Affinity works both similarly and differently and is now pretty popular.
It’s different but really not inferior to Photoshop, for example (better live filters, cross model curves, better layer blending), and it’s not inferior to InDesign or Illustrator, mostly. It does have a file format that allows all three to coexist (in fact it effectively always did).
They all have sufficient familiarity (the basics of the tools and layers are now pretty much a standard “medium” that most photo/painting apps implement, after all) but they have their own advantages. The integration between the three apps is way ahead.
I just don’t see why anyone would make open source apps that don’t move things forward (Krita and Inkscape do, in their own ways).
It’s also a pretty hollow demonstration of AI, ultimately, to use it to just clone ripoffs, but it does have a sort of fractal self-similarity I suppose.
Is there an open source “drop-in alternative” for really any desktop app of substance? Plenty of excellent alternatives, very few that drop in and don’t have some kind of conceptual differences (even LibreOffice, which after all started as a closed source app).
I don’t think anyone is served well by pursuing blatant cloning in open source. But if this is the shoddy destiny of AI coding then I am at peace with it. People can use lazy knockoffs if they want.
