Even if it works despite being AI slop that’s been developed in a mere 4 days (?) and somehow has all these contributors, I’m not sure I agree with the idea.
It’s cool that they went with Rust for it, but I would have much preferred if all that effort went towards improving GIMP and existing open formats.
If it works then I guess it’s the same end result at the end of the day, but it would suck if GIMP doesn’t end up being the one to put a nail on Photoshop’s coffin after all these years of serious development by humans.
Edit: I already see the kneejerk dislikes coming, I’m just interested in starting a conversation about the idea of it, I also dislike the fact that it’s AI slop as I already implied. I’d appreciate joining the conversation instead of dislike bombing with no argument.
From their own documentation:
Just what I want in my editing software, the assurance that my saved files will mostly render properly when reopened in the same program…
This is exactly what will sink any attempts to do similar things, it’s not the broad functionality of the software, it’s all the billions of edge cases.
The LLMs will be able to get all the general requirements mostly right, and that’s where it will stop. The subtle errors and bugs will pile up steadily as the codebase grows too large and complex for even frontier models to accurately summarize, and the people who vibed it to begin with don’t actually understand what is happening, so they can’t troubleshoot effectively.
Automated bug reports will pile up, agents will be dispatched in greater numbers, leading to cost issues and further complicating and compounding the errors in a bloated and convoluted codebase. The leads of the project will get burned out and abandon the project, leaving a giant, rotting, husk behind. Software that was forever, “almost working properly.”
They aren’t saying that opening and saving their own files corrupts. They are saying their psd saving is 99% the same as adobe’s.
Most of these are very modular, so should be very easy to maintain. I guess we’ll just have to see.
That describes how I feel about MS Word quite well.