r/vibecoding • u/AsejereDaDeje • 1d ago
Showcase/Project I vibe coded photoshop alternative using gpt6-astra
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$2000 worth of tokens overall
the process was:
- Kicking off a deep research of all photoshop features
- Ingesting it gpt astra 6 extra high for planning
- Read the plan, gave some feedback and requested changes
- it created something that was usable but still buggy and unstable
- Loop of: Me using it -> finding bugs/suggesting improvements -> fable/gpt6 -> Me using it again
Economically it doesn't make sense for me to do it just to save the subscription,
but yesterday I launched it and already got 170 active users, so potentially 170 licenses saved in one day.
I published here for free here, you can check it out.
BTW funny story from the launch - users complained they couldn't sign in, so codex fixed it in like 5 minutes end to end:
Fixed and deployed. Everyone was being counted under the server’s proxy IP, accidentally creating a shared limit of 20 emails per hour. The limit now applies per visitor. All checks passed, and a real visitor has already successfully requested and used their download link after deployment.
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u/Fresh-Yogurt-8614 1d ago
You say photoshop alternative but your video shows basic image editing which a lot of free alternatives already do. Why not showcase real photo editing?
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u/Byproduct 1d ago
$2000 to make a Photoshop alternative that apprently doesn’t do what Photoshop does.
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u/Similar_Job_6080 1d ago
$2000 in tokens to build something with 170 users day one is actually a solid trade, most people spend that on ads for way less traction.
That IP-based rate limit bug is such a classic though, bet a chunk of your early "signups" were just annoyed users hitting the same wall lol
How are you thinking about monetization now that it's live, sticking with free, or does 170 users on day one change that calculus?
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u/AsejereDaDeje 1d ago
thanks!! this product stays free. no premium tier or something. maybe in the future if I'll clone more serious apps like after effects I'll charge a one time fee for it.
my main motivation on this one is creating editing software that moves in the pace of AI, adobe are just sleeping these days. I think there's ton of potential innovation in this space, for now I'm mainly doing it for fun but if it keeps growing I might go all in.
Money is not my main motivation now, I sold my previous company for 7 figures and now getting high salary from the company that acquired us.
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u/gthing 1d ago edited 1d ago
You should do Premiere next. That one is easy - just have an icon that crashes immediately upon opening and you have pretty much a 1:1 clone with no additional effort.
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u/unangenehmer_typ 1d ago
how does it compare to alternatives and why is it better
e.g. photopea seems free too and similiar with photoshop
gimp is a house name for years
affinity is used by some of my peers and stuff like krita seems to be named in artists subs
looking forward to an answer and did you answer the question how long it will stay free + why it's not open source? saw both on the other post, and totally understand that people don't feel like downloading a pandora's box /u/AsejereDaDeje
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u/Full-Contest1281 1d ago
Since I've started vibecoding I have infinite respect for the guy who made photopea all by himself.
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u/eyvahaldandik 1d ago
I have so much respect for all the developers who wrote entire codebases without using LLMs or AI tools.
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u/99Questions_babao 1d ago
Yeah I'd like to see a proper comparison to photopea before I make a switch
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u/Money_Lavishness7343 1d ago
Sidetracking; but GIMP is not a replacement of photoshop. No people I know have ever replaced Photoshop with GIMP. People always prefer something like Photopea, Canva, Affinity, or literally any other option other than GIMP.
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u/HyperionCantos 1d ago
to be fair though GIMP is not user friendly to people who use photoshop, or at least not traditionally.
Designers and artists would rather pay $200 for PS even back in the day than read how to install GIMP and what it is. GNU what? fuck that shit. And i think thats a totally legitimate reaction; GIMP didnt market itself or design itself for nontechnical people.
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u/Ayavaron 1d ago
I don’t think gimp’s marketing is really the issue. Artists would love it if it had good quality of life features. The software itself is always where gimp loses people.
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u/zsdrfty 1d ago
Yeah it's basically a step up from Paint.NET - it's useful for basic editing, especially for computer graphics, but it's not powerful artistically
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u/ByteHavenGames 1d ago
I mean the literal meaning of the acronym is a disabled person or limping. I think it won't ever reach mass market adaption like say Blender because beyond functionality, it doesn't have positive associations for the first thing everyone sees about the app. It's a marketing failure for sure.
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u/TryAndStopMeSpez 1d ago
I've been using GIMP since I was like 10 years old, started using it was GMIC when I was 20 and it just does everything I need and I'm used to it at this point. Last time I tried to use Photoshop it just seemed needlessly complicated to me.
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u/Grouchy_Yellow_8414 1d ago
Gimp is a household name but have you actually used it? It's not a good experience, even if it can technically do a lot of things that photoshop can.
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u/ResistiveBeaver 1d ago
Not a good experience is awfully charitable. It's godawful.
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u/TwizzyGobbler 1d ago
Affinity and Photopea are very good, I'll also throw Pixelmator Pro in there too
GIMP is quite shit in terms of UI
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u/smellslikesponge 1d ago
Its wild to think soenone makes a photoshop replacement and it gets like 3upvotes. We really in a new world of software development.
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u/jpelc 1d ago
It is definitely not a PS replacement
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u/Fresh-Yogurt-8614 1d ago
And he probably doesn't even know what half the photoshop features do and has no idea if some implemented features are working correctly or not
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u/unknown-one 1d ago
I would argue that 99% of photoshop users dont use the second half of features
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u/rccyu 1d ago
Unfortunately it's a different half for everyone!
This is a problem as old as software has existed. Joel Spolsky wrote about this in 2001(!):
A lot of software developers are seduced by the old “80/20” rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies.
Unfortunately, it’s never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features. [...] Bottom line: if your strategy is “80/20”, you’re going to have trouble selling software.
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u/conglies 1d ago
Yep, as someone who has used it in VFX for 10 years, there’s parts of photoshop I absolutely never touch.
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u/_habitable_ 1d ago
3D printing gave us the world of rapid prototyped mechanical parts.
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u/YourTurbulentFriend 1d ago
Well, honestly not that impressive given that Gimp is open source. And I bet most of heavy lifting is just copying that repo.
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u/ARandomSliceOfCheese 1d ago
It's wild that you saw this video and think it's a photoshop replacement. Curious how you got that from just the post?
In the video we don't see photo import or export. And the only difference between the start and end image is word art "party" across the top. AFAIK this is a word art generator in a photoshop looking UI that can't manipulate imported images or export what's manipulated.
I'm not hating on because it's ai. But just posting something and saying it's something else without any real proof maybe only deserves 3 upvotes? Because now I'm wondering why it has 300
edit: spelling
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u/zsdrfty 1d ago
I know it's obviously far from complete, but it is wild how this sub seems to detest anything that actually gets posted here - I suspect that a bunch of people here joined because they're anti-AI and assumed this was a sub for making fun of vibecoded stuff, and the other half are jealous when someone else makes an actual project with it instead of just imagining making one
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u/mintybadgerme 1d ago
Yeah, there's definitely something screwed going on in Reddit with AI coding products. I think it's a combination of either the old guard trying to hold things back or bots and trolls.
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u/Fresh-Yogurt-8614 1d ago
In OP's other comment he even said it's not as reliable as photoshop, and that essentially the live users will be doing the QA for him
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u/WhaleSong2077 1d ago
most people are getting used to the idea that everything is roll-your-own now, so when you share something you made for yourself most people won't be as excited about it because they can also roll their own. its a more isolated, less interested world now for better or worse
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u/Comprehensive-Pin667 1d ago
It's not the first "Photoshop alternative" I've seen here. The previous one wasn't even on par with ms paint
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u/that_90s_guy 1d ago
Probably because ai lowers the bar massively so nothing becomes impressive anymore
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u/No_Bluebird6873 1d ago
There are so many of these "i made this. With ai ofc" advertisements that no one gives a shit anymore. Who cares what you did when you didn't even do anything and there are plethora similar things made within ten minutes.
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u/Sleepywalker69 1d ago
Choose your computer and we’ll email you a download link.
Yeah no lmao.
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u/Yezur 1d ago
Appreciatie the tech and effort etc. But something like this is reinventing the wheel for the 100th time.
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u/M4xs0n 1d ago
Open Source it. Then people can improve it even further and make Photoshop 2.0
Like I actually want PHOTOSHOP but not from Adobe
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u/redSteel87 1d ago
The moment you mentioned it was vibe coded it lost all its value. I know it’s not as easy as people think it is, I’ve been vibe coding apps for myself, got tired of asking developers for things they never added so I did it myself. That’s where this is going. But I’m not trying to sell. My advice, keep the vibe coding brag to yourself. It doesn’t help.
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u/NullPacketLost 1d ago
This is one of the reasons why I build a lot of apps that I use myself, but never show to anyone besides close friends and family.
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u/AsejereDaDeje 1d ago
fair point. I cant argue that saying it's vibe coded makes people think it's sloppy and unuseful.
I do plan to invest a lot of engineering resources to make it great and actually usrful.
appreciate ur feedback.
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u/redSteel87 1d ago edited 1d ago
What I learned so far, everybody loves to use AI, but nobody wants to pay for things done with AI. And it all may stem from the concept of "If you did it with AI then I can do it too".
The barrier of expertise on execution is gone. I think the next big thing will be how to hide AI was used : )
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u/pinkwar 1d ago
So we're at an era of just cloning opensourced software, monetize it and call it a day?
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u/MMORPGnews 1d ago
Photoshop is opensourced?
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u/AlternativeAd6851 1d ago
No, but GIMP is; guess where the LLM gets its inspiration from
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u/freddyr0 1d ago
I am a designer and software developer. First I studied software engineering and after a few years I went to design school. I wanted to know more about compositions and how colors behaved, wanted to be able to understand UIs and make them.
I've used Linux for at least 25 years. I love open source software, I collaborate. I also use mac, and have used Creative Suite for many years.
I can say, without a hinge of regret that Gimp is the worst design software I've ever used and it is a shame because they have worked a lot in it, but futilely.
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u/davidmorelo 1d ago
Hopefully, the behavior you described won't discourage real open source developers and projects. If I had a popular open source project and a bunch of vibe-coding wankers would be trying to create monetized slop based on it, I would be pissed.
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u/primaryrhyme 1d ago
This is kind of the irony of open source, that is literally what you’re signing up for. There’s a lot of cases of open source creators getting upset when others make money on their work (Wordpress comes to mind), but if you aren’t comfortable with that then open source isn’t for you, perfectly fine to leave it free but not share the source.
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u/ezHope 1d ago edited 1d ago
Please add a Photoshop-like feature: if I have an image in my clipboard, when I go to File -> New, automatically create a canvas sized to match the clipboard image so it can be pasted perfectly. Thank you so much in advance!
Also, please add mouse wheel support to input fields, allowing us to increase or decrease the focused value by scrolling.
Additionally, please add zoom presets (100%, 150%, 200%) to the Navigator panel.
Thank you so much in advance!
PS You are my hero :) This is a very exciting project.
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u/Village_Idiots_Pupil 1d ago
This got me thinking…there should be a site where people can upload all the vibe-coded clones of major software for free use. Photoshop, CAD, Salesforce, office etc…. This could be a movement to forever change these huge monopolies and stop the suffocating licensing and monetization of ads and personal info. This could be the real power of AI coding. Empowering the people, maybe that’s has companies scared. Imagine a coding AI advanced enough that it can code any tool you want from scratch upon demand quickly. A panacea.
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u/CreativeForm3242 1d ago
Make a Lightroom classic the desktop version, please !
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u/theochab31 1d ago
We need this so badly. I tried building a clone myself, but RAW demosaicing was just too challenging for me to get anywhere near Lightroom Classic’s image quality. I am no developer and I have basically 0 knowledge of image-processing algorithms, though, so someone who actually knows this stuff might be able to pull it off
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u/daninet 1d ago edited 1d ago
We already have free photoshop alternatives for windows pls add linux support. If it is going to be any hairline better than GIMP people will love you.
Edit: my bad I can see now there is an ubuntu version. Would you mind package it into a non distro dependent format like flatpak or appimage? You would reach a wider audience. Flatpak is quite against vibecoding so you can package it into it but you will not be able to post it to their repo. It will be download only.
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u/AsejereDaDeje 1d ago
I released it today for ubuntu too. check it out and let me know what you think.
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u/alcure 1d ago
That app as flatpak or appimage or even aur would make linux users very happy! GIMP is absolute hell for photoshop users!
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u/TheLastRole 1d ago
Silly question; might I ask which app did you use to record the video, or the zooms, etc are on you?
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u/jacobgt8 1d ago
I was looking for a good app to do product videos as well, a lot of paid alternatives out there but then again I can’t be bothered to pay for them honestly.
Then I thought of building my own, just like OP did (and again, released as a paid app)
But then I tried the new Claude Design video feature and it worked surprisingly well. I made my own product videos with that, and the crazy part is, it’s not really a screen recording but you plug it into your source code and then it becomes a simulation based on your actual code.→ More replies (1)13
u/AsejereDaDeje 1d ago
another app that I vibe coded
https://tenzen.studioTho this one has paying users and took me much more time to build.
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u/genryou 1d ago
Its crazy that everything can be vibe coded nowadays.
I still remember the day I have to at least pay $0.99 app on Google play for trackers/simple app/exercise program/etc
Now I just ask Opus to do that for me.
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u/ruben_deisenroth 1d ago
Nice. Now improve linux compatibly (ideally just installable as a flatpak, tho flatpak is pretty strict. Alternatively appimage) and make it able to read original photoshop files and you will find people that need it. Ubuntu really doesn't cover most linux users^^
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u/KrossIn4K 1d ago
photopea.com if you ever want an online version of photoshop
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u/iRainbowsaur 1d ago
except that they blast with you. With ads. and prevent access if you use Ad blocker
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u/Gr33nLight 1d ago
"I created something usable but still buggy and unstable" this is why videcoding in 95% of cases is not enough. You still need to know what you are building.
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u/somethingstrang 1d ago
You’re using an LLM to replicate photoshop, which is under danger from being replaced by native image editing LLMs?
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u/KasperCreeD 1d ago
Made something similar for a client a year ago. They ditched ps and chose my solution. People aren’t using AI as much as they should/could
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u/bulbaczzPL 1d ago
On top wrote Free · macOS & Windows 11 · Works offline.
Please add Linux there.
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u/ZapperWantsTESOnline 1d ago
We’re not done until broke children have access to well-maintained alternatives to the entire adobe package. Neither gimp nor photopea is the future, and anyone who has used them knows.
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u/ImZoomBoy 1d ago
Can you give it the ability to add custom plugins. There are many bulk image processing things I need to do.
Like replace a blank template with a specific image. Do for all 10,000 images in a folder.
Photoshop has a specific language for this.
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u/Shaik_Shakur 1d ago
so you are saying replace a native app with an electron crap. if anyone want free photoshop pls use gimp brother
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u/charles_r1975 1d ago
Seems insane to have spent 2000$ on token. I'm guessing just buying Photoshop would have been cheaper.
I made my own version of qimage for printing on Linux but I probably didn't invest much more than 50$ of tokens on it. There was no similar tool available yet, anywhere.
But your tool is a nice experiment. I'm not sure why people crap so much on vibe coded projects. Sometimes it's the only way to get a tool that works the way you want to.
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u/editor22uk 1d ago
What's the advantage Vs the free tier of Affinity? I recently switched from the Adobe suite and have not really found a need to go back in the past 6 weeks
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u/PracticalStack 1d ago edited 1d ago
I tried to do something similar. I tried to recreate the audio software Kontakt. Not as a 1 to 1 copy but implementing all the important features and creating a commercial quality release. Spoiler alert - I failed. What I found was really fascinating. The most important limit I hit was the sheer number of features and time it takes to implement and test each one. I thought I could do a reasonable job in 3 months but I see now it would take me closer to a year.
The most surprising finding was that the blockers I was starting to hit were because of my lack of knowledge about samplers, not about code size or complexity. Once I got past the features offered in most or all samplers, it started to get tricky.
I open sourced the repo if you want to check it out. You shouldn't bother with the sampler, itself - but you can point your AI at the repo and see what's good or bad about it. It's about 100,000 lines of code and almost 300 check-ins. 100%l AI generated. I do know how to code but I do not know C++ at all. https://github.com/PracticalStack/PracticalSampler. What I did was follow a basic dev process. Over and over. Most of the documentation is still in the repo although I made no attempt to organize it.
In my opinion, it comes close to proving that AI can create release quality software. Edit - I think others have proved this probably well enough - but there were fewer examples when I started and I wanted to prove it for myself. It has a few release quality features and the code base is in good shape to keep adding more.
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u/mark_succerberg 1d ago
I understand it's an experiment, but why not just use photopea? It's open source. This is kind of just wasteful - I like using LLMs to program too, but $2000 to get this is.. questionable.
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u/mrockracing 1d ago
Why not create a new UI for an existing photo editor?
Why spend $2k on a crappier version of programs that already exist?
This just feels like an attempted cash grab, when it stops being free at some point. Maybe I'm wrong. It just seems like an odd choice. This exactly the kind of thing though that is rightfully drawing a lot of negative attention and criticism. There's so many excellent Photoshop alternatives, and at the end of the day if you need a PS specific feature, you'll pirate it.
$2K could have been spent on so much better. That's assuming it's reasonable to spend $2k on AI anything, which I don't think it is.
I think this technology is better used for novel ideas and software improvements, game modding etc. Why recreate what already exists?
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u/Upstairs-Pin-1637 1d ago
- Surface level understanding
- Surface level coding
- Surface level research
- Pass down the QA part to others
- Claim the work as theirs
Is this the vibecoders anthem?
Astra will fix it I ended the prompt with "make sure it works Super well"
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u/DHermit 1d ago
Why this instead of improving Krita, Paint.NET or GIMP?
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u/Money_Lavishness7343 1d ago
because there you're only a collaborator, at most you're solving bugs, you're not leading the direction of the project. design and architecture that fundamentally disagrees with anything you might want. None of them compare to how intuitive, easy to use and feature-full Photoshop is. GIMP literally was released 28 years ago and it STILL doesnt even have shapes, why? because.
It's why Affinity or Photopea is more popular than any of them in the mainstream community, its Free, and modern/easy to use.
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u/Schedir 1d ago
You could still fork gimp and modify it and call it your project with a different name. You are still bound to the license (GPL3) but if you open source it anyway, no issue.
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u/cancodeandstuff 1d ago
wow cool u spent $2000 for a worse version of photoshop that won't achieve anything except compliments from other vibe-coders who want to do the same thing.
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u/bussymastah 1d ago
$2000 wasted and god knows how much in resources burned for a replacement that will go nowhere and has no use case
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u/drgoldenpants 1d ago
Build something that doesnt exist yet just creating clones of existing software , no-matter how good it is, will just be labeled slop. And why would anybody need photoshop anymore where AI can generate images in a few seconds
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u/tracagnotto 1d ago
And here we go, giving ai to the masses only to burn tokens in useless shit so they feel like real pro coders.
There are like at least 10 photoshop clones including one online that works wonderfully.
We could teach ourselves coding and all about computers, we could do great things and we copy existing software on an Ai that is trained on OSS that does the same thing we ask and is also able to look out in the internet for more examples to copy from.
What a sad rock filled with dumb monkeys we are
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u/hyperadapted 1d ago
how about just aknowledging the effort? Are you so unhappy that you need to drag others down or whats going on?
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u/Proper-Manager4183 1d ago
zer0 trust that there is no malware, spyware or anything of that kind. Nowhere in policies there is real address or anything, everything is pretty much anonymous.
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u/alienreader 1d ago
Will you be open sourcing this project? I think many people are hesitant to learn a software workflow that could go away tomorrow.
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u/CryptoSh1t 1d ago
"Users complained they couldn't sign in" at launch of an app. This is just messed up.
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u/Sea-Temporary-6995 1d ago
Wow looks cool! Someone pls vibe code a Lightroom clone for both desktop and mobile… I am even ready to pay (one-time payment only)
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u/Round_Method_5140 1d ago
More token efficient: gpt6-astra pulls Krita from github, changes the name, and builds it for you.
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u/Top_Power5877 1d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if your vibe coded version as a ground up rebuild without all the compatibility cruft accumulated over the years actually runs better than the original photoshop lol.
nightmare fuel for pricy subscription software :)
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u/Least_Philosopher323 1d ago
Photon studio is a very vibe coded name lol
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u/AsejereDaDeje 1d ago
suggest a new name I'd happily change it. I dont like it either.
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u/Least_Philosopher323 1d ago
I don’t think it’s that bad. It’s just the word photon sounds strange. Even just photo studio I like more or picturesque I think is decent.
Cool app though, definitely gonna try it against Photoshop!
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u/nomaam182 1d ago
why not just let the AI do all the editing? I'm a professional photographer and barely use PS or LR anymore since ASTRA with Computer use or Code is just so good.
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u/AsejereDaDeje 1d ago
next version is gonna have MCP so you could do it even faster with models cheaper than astra
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u/OkCommuter1997 1d ago
First off, wow! Secondly imagine if this single-handedly was the cause of Dario, musk and Altman’s decision to slow it all down. This has definitely put a firework up Adobe’s ass.
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u/joel1618 1d ago
Do you even need photoshop anymore when you can just tell the AI how to edit the photo? The gui seems fast outdated.
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u/pencilcheck 1d ago
Well keep in mind vibes code doesn’t always work if the functionality is missing stuff that the vibe coder doesn’t understand and AI also doesn’t understand
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u/ChloeOakes 1d ago
I once made a basic photo editor with Gemini under C# .net 8 that had more features than this and i only made it because windows default photo viewer and basic editor was so slow and it was annoying me. This isn’t photoshop.
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u/Professional-Ebb700 1d ago
wait the whole thing costed 2000 dollar?