I see plenty of posts from authors who didn't even bother trying any of these clones.
It seems it's buzzing because it make people who post about it, buzz.
We live a strange time.
It seems it's buzzing because it make people who post about it, buzz.
We live a strange time.
Fascinating stuff. I'm glad somebody else is doing it, and happy that I'm not doing it. Yet. But I will certainly be watching with interest.
I am a professional coder with decades of experience. I use AI regularly, but so far use it very tactically. The big challenge I struggle with at the moment is whether I can trust current-generation models that seem to be increasing in power exponentially at the moment with big tasks.
--- Just to qualify for your arbitrary impressionistic standards on who gets to say what about ArtCraft....
Photoshop: Used it for years. I have a perma-license CS6 copy that runs on Windows only. I sometimes (rarely) boot up my Windows partition when I have particularly complex edits to make. A UI that has rotted out over time. No way I'm paying the extortionate rental prices for current-gen Adobe tools. Their entry-level software seems to be toys, and are not usable for anything serious.
Corel Photopaint: I worked for Corel. I actually really like PhotoPaint, which at least follows a Windows UI convention. Much easier to use than Photoshop; but I have not used it for many years.
Gimp: tried it. Rotted out UI, and an absolutely incomprehensible UI convention (if any). I cannot use it and will not take the time to learn it. On Linux, I very occasionally use Gimp, but I loathe it.
Krita: So much easier to use than Gimp, excellent for consistent and modern UI conventions, but currently missing important features.
ArtCraft: I have not actually tried it, although it sounds very much like what you would expect from vibe coding: buggy as heck, feature deficient, and definitely not ready for serious consideration. Yet.
To be honest, I do most of my graphics work in Inkscape these days (lots of vector icon design). Brilliant UI, consistent UI conventions. Very usable. But mostly useless for photos.
Noting that this project is examplary experiment that may demonstrate whether the state of genAI can produce complex software before an explosion of token consumption as the code base grows, or even collapse.
In my experiments, it collapsed, each time I tried. Every 6 months or so I take the challenge. Unless a human intervenes of course. Basically dictating what genAi should do, which becomes more painful than it's worth automating code generation.
That being said, as somebody who views Adobe products as borderline spyware and STILL rocks Adobe Photoshop CS6 (the last non-SaaS version), I'm not exactly going to shed any tears of sympathy for them.
I do want some open source Adobe suite clone to work. I just have far more fate in tools like Krita that don't give me a feeling of being fooled and sold a toy even if it's free.
In fact the open source project is there for profit as the easiest way to install it is to go to their website, where they also offer AI credits to use with those tools from $8 per month to subscriptions far more expensive if you need more credits.