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It’s pretty depressing how many image editors are just incomplete clones of Photoshop without any original ideas. There are a lot of parts of Photoshop which c

It’s pretty depressing how many image editors are just incomplete clones of Photoshop without any original ideas. There are a lot of parts of Photoshop which could be radically improved if Adobe weren’t constrained by needing to preserve existing customer workflows from circa 1995 and build off decades of legacy code / organizational inertia. Most of the low-level decisions in Photoshop are based on academic research from the 1970s, reimplemented in the early 1990s to match mid-range computer workstations and typical images of that time. Many new image editors have basically zero thought put into design or core image processing infrastructure, and are just exact copies of Adobe’s ideas, without considering that computers and imaging have changed dramatically in the past 2 decades. (To be fair, coming up with new ideas and then polishing them to the point they are ready for customers is really hard: it takes vision, cross-disciplinary expertise, new research work, multiple attempts at implementation when some ideas don’t work out, integration effort fitting ideas together, etc. Clones are a lot easier.)

panabee 8y ago
this is interesting. what are some things you think image editors should do differently once freed from legacy constraints?
- flibble 8y ago
  1 - automatically save a version history and completely remove the need to think ‘have I saved this’. Same goes for all editors.
  - chongli 8y ago
    Yes. Let me join in the fun: 2 - every operation, every brush stroke, should be nondestructive, stored on automatic layers, and always adjustable. 3 - the rendering pipeline should be built from the ground up to support the nondestructive workflow on modern hardware. This means aggressive caching of layers with GPU compositing throughout. 4 - a full commitment to open data formats. Since a nondestructive workflow requires storing all of the instructions for every edit, these should be save-able in an open, human-readable format such as JSON. This would open the doors to scripting the editor with external tools, with the nondestructive editing instructions coalescing into a standard API.
    - wildpeaks 8y ago
      At least they have been moving towards Node for the scripting part (Photoshop even ships with Node, you can make panels in HTML5, even use WebGL). Although I wish the documentation wasn't just PDF files you can't copy/paste from, not an ideal way to provide code snippets.
    - gmueckl 8y ago
      Have you estimated the menory requirements for what you are proposing? Each brush stroke would need to store some image data for this to work. Just storing e.g. pen movement and rendering the result on the fly will likely not recreate the same result in an uodated version of the program, altering the image that the user created. Also, reopening complex files would take longer than users are willing to tolerate. The undo stack (which internally is pretty much an implementation of non-destructive editing) is about as far as you can bring the concept realistically. Non-destructive workflows also have a huge maintenance problem: you can never again touch code that is involved in the creation of the final result after it has been released because it might break the user's files. It is not just the loading and storing part, but the whole backend can never be evolved in a reasonable way without breaking backward compatibility. After a while you sit on a pile of code for legacy operators and data models that you need to support and stops you from doing meaningful development. I love non-destructive editing in many cases, but I also have some experiences with implementing that concept and this has shown me how constraining it is and how much effort it takes.
      - chongli 8y ago
        Each brush stroke would need to store some image data for this to work. No, brush strokes would be stored as paths that simply record the input information needed to reproduce what the artist did with her mouse or stylus. I hear you about the issue of breaking changes though. I think it takes real discipline to develop a format that's adaptable and with the capability to let you migrate files without visible changes. It would take one hell of a test suite though.
        gmueckl 8y ago
adobeeee 8y ago
Well said and great argument on both sides but you missed the point that nobody wants to spend time learning another tool. Most experts are very quick at things. Unless you know you're going to beat adobe 100% and with the entire feature set you wont try an innovative way.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  Sure, but if your main criterion is “I am a professional expert and I know Photoshop inside and out”, then the obvious thing to do is just use Photoshop. The price is not really a problem for people doing serious work.

panabee 8y ago

this is interesting. what are some things you think image editors should do differently once freed from legacy constraints?

flibble 8y ago
1 - automatically save a version history and completely remove the need to think ‘have I saved this’. Same goes for all editors.
- chongli 8y ago
  Yes. Let me join in the fun: 2 - every operation, every brush stroke, should be nondestructive, stored on automatic layers, and always adjustable. 3 - the rendering pipeline should be built from the ground up to support the nondestructive workflow on modern hardware. This means aggressive caching of layers with GPU compositing throughout. 4 - a full commitment to open data formats. Since a nondestructive workflow requires storing all of the instructions for every edit, these should be save-able in an open, human-readable format such as JSON. This would open the doors to scripting the editor with external tools, with the nondestructive editing instructions coalescing into a standard API.
  - wildpeaks 8y ago
    At least they have been moving towards Node for the scripting part (Photoshop even ships with Node, you can make panels in HTML5, even use WebGL). Although I wish the documentation wasn't just PDF files you can't copy/paste from, not an ideal way to provide code snippets.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    Have you estimated the menory requirements for what you are proposing? Each brush stroke would need to store some image data for this to work. Just storing e.g. pen movement and rendering the result on the fly will likely not recreate the same result in an uodated version of the program, altering the image that the user created. Also, reopening complex files would take longer than users are willing to tolerate. The undo stack (which internally is pretty much an implementation of non-destructive editing) is about as far as you can bring the concept realistically. Non-destructive workflows also have a huge maintenance problem: you can never again touch code that is involved in the creation of the final result after it has been released because it might break the user's files. It is not just the loading and storing part, but the whole backend can never be evolved in a reasonable way without breaking backward compatibility. After a while you sit on a pile of code for legacy operators and data models that you need to support and stops you from doing meaningful development. I love non-destructive editing in many cases, but I also have some experiences with implementing that concept and this has shown me how constraining it is and how much effort it takes.
    - chongli 8y ago
      Each brush stroke would need to store some image data for this to work. No, brush strokes would be stored as paths that simply record the input information needed to reproduce what the artist did with her mouse or stylus. I hear you about the issue of breaking changes though. I think it takes real discipline to develop a format that's adaptable and with the capability to let you migrate files without visible changes. It would take one hell of a test suite though.
      - gmueckl 8y ago

adobeeee 8y ago

Well said and great argument on both sides but you missed the point that nobody wants to spend time learning another tool. Most experts are very quick at things. Unless you know you're going to beat adobe 100% and with the entire feature set you wont try an innovative way.

jacobolus 8y ago
Sure, but if your main criterion is “I am a professional expert and I know Photoshop inside and out”, then the obvious thing to do is just use Photoshop. The price is not really a problem for people doing serious work.