When I was making some Photoshop extensions [0], I slowly formed a general idea for how it works under the hood. Initially I was really excited to write some c

When I was making some Photoshop extensions [0], I slowly formed a general idea for how it works under the hood. Initially I was really excited to write some code and give Photoshop some super powers. Especially I wanted to make a panel for automatic layout, and another for generative art. But in the end I realised that Photoshop is just not designed to be extensible other than in some very specific ways (filters mostly). I was also convinced that even Adobe probably has trouble putting in new features. This was surprising knowing that most of Photoshop's features don't interact with other features in any way (unlike a word processor or a 3D design suit like Maya). They can even develop the features in silos if they want to. But still, the extension APIs give some strong hints that the whole thing is tangled and unwieldy [1]. I did try to tame the thing [2] but the whole process was so unstable that after a few months of part time work, I just gave up. My conclusion was that if you want to have a design tool with super powers, you can't build it on top of Photoshop (or any of its competitors for that matter). Anyway, this is where I shamelessly self-plug and say that I decided to start a company to build such a tool myself. Write to me [3] if you would like to learn more ;) --- [0] This was one popular extension I wrote: http://gelobi.org/griddify http://gelobi.org/griddify [1] I didn't care enough to document this, but I'm sure there are other extension developers who agree. [2] https://github.com/AriaMinaei/photoshopjs-com/blob/25c320f8304a29ddddacd9b571c921354b15caf7/src/comInterface/Desc.coffee https://github.com/AriaMinaei/photoshopjs-com/blob/25c320f83... [3] aria [at] theaterjs.com