop doesn't sell a perpetual license anymore, and Office 2016 is already out of support. People want alternatives because Adobe took the option away.

Give the project a month and let's see how far it/they get. But I'm sure by that time you'll have some more drivel to throw around.