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Comment by Hard_Space | Hacker News Reader

I need Photoshop for an almost vanishingly small subset of all the things it is capable of, and this holds true for nearly all 'full-fledged' software that I use. So what may not be surfacing, in the absence of vibe-coded Photoshops, is the growing local script collections of many users.

Since I have had AI to knock up Python scripts and workflows incorporating local ImageMagick and FFMPEG, I have devolved a lot of tedious Photoshop work to scripts and routines of some kind. Likewise with text and data manipulation that I might have turned to software for before.

I don't have the slightest urge to incorporate this ad hoc collection of scripts into a central program, and I certainly don't intend to share them in any way, considering the growing hostility to sharing vibe-code.

So this particular iceberg may be 99% underwater.

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There are no downsides for the customer if the software is much more capable than what the user needs. So there's not much of a business case for offering software with less features.

The use case for less capable software is that it is cheaper. Why buy a mansion when all you need is a bedroom?

Because fully fledged software is dirt cheap already. Even Photoshop is only $20 per month. That is nothing to a professional who needs the tool. People who care about that kind of money will never pay any money at all for software, they will look for something for free.

The very real alternative now is: $0 to custom-code the one workflow you need, then $0 to fix it in four years when the dependencies break.

Don't get me wrong. If you need PS, you need PS. I have a neighbor who is a photo retoucher. She is not vibe coding the tool she spends 8+ hr/day in.

$0 is a little low.

maybe $3?

For the moment, there is a free tier on every major AI provider, which is more than enough to vibe code a single graphics workflow.

I think there's only two real world scenarios:

1. People buy and use fully fledged applications like Photoshop or get Affinity.

2. People ask AI to do their image editing / creation tasks.

The number of people who will have AI make programs for image editing is so small as to not even count. And they will only do it for tinkering reasons to make a vector image of Tux the penguin and then never use it again.

So in your mind, there is no scenario where people ask AI to create a more focused (even single-purpose) image editing app, and either make it free or charge a small amount?

Because I'm seeing that happening more and more. Just as one random example, I've lost count of the number of vibe coded captioning apps I've seen for FCP, because it's a known pain point in the software.

Sure, but there isn't much of a business in it I would say. People who are too cheap to pay for Photoshop aren't going to pay for a small tool either. And Affinity is already free and very powerful.

Just saying… Canva started as a "small tool" that was in no way competitive with Photoshop.

Price?

Why would I pay 10€/month to Adobe so that I can stitch two images together in a specific way?

It took me maybe 2€ worth of credits to make a fully self-contained web page that does that.

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