I've occasionally looked around for a node-based image editor (á la Blender, but for 2D), and I've only found simple proofs-of-concept.
When discussing Photoshop alternatives, I often find the lack of smart layers and other non-destructive editing to be a painful gap; this is a bit of a paradigm shift towards the other extreme.
On the hate side, ComfyUI is just so, so difficult to use on a normal size screen with a trackpad. It’s designed for someone with a 34” gamer monitor and a mouse with like six buttons, and I haven’t seen a good working node based interface that would be comfortable on a Mac or iPad, so I feel frustrated just looking at the images and thinking about zooming in / out and arranging the nodes.
On the love side, everting the workflow into the main thing is really interesting and clearly a thing people who do graphics in production need. Photoshop has a history palette, but it just does not do (easily) what this lets you do, which is be process first, and automate the process.
Anyway, not for me I think, and I’d like to imagine there’s a better UI waiting to be developed to do some of this, but I think it’s cool and interesting to see new ideas in graphics production.
If Mari (texture painting app) and Nuke (vfx compositor) had a baby together it would be the perfect node based photoshop alternative. The brushes of Mari are insanely good and color editing on nuke is a dream.
Interesting. I’m in the process of making a node based image editor myself so I’ll see what this does right and what points of friction still remain. The main reason I want to do is to make automating tasks easier, batch processing in photoshop is ok, but it could be so much better.
This is either an extremely weird timing coincidence... Or someone saw the announcement/devlog of Plasma Studio and decided to vibe-code-front-run it as a paid offering. This page appeared 3 weeks ago.
Original video a month ago for the plasma studio which is basically the same thing: https://youtu.be/WlgrCqgnk-M
Free and open source and, as far as I can tell, does everything this is claiming to do and more. It's part of our workflow for the game my son and I are making.
Node editing is great for certain pro workflows, but it’s not as user-friendly as programmers assume. And for pros, there are times when text-based scripts are actually easier to parse.
Source: I launched a node based video compositing tool 20 years ago and watched people struggle compared to the layer-based workflows they were used to.
Unfortunately since it's not FOSS and there's no information about the company/individuals behind it, or even a way to pay for it/get licensing information from your UI, there is absolutely no way I would download it as a binary and run it on my computer as you suggest. That is, IMO, incredibly sketchy
I have never been in the target audience for such software and I am not intending to change that.
However, I love it. Not because I think it executes on its promise perfectly nor that it feels safe to use. I love it because it knows what it hates: Electron; subscriptions; AI-first; single-platform; interpreted software; big, fat, sloppy files. I hate those things in my end-user applications, too.
I hope they figure out how to create enough transparency and trustworthiness to make a sustainable business out of it, because I want to think that such businesses are still possible.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 32.7 ms ] threadOn the hate side, ComfyUI is just so, so difficult to use on a normal size screen with a trackpad. It’s designed for someone with a 34” gamer monitor and a mouse with like six buttons, and I haven’t seen a good working node based interface that would be comfortable on a Mac or iPad, so I feel frustrated just looking at the images and thinking about zooming in / out and arranging the nodes.
On the love side, everting the workflow into the main thing is really interesting and clearly a thing people who do graphics in production need. Photoshop has a history palette, but it just does not do (easily) what this lets you do, which is be process first, and automate the process.
Anyway, not for me I think, and I’d like to imagine there’s a better UI waiting to be developed to do some of this, but I think it’s cool and interesting to see new ideas in graphics production.
Original video a month ago for the plasma studio which is basically the same thing: https://youtu.be/WlgrCqgnk-M
Devlog #1 https://youtu.be/JDsoKhgNtHQ
More design / timelines https://youtu.be/L1O2ALT0A14
Free and open source and, as far as I can tell, does everything this is claiming to do and more. It's part of our workflow for the game my son and I are making.
edit: minus the AI stuff
Source: I launched a node based video compositing tool 20 years ago and watched people struggle compared to the layer-based workflows they were used to.
Unfortunately since it's not FOSS and there's no information about the company/individuals behind it, or even a way to pay for it/get licensing information from your UI, there is absolutely no way I would download it as a binary and run it on my computer as you suggest. That is, IMO, incredibly sketchy
https://x.com/albertomoss/status/2049147961926734008?s=20
However, I love it. Not because I think it executes on its promise perfectly nor that it feels safe to use. I love it because it knows what it hates: Electron; subscriptions; AI-first; single-platform; interpreted software; big, fat, sloppy files. I hate those things in my end-user applications, too.
I hope they figure out how to create enough transparency and trustworthiness to make a sustainable business out of it, because I want to think that such businesses are still possible.