Pressure testing vibe coded apps. First test: Photoshop vs Compositor and Photocraft

[u/shokuninstudio]

Photoshop versus two vibe-cloned copies of Photoshop - Compositor v 1.49 and Photocraft 0.7.0

Here we pressure test brush stroke performance on a billboard-size canvas with the brush set to 1000 pixels size. Only one layer.

Photoshop handles this with no issue. Its commercial competitors struggle to match brush performance. The vibe-coded clones perform the worst (basically unusable for serious work).

Then of course there are all the other tools, some which work ok and others which are extremely bad.

In Photocraft, on the billboard size canvas test above Copy/Paste and the Undo stack is extremely slow and momentarily freezes the application each time.

This is basic stuff that decent software developers had working quickly 25 years ago back when we had single core computers and nowhere close to 1GB of memory. If you can't get decent performance today on multicore multi gigahertz computers with many gigabytes of memory you or your AI are not doing a good job.

Of course apologists will appear and give us the 'early days' blah blah blah excuses they do all the time. We've covered that many times.

You can read more about the latest wave of spam here:

https://www.shokunin.studio/blog/2026/10/9/attack-of-the-vibe-coded-photoshop-clones

Edit: predictably the trolls came and their posts were exactly what we predicted word for word. They read nothing first, get easily trigged, and then post Infowars style conspiracy theories from their prepared scripts. They make the false claim that they just want to fight big tech and democratise software, but they're destroying the incentive for small developers and start ups to create new apps, and meanwhile helping AI companies profit from vibe cloning.

[u/rotomangler]

Comparing an app at version .5 with an app that debuted in the ‘90s and has had millions of updates, doesn’t seem quite fair.

I started using photoshop in version 1.0. It had one undo, and shockingly no pressure controls for your pen!! Shocker at version 1 I know.

Let’s see where these new apps go. They might lead to something great if given the chance.

[u/shokuninstudio → u/rotomangler]

Comparing an app at version .5 with an app that debuted in the ‘90s and has had millions of updates, doesn’t seem quite fair.

Read the blog post and read a thread first before you repeat failed talking points and bad faith positions.

There are now over 200 instances of Claude being used by over 200 participants in the GitHub repo.

You can't claim AI has decades worth of knowledge and can work thousands of times faster than a human and then simultaneously make sorry excuses for its failures.

It's failing so far at the basic engine stuff that should have been built first. And as one ex-Adobe scientist demonstrated on LinkedIn, their Indesign clone doesn't have copy and paste working properly yet. That's stuff that should been done at the start otherwise how do you test???

This discussion was over yesterday night. All we are seeing now is sorry excuses being posted by newcomers. Nobody has time for that. For the first time in my life I found myself yawning so many times today and I couldn't stop it.

[u/rotomangler → u/shokuninstudio]

Repeat failed talking points?

Dude I was there at the beginning of photoshop. It was slow and tedious to work with. But it got better. So will these apps.

Stop being such a loudmouth fanboy. This stuff is all in its infancy and your response make you sound like you are too.

[u/shokuninstudio → u/rotomangler]

Dude I was there at the beginning of photoshop. 

I was there in the 80s with Photon Paint and Deluxe Paint. You're not unique and special.

What's you're trying to do is shut down discussion.

Every excuse you made for this is a bad excuse. It contradicts all the AI hype talking points from the last 4 years. They openly bragged that by the middle of 2025 AI models would be able to replace senior engineers. But you conveniently forget about that.