Hello artists of fediverse!
It's probably not a wild thing to say that we all hate Adobe and similar giant companies that make art software that:
1. Doesn't work on linux,
2. Could probably disappear tomorrow without any warning, taking all our projects with it and
3. Requires expensive subscriptions
I want to try and combat that by creating an alternative open source suite of tools!
Q: But what about existing open source tools (inkscape, gimp, krita...)?
While I'm very greatful for their work and what they've brought to the community, I personally couldn't get used to them. They feel slow, outdated and are not made to work together elegantly. I also have friends that are artists that feel the same way.
While I do believe that these tools work great for some people, they do not work great for everyone and a little bit of choice never hurt the open source community.
Q: why do you think you can make something better then existing tools?
I do not think I have to make something that is 100% better for everyone, just something that is better for *some* people. I want to work with artists from the start of the project to make something that caters to them and that's why I'm making these posts
My priorities are on stability, speed and ease of use, while leaving a clean path to adding any requested features later.
Q: What will make my tools better?
1. I want to make the whole system very modular from the very start. (More about it soon)
2. I want to use exclusively hardware rendering (with an opengl software fallback)
3. I want to make a system from the ground up that can be used for both vector and raster editing, that will also have animation and video editing support etc
4. I want to use modern technologies and start from the clean slate without years of legacy code
Q: Do you have any experience in creating something similar?
I have created a very barebones vector graphics editor in the past. While I probably will not use almost any of it's cod,e it proved to me that this is possible and it also showed me what not to do and how to do everything better.
Your project sounds like Graphite.
The core issues for most hopeful replacements are and will always be: 1. resources (you should have multiple people right away) 2. depth, 3) data integrity and compatibility.
There are extremely hard problems for most foss projects based on the scale of the problem involved. 80% is solvable with 20% of the work... but that last little bit is where all the meat is.
Ask me how I know.
And now the most important thing:
If you're an Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma or similar program user, what are the most important features that even the most basic app needs for you to consider trying it?
#Adobe #illustrator #Figma #Inkscape #design #illustration #art
@gloopsies I really really really like the way affinity has a pixel/vector/and layout editor all in one program.
