Unfortunately it is not an alternative to Photoshop. It's more of an alternative to Paint.net. Photoshop is vast, it's absolutely huge. It has all kinds of features that will take decades to implement for one talented person. Additionally, it relies on GPU acceleration for many common tasks.
If you want to target Photoshop userbase, you absolutely must implement 16-bit editing and the ability to open RAW camera files. This project can't do either, while GIMP does.
This thing targets people who started using Photoshop back in the day when it still wasn't a subscription service for basic and mildly advanced image editing tasks, and who thus grew accustomed to the Photoshop UI. I personally know several such people, some are trying to switch to alternatives (like myself, I'm switching to Affinity Photo), but the others still use the same (sometimes pirated) Photoshop CS3 or CS4 version they have used since forever, because it's more than enough for their needs, and the usual reason why they stick to it is that they know how to get stuff done with the familiar UI.
Imitating this basic UI with nearly 100% accuracy is a stroke of genius. Not even Affinity Photo, which is clearly taking lots of ideas from the Photoshop UI as well, comes close to this level of familiarity. Photopea truly feels as if it was Photoshop from 10 years ago, which is exactly the Photoshop that lots of people not working in the graphics industry, where an Adobe subscription is mandatory, love.
This describes me. Started using Photoshop around 4, knew it inside and out. Then, over the years, Photoshop far outgrew me (and my needs). This is a wonderful alternative that probably does 95% of what I need in Photoshop.
Pretty much in a similar case to yours. I started playing with Photoshop with a 5.0 license my dad bought back around 1998, and used that same version for years. I pretty much still use the same features I did back then, and to me all those modern versions makes no difference to my workflow whatsoever. With time I just learned to do things a bit more efficiently like to use adjustment layers instead of destructive transformations, etc. That same 5.0 version would probably still meet the majority of what I would do with Photoshop.
Give Krita a shot. Its UI is much closer to Photoshop than other alternatives, and it's a fully open source project. It's still a bit buggy on Windows but it runs perfectly on every Linux distro I've tried it on. It's a bit overkill for my needs (I do everything I need with Paint.net/Pinta) but it's worth a look.
I used it a few weeks ago to crop out a picture of Lebron James’daughter’s face to use as a reaction in slack because I didn’t have photoshop or an app capable of doing what I needed on my computer
I used maybe a hundred of different graphical programs(2d,3d, animation, foo) and photoshop still owns up on the ergonomic side. It's not perfect but it's way good enough. Everytime I use another 2d program I suffer.
For the HN crowd, yes, you are correct. However, would the mass population relate more to paint.net or Photoshop? Maybe that's why he is calling it a Photoshop alternative.
I have never heard someone saying "Hey, that photo has been paint dot netted."
If someone says "I you can do in X whatever you can do in Photoshop" I immediately assume that they are only using a tiny fraction of Photoshop's functionality.
That's why I miss Fireworks so much. As a developer I receive PSD designs (sometimes 400MB files) that are just a collection of layers that have to be converted in to website-ready image files. This isn't really what PS is for, yet there's no alternative.
I'm running a windows VM on my mac solely for the purpose of running Fireworks (my CV is in Fireworks). I hope someone creates a decent (cross-platform) replacement someday! There's surely a market for it.
Sketch is great, but it's Mac-only with absolutely zero intention[0] of supporting anything else.
I'm a Mac user and have a Sketch licence, and use it often for personal things, but if you're looking to build a piece of software that supports workflows with multiple people working on / implementing designs independently in a professional setting, expecting every company using your software to enforce a fully Mac-only office* is only going to get you so far.
* I also work in a pretty-much-Mac-only office, so I do acknowledge that this strategy is not entirely fruitless, it's just not going to replace Fireworks.
Most people use Photoshop to open up the picture, crop, adjust color, mabe remove a read eye or put some text over the picture and then save it. Just about any program would be good enough but they know how to use Photoshop so that is what they will be using.
How do you know that? Until recently Photoshop was $700+, now it's $252/year, and I can't imagine many people you're describing paying that much, when you can do all that in a free program.
I'd imagine that warez versions of Photoshop are still extremely popular, and Adobe doesn't even have a lot of incentive to go after them since it's what gets people hooked on the Photoshop UI.
I think Photoshop also operates on a reduced image for previewing the outputs of filters and other tools. Compared to Photoshop, Photopea is a bit laggy with large images on my 8 year old machine, just like GIMP.
Unless something has changed more recently Photoshop was terrible with you acceleration and worked like crap on a 4k display. Most Adobe products completely lacked support for 4k and made them unusable. I was dumbfounded you had to manually edit obscure setting files simply to get hit or miss support for a modern display. They are a graphics company.
If you want to target Photoshop userbase, you absolutely must implement 16-bit editing and the ability to open RAW camera files. This project can't do either, while GIMP does.
It's still impressive what he did.