Is it my imagination or have there been a bunch of similar submissions in the last week? Is one-shotting the Adobe suite in Rust the new pelican on a bicycle?
I've seen these posted and amplified in a few places over the past few days now, has anyone who is familiar with the adobe suite actually tried these in depth and can comment on their fidelity/quality?
I tried Lightcraft (Lightroom alternative) for some color correction. It worked fine and the UI is very similar to Lightroom. Though I must disclose I'm not an advanced Lightroom user by any means.
Yes, like last time this was brought up, you can criticize them as both vibe-coded and far from complete, but their Illustrator clone Vectorcraft is quite functional at least -- I think it is more useful than Inkscape now, even in its incomplete form.
I've only seen one of those -- the first I think. If you are criticizing that it is being brought up too often, you might be right -- I'm just a user, not the developer or submitter.
In discussions about 'coding being solved' and the ability to produce large, well working projects with AI, a common question was why we do not see a vibecoded PhotoShop clone then.
This claims to be that.
It's relevant for discussion here about the quality of vibecoded software.
I wonder which Adobe apps do they mean. From the screenshots/videos it looks like it has zero overlap with the functionality of Photoshop or Illustrator. This is just a slop generator.
It can only be an alternative if 1) it is an exact clone of Adobe apps including feature set and the UI/UX, or 2) it has a different design but provides the same features along with good UX and can help user complete various tasks effectively (which requires tons of UX research on its own). Even small details can matter.
Which is why people still go to Adobe products despite similar products exist, especially for people who are getting paid to use software. They want things to simply work.
I very much doubt a vibe coded application can achieve that, but I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
DesignCraft is also a portable app. It works fine, behaves really good. Some things are a little different. You can import idml files (exported from InDesign) and what I see as real progress that its format is described (both Affinity and Adobe use closed formats).
armcat | 11 hours ago
phs318u | 11 hours ago
pitchlatte | 11 hours ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958850
thw_9a83c | 11 hours ago
There is a full Ars Technica article about this one [1]. Already posted to HN few hours before [2].
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/software-is-over-bold-ai-...
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50000426
fxwin | 11 hours ago
user43928 | 11 hours ago
I compiled and ran the macOS version in a sandbox, and it's indeed a working Photoshop clone, all the features I expected were there.
I only played with it for 10 minutes, and I did not use regular PhotoShop for some time, but this felt very similar to me.
When trying to Export my DNG as a JPG, the file is not being written and there is no error message. It might be because I'm running it in a sandbox.
fai5a1 | 10 hours ago
sixtyj | 10 hours ago
piva00 | 9 hours ago
[0] https://tenzen.studio/photon/
jhbadger | 11 hours ago
piker | 11 hours ago
jhbadger | 11 hours ago
piker | 11 hours ago
user43928 | 10 hours ago
This claims to be that.
It's relevant for discussion here about the quality of vibecoded software.
piker | 10 hours ago
user43928 | 10 hours ago
I have seen zero discussion on HN previous to this post. A working photoshop clone should have been discussed earlier and extensively.
Now we have a post with 28 votes and it's already Flagged.
piker | 7 hours ago
Where the community basically says "yeah cool, but this is garbage software"?
user43928 | 7 hours ago
It seems like some sort of attempt to censor discussion around it.
Would it have stayed up, I'm sure this would get more attention.
In any case, the author didn't post the project himself since it's not yet ready to show off, being an early alpha and all.
Let's see if it will get a post once it is working better.
zeandcode | 11 hours ago
omnimus | 9 hours ago
cyberge99 | 8 hours ago
nasso_dev | 11 hours ago
meindnoch | 11 hours ago
Flockster | 11 hours ago
[OP] SweetSoftPillow | 10 hours ago
NexRebular | 11 hours ago
fg137 | 11 hours ago
Which is why people still go to Adobe products despite similar products exist, especially for people who are getting paid to use software. They want things to simply work.
I very much doubt a vibe coded application can achieve that, but I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
sixtyj | 10 hours ago
fg137 | 10 hours ago