Docs: where we stand and where we're going (roadmap, README, AGENTS.md) (#186)
roadmap.md: the honest parity assessment now breaks parity down by dimension with dated measurements (PSD oracle 115/170, round trips 169/169, shortcut audit 0 failures, perf numbers, RAW coverage, AI 0%, ~20 missing tools...), an overall estimate (feature surface ~60-70%, pro-switchable ~25-35%), and a priority order for what's next. README: the status note says plainly that PhotoCraft isn't yet a daily-driver Photoshop replacement, what the biggest gaps are, and links the assessment. AGENTS.md: agents read the assessment first when picking work and update it when numbers move. Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Brandon Thomas
GitHub
parent
3389ba558b
commit
433b84fae7
|
|
@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ PhotoCraft is an open-source, native, Photoshop-comparable image editor written
|
|||
| `docs/contributing.md` | Rules: clean-room, tests, layering, style, commits; the "add a command" checklist |
|
||||
| `docs/control-protocol.md` | JSON control channel: how agents drive and screenshot the running app |
|
||||
| `docs/ui-design.md` | Design tokens, themes, widgets, and how to match Photoshop's look |
|
||||
| `docs/roadmap.md` | Milestones and the **current focus** |
|
||||
| `docs/roadmap.md` | Honest parity assessment (where we're lacking, where we're going), milestones, **current focus** |
|
||||
| `docs/parity.md` | Generated list of every Photoshop menu item, live or missing |
|
||||
| `crates/<name>/README.md` (where present) | Public API of that crate |
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -67,6 +67,10 @@ People trust PhotoCraft with their work, and a crash loses it. A malformed file,
|
|||
|
||||
Priorities: important infrastructure first, then low-hanging parity, then the long tail.
|
||||
|
||||
0. **Read `docs/roadmap.md` → "Honest parity assessment" first.** It says, dimension by dimension,
|
||||
where PhotoCraft is lacking and the priority order of where we're going. `docs/parity.md`
|
||||
(menu wiring) is not a measure of behaviour. When your work moves a measured number (PSD oracle,
|
||||
round trips, workflow tests, performance), update that section with the dated figure.
|
||||
1. `docs/roadmap.md` → **Current focus**.
|
||||
2. `cargo xtask parity` → `docs/parity.md` lists every missing menu item, grouped by menu. Low-hanging fruit is usually a missing command whose algorithm already exists in `algo`, `paint`, `vector` or `text`.
|
||||
3. `log/devlog.md` → the "Still open" bullets of recent entries.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -267,7 +267,7 @@ flatpak run ai.storyteller.photocraft
|
|||
Maintainers: [`docs/releasing.md`](docs/releasing.md) explains how releases are built, signed and published.
|
||||
|
||||
> [!IMPORTANT]
|
||||
> **Status:** PhotoCraft is in early alpha. The core editing workflow is here, and we're working toward full Photoshop parity, milestone by milestone (see [`docs/roadmap.md`](docs/roadmap.md)). Progress is measured, not guessed: `cargo xtask parity` checks every item in Photoshop's menu tree against the live command registry and writes [`docs/parity.md`](docs/parity.md). Expect rough edges, and please file issues. You can also tell us what broke on [Discord](https://discord.gg/artcraft).
|
||||
> **Status:** PhotoCraft is in early alpha, and we want to be straight about where it stands: much of Photoshop's feature surface exists in some form, but **it is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work**. The biggest gaps are AI/generative features, about twenty missing tools, depth in typography and pro workflows, and plug-in compatibility. Every Photoshop menu item is wired to a command ([`docs/parity.md`](docs/parity.md)), but that measures wiring, not behaviour. The honest, dimension-by-dimension picture and where we're going next are in the [roadmap's parity assessment](docs/roadmap.md#honest-parity-assessment-2026-10-05). Expect rough edges, and please file issues (include your OS, document size, layer count and a screenshot). You can also tell us what broke on [Discord](https://discord.gg/artcraft).
|
||||
|
||||
## Documentation
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -30,42 +30,60 @@ readiness; treat it as an upper bound.
|
|||
|
||||
## Honest parity assessment (2026-10-05)
|
||||
|
||||
Written after the 0.2.0 release and the first wave of real user feedback. **We are far from real
|
||||
Photoshop parity.** `parity.md` says 625/625 menu items are live, but that only means each item
|
||||
dispatches *a* command. In the first day of public use, users hit broken basics that all counted as
|
||||
"live": text selection offset from the cursor, shortcuts that didn't fire after clicking a panel
|
||||
(214 failures in an audit), panels resizing themselves, an immovable crop frame, folders that
|
||||
wouldn't collapse, and lag on layout-style PSDs.
|
||||
This is the reference answer to "how close are we to Photoshop parity, really". Agents: read it
|
||||
before picking work. Update it (with dated measurements) when the numbers move; don't restate the
|
||||
menu-parity number in its place.
|
||||
|
||||
| Area | State |
|
||||
|---|---|
|
||||
| Core editing (layers, masks, selections, adjustments, filters, transforms, blend modes) | Broad coverage; engine quality decent; interaction/UI quality only started catching up after 0.2.0. |
|
||||
| PSD fidelity | Composite oracle 113/170 (~66%). All adjustment layers and blend modes round-trip; Photoshop smart filters in PSDs, some effect shapes and text-engine details remain. psd-tools corpus being added (#81). |
|
||||
| Tools | ~20 Photoshop tools missing entirely: Pencil, Mixer Brush (as a tool), Patch, Content-Aware Move, Red Eye, Pattern Stamp, Art History Brush, Freeform/Curvature Pen, anchor tools, Direct Selection, Magnetic Lasso, single row/column marquee, Color Sampler, Perspective Crop, Rotate View, vertical type and type masks, Frame. |
|
||||
| Text | Engine works; advanced typography (OpenType features, text-on-path editing, full paragraph composer parity) and PSD text fidelity are partial. |
|
||||
| Painting | Brush model close to Photoshop after #136/#174; no pen pressure on macOS/Linux (#79), no Mixer Brush tool, no Art History Brush. |
|
||||
| AI / generative | ~0%: no Generative Fill/Expand (#41, deferred), Neural Filters or Remove tool. Classical Select Subject / Content-Aware Fill only. |
|
||||
| Ecosystem | No .8BF plug-ins (by decision: sandboxed WebAssembly plug-ins instead), no ExtendScript/UXP/.atn actions, no Adobe Fonts / Libraries / cloud documents. |
|
||||
| Camera RAW | DNG, CR2, Sony ARW (lossless + compressed), RW2, uncompressed ORF decode; Nikon compressed NEF, CR3, RAF fall back to the embedded preview (clean-room limits, #50). |
|
||||
| Performance / robustness | Strong on large rasters (14k+ on the GPU, banded memory); layout-style documents were laggy (#125/#128 in progress); real-file testing has only just begun. |
|
||||
**Bottom line.** Two days after 0.2.0 we had merged ~96 PRs and closed ~48 issues, but **real
|
||||
Photoshop parity is still well below 50%**. The biggest gaps are AI, missing tools, professional
|
||||
workflow depth and the plug-in ecosystem. Most fixes since 0.2.0 have passed our tests but have
|
||||
**not yet been validated by users**, and this week proved our tests miss what users hit:
|
||||
on first public use they found broken basics (text selection offset, 214 shortcut failures, panels
|
||||
resizing themselves, an immovable crop frame, folders that wouldn't collapse, lag on layout PSDs)
|
||||
that all counted as "live" in `parity.md`.
|
||||
|
||||
**Estimate.** Feature surface: roughly **55–70%** of what a typical Photoshop user touches exists in
|
||||
some form. "A working professional could switch today": roughly **20–35%**; professionals live in
|
||||
the details (exact tool behaviour, PSD fidelity on their own files, typography, AI, plug-ins).
|
||||
True 1:1 parity is **many months** of focused work, and some areas need product decisions rather
|
||||
than effort (generative AI backend, the 8BF ecosystem, clean-room RAW limits).
|
||||
**Overall.** Feature surface: roughly **60–70%** of what a typical Photoshop user touches exists in
|
||||
some form. "A professional could switch for daily work": roughly **25–35%**. True 1:1 parity is
|
||||
**many months** of focused work, and some areas need product decisions rather than effort.
|
||||
Confidence: moderate — the next users of 0.2.x will move these numbers either way.
|
||||
|
||||
**Making it measurable** (replace guesses with numbers; update this section as they land):
|
||||
1. **Workflow acceptance tests:** 30–50 real tasks (e.g. retouch a portrait, build a social post
|
||||
with text and effects, composite with masks and adjustment layers, prepare a CMYK print file),
|
||||
each scripted end to end and checked against Photoshop's output, run on every build. The pass
|
||||
rate becomes the headline parity number.
|
||||
2. **Real-file corpus:** users' shareable PSDs plus the psd-tools set (#81), with pass-rate floors
|
||||
that only go up (`crates/io/tests/corpus.rs`).
|
||||
3. **Recurring visual QA:** screenshot sweeps of realistic documents (`cargo run -p photocraft-engine
|
||||
--example designer_psd`). The first sweep found 14 defects (#147–#157) that unit tests missed.
|
||||
4. **User reports:** fast turnaround from report → issue → fix; ask reporters for OS, document
|
||||
size, layer count and a screenshot.
|
||||
### By dimension
|
||||
|
||||
| Dimension | Measured / evidence (2026-10-05) | Grade | Notes |
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|
|
||||
| Menu wiring | 626/626 menu items dispatch a command (`parity.md`) | high but shallow | Says nothing about behaviour. |
|
||||
| PSD fidelity (rendering) | Corpus oracle 115/170 (68%): 30 differ, 26 have no usable reference, 1 import error | medium | Push to 170/170 under way (effects/strokes, multi-instance effects, 16/32-bit and colour modes, references for skipped files). |
|
||||
| PSD round trip | 169/169 re-import identically; every adjustment layer and blend mode round-trips | high (within corpus) | Floors in `crates/io/tests/corpus.rs`; raise, never lower. |
|
||||
| Smart filters / text / effect shapes in PSDs | Not measured: the corpus barely contains them | unknown (probably low–medium) | A Photoshop-authored reference set is being built (`corpus/photoshop`). |
|
||||
| Core editing (layers, masks, selections, adjustments, filters, transforms) | Broad engine coverage; many interaction bugs fixed after 0.2.0 (adjustment dialogs, Curves, crop, Move/Transform modifiers, gesture origin) | medium | Fixes not yet user-validated. |
|
||||
| UI / UX polish | Shortcut audit 214 → 0 failures; dock, Layers rows and menus reworked; first visual-QA sweep found 14 defects (#147–#157) | low–medium | Needs recurring visual QA with realistic documents. |
|
||||
| Tools | ~20 Photoshop tools missing: Pencil, Mixer Brush (tool), Patch, Content-Aware Move, Red Eye, Pattern Stamp, Art History Brush, Freeform/Curvature Pen, anchor tools, Direct Selection, Magnetic Lasso, single row/column marquee, Color Sampler, Perspective Crop, Rotate View, vertical type and type masks, Frame | low–medium | Magic/Background Eraser added; live gradients in progress (#180). |
|
||||
| Painting | Brush model and Brush Settings panel near Photoshop; .abr/.grd import; persistent presets; pressure on Windows and web only | medium | macOS/Linux pressure blocked on the windowing layer (#79). |
|
||||
| Text / typography | Engine works; caret placement and size editing fixed; OpenType features, text-on-path editing, composer parity partial | medium-low | Measure with the Photoshop-authored set. |
|
||||
| Colour management | Colour-managed canvas (document → monitor), embedded CMYK profiles, linear EXR/HDR, 16-bit float canvas | medium-high | Monitor profile follows only at launch. |
|
||||
| Performance | 14k+ px on the GPU at ~⅓ the memory; adjustment preview 285 ms → 4–9 ms; font-size edits 297 ms → 4.6 ms | medium-high on rasters | Complex layout documents still laggy (#125/#128); >16384 px GPU tiling in progress (#49). |
|
||||
| Stability | Never-crash lint series, crash guard, `panic_hunt` fuzzing in the gate | medium-high | No field crash data yet. |
|
||||
| Camera RAW | DNG, CR2, Sony ARW (lossless + compressed), RW2, uncompressed ORF | medium | Nikon compressed NEF, CR3, RAF blocked by clean-room limits (#50). |
|
||||
| AI / generative | none | ~0% | Deferred by decision (#41). |
|
||||
| Ecosystem | Sandboxed WebAssembly plug-ins instead of .8BF; no ExtendScript/UXP/.atn; no Adobe Fonts/Libraries/cloud docs | low | By design for 8BF; scripting compatibility open. |
|
||||
| Platforms | macOS (notarized), Windows, Linux (AppImage/deb/rpm/Flatpak bundle), web | medium-high | Flathub later (#173); Windows signing material pending. |
|
||||
|
||||
### Where we're going (priority order)
|
||||
|
||||
1. **Ship the fixes:** cut 0.2.1 once the current batch lands, so users validate them.
|
||||
2. **PSD fidelity to 170/170** with round trips, plus the Photoshop-authored reference set for smart
|
||||
filters, the text engine and effect shapes; enforce floors in `corpus.rs`.
|
||||
3. **Workflow acceptance tests:** 30–50 real tasks (retouch a portrait, social post with text and
|
||||
effects, composite with masks and adjustment layers, CMYK print prep…) scripted end to end and
|
||||
checked against Photoshop's output on every build. Their pass rate becomes the headline parity
|
||||
number.
|
||||
4. **Missing tools,** starting with the Pen variants and Direct Selection, Patch / Content-Aware
|
||||
Move, Pencil, Rotate View, Perspective Crop.
|
||||
5. **Complex-document performance** (#125/#128) and GPU tiling beyond the texture limit (#49).
|
||||
6. **Recurring visual QA** (`cargo run -p photocraft-engine --example designer_psd`) and fast
|
||||
turnaround on user reports (OS, document size, layer count, screenshot).
|
||||
7. Later / needs decisions: generative AI backend (#41), scripting compatibility (ExtendScript /
|
||||
UXP / .atn), Flathub (#173), macOS/Linux pen pressure (#79).
|
||||
|
||||
## Current focus (infrastructure before the long tail)
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -77,10 +95,8 @@ Landed on 2026-10-01:
|
|||
(`docs/releasing.md`).
|
||||
|
||||
Next:
|
||||
1. **Quality of what exists** (from user feedback after 0.2.0, see the assessment above): workflow
|
||||
acceptance tests, real-file corpus, visual QA, and the open user issues. 0.2.0 shipped signed and
|
||||
notarized on 2026-10-05 (`docs/releasing.md`); Windows code-signing material still needs to be
|
||||
obtained.
|
||||
1. **Follow "Where we're going" in the assessment above.** 0.2.0 shipped signed and notarized on
|
||||
2026-10-05 (`docs/releasing.md`); Windows code-signing material still needs to be obtained.
|
||||
2. **Fidelity**: the PSD oracle (113/170). Modern Brightness/Contrast and grayscale Levels
|
||||
curves; chisel-soft / stroke-emboss bevel shapes; Photoshop's 8-bit blend rounding; non-Normal
|
||||
modes in Lab documents; Photoshop smart filters in `SoLd`.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue