Show HN: Free alternative to graphics design giants

97 points by sia_xi 13 hours ago on hackernews | 41 comments

Freak_NL | 7 hours ago

Tip: you are blocking text selection for the terms of use and in a number of other spots. People often use text selection to copy and paste words for a variety of reasons. Some people select blocks of text to help mark what they are reading, and some people use it to paste the words in a dictionary or translation service of their choice. (Or when making a bug report to copy the version number from the about screen.)

Don't block text selection for prose, only for UI elements.

[OP] sia_xi | 7 hours ago

thanks for the feedback and reporing the bug, the goal was to have the custom context menu instead of the browser one; but seems like that casued an error, will fix it asap.

robertclaus | 7 hours ago

FYI the initial modal sounds extremely AI generated.

[OP] sia_xi | 7 hours ago

thanks for the feedback, the Fox is a traced vector from a raster image and it's been added just to great users with some good vibes, and give user a wam feeling :D .

[OP] sia_xi | 6 hours ago

hopefuly I get some time and I personally create a nice vector and add it to the samples, some isometric catroon and doing it manually (there is a iso berlin that I am working but manual labor takes so much time...).

speps | 6 hours ago

I love a wam feeling

shinze | 6 hours ago

Really fast ! Do you plan to make this a local only app ?

[OP] sia_xi | 6 hours ago

It's a PWA and you can install it like a Native app, and as it's writen in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly it's almost as fast as a native app (and it does not send any user data to anywhere all the artwork stuff are fully local; the only thing that it send to the backend is no of users for analytics and users can opt-out in the setting).

haven't thought about it to be hoest, but now that we have AI I might be able to transalte it to Swift to make some MacOS version, or create a desktop app for Linux/... using Tauri

I was going to ask the same, perhaps do it myself as a side project. I see value in it, it definitely should be an app. Swift for MacOS, Rust for Linux (no tauri, react, nothing, just plain optimized rust)

DeepSeek can do it in the blink of an eye, here is what I would do:

- Copy the source to scissor-web, create an empty sibling folder scissor-macos and another as scissor-linux

- Run DeepSeek Harness, create a workspace pointing to scissor-macos start a session and tell DeepSeek to port your excellent app located in folder scissor-web using the latest swift for macos 26

- Watch magic performed for your own delight

- Once finished, do the same for scissor-linux

A couple of hours later you will have three beautiful apps for web, macos and linux. Then ask DeepSeek to translate them to chinese, french, german, italian, spanish, portuguese, russian, etc

Then you will see software development with different eyes

dylan604 | 6 hours ago

No render clouds?

[OP] sia_xi | 5 hours ago

It's a static SinglePage web applicaiton that runs everything completely locally on your machine. it also mean the better computer you have the better performance.

dylan604 | 5 hours ago

what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? you've totally missed a basic feature of the app that you're trying to replicate

popalchemist | 4 hours ago

It's a bit far fetched to imply rendering clouds is a core feature. This app is not even trying to be photoshop, where that would be expected, it's a design app, ala Figma.

[OP] sia_xi | 4 hours ago

Exactly, the primary idea is to edit vector files; Hoewever, I am trying to add features for raster files as well.

currently the raster editing features are not quite there yet, and I need time (a lot of time) to make it in a quality that doesn't drive user crazy (I'm first user to this app in the first place and I don't like it when it's not snappy and smooth)

[OP] sia_xi | 4 hours ago

I don't replicate, I am creating an aleternative for myself and people like me that they need an advanced app but can't afford to give an arm and a leg.

matteason | 5 hours ago

I think they mean the Filter > Render > Clouds feature in Photoshop rather than local vs cloud

dylan604 | 4 hours ago

you can't reason with a vibe coding bot

[OP] sia_xi | 4 hours ago

firstly I'm not a bot! I didn't understand the question correctly. Anyway thanks for pointing the gap, I will look into it

bsonmez19 | 5 hours ago

Gave it a quick try. The fact that it’s fully local and installable as a PWA is appealing. Performance felt solid in a short test.

[OP] sia_xi | 3 hours ago

thanks for trying it and I'm glad you liked it. I am planning to create a Feedback dialog that users can send feedback about the UI (with their consent and intent, so I can be aware of the bugs and gaps)

matteason | 5 hours ago

This looks really promising. Very snappy.

I might be missing it but there doesn't seem to be the equivalent of Illustrator's direct selection tool, for moving individual anchor points? There's the anchor point tool for adjusting the curve of an anchor point, but I can't move the anchor points themselves. I expected to find it under the pen tool menu.

[OP] sia_xi | 4 hours ago

for moving point by point you should select pointer tool (A) then click on the path after that you can move each pixel separetly; Thanks for letting me know the UX issue, I make it easier to access

fallinditch | 4 hours ago

I am not getting the sub menus to expand, e.g. create > pattern >

fallinditch | 4 hours ago

(Andoid - chrome, installed)

[OP] sia_xi | 3 hours ago

Sorry the UI on Mobile is work in progress and currently, it's not accessible via Mobile (small screens); my plan is to creeate a special touch friendly UI for mobile and I haven't finished the concept (UX wise).

popalchemist | 4 hours ago

Sweet!

[OP] sia_xi | 4 hours ago

thanks for positive energy <3

imskanand | 4 hours ago

This is so fast in the browser, really impressive. Congrats G!

[OP] sia_xi | 4 hours ago

thanks! it's the power of rust

yolandac | 3 hours ago

this blazing fast and smooth, never disappointed by rust

[OP] sia_xi | 2 hours ago

so true. the raster processing is slow for big files, but it's my fault and not Rust :D
Amazing work, well done!

I found a weird bug when using the glyph tool on Hebrew text. Where can I file an issue?

Also, are you planning to open the source?

[OP] sia_xi | 2 hours ago

Haven't decided on the OpenSource yet (I had a project back in the day called Open-Scissor but that is different).

Here is the bug report: - https://github.com/samalstudios/scissor-community/issues/new...

pooloo | 3 hours ago

How can I access this forever without fears of it going away? I hate changing things like workflows or interfaces really. How can I keep a copy locally to run it such that it no longer requires access to the web or freeze the current working version?

[OP] sia_xi | 3 hours ago

Hopefully, after finishing it fully, in future I'll create a native desktop version.

[Spoiler Alert] I am also thining about creating a LLM moder for vector generation with open weights that can be run by user, so we can have AI fearues as well (far in future)

mircerlancerous | 2 hours ago

A local web server would be fine for me; save yourself the time of creating another version of the same thing

[OP] sia_xi | 2 hours ago

Hey People,

In case you find some gaps or find out a bug, I really do appriciate if you report it here: - https://github.com/samalstudios/scissor-community/issues/new...

daredoes | 2 hours ago

Reminds me of https://photopea.com/

[OP] sia_xi | 2 hours ago

Photopea looks like a clone of Adobe Photoshop imo;and, it's a raster editing software and it's quite impressive to be fair.

https://scissor.studio/ is rather a vector first software that support raster editing as well; Also, it's not a replica/clone of an existing software. it has similar concepts and shortcut (for sake of helping user) however Scissor has many original Ideas (e.g. Isometric grid and grid shape maker, Perspective Grid, ... )

lmmjvs | 2 hours ago

Excellent work, love the micro-UI decisions here. Tired of paying for subscriptions to Adobe I built a similar tool called Pixel for myself and shared it with the community for free among other design apps: https://croma.io
Spectacular!

Just checking help/about Scissors shows how detail oriented you are. As the saying goes, you paint the wall at the back of the dishwasher so the plumber knows you have good taste