Keavon (u/Keavon) - Readit News

Keavon commented on · Posted by u/Keavon

Keavon · 9 months ago

This Developer Voices podcast interview digs into the juicy details of building a graphics engine in Rust through the lens of a purpose-built programming language made for graphics pipelines. This language, Graphene, is built on top of the Rust language and supports both JIT and ahead-of-time-`rustc`compilation of reusable image editing pipelines down to standalone programs (like full screen apps or CLIs akin to ImageMagick) and embedding in other apps like games or websites. And built on top of that language/engine, we talk about how our open source Graphite ( https://graphite.rs/ ) editor is being built to offer a credible alternative to creative apps like Photoshop and Inkscape.

In short, we're building an approachable, artist-friendly graphics editor that allows technical users to dig into its underlying technical details. Instead of picking one focus—like vector, raster, painting, photo processing, or animation—we're generalizing the technology and building something that's more like a "game engine" for universal graphics processing, where artist-friendly editing tools act like the "coding environment" or "IDE" for the underlying graphics programming language. Artists use industry-standard workflows to draw their artwork, and Graphite automatically sets up the Graphene node graph "code" behind the scenes for rendering their creations.

If your interest is piqued in languages/compilers, graphics programming, or rendering techniques and you're looking for a summer internship, applications are open for GSoC 2025 ( https://graphite.rs/volunteer/guide/student-projects/ ) working with us to build a better Graphene and Graphite, especially focused on the infrastructure for GPU-accelerated raster rendering. Get in touch (Discord is best) to tell us your background if that's of interest. We'll especially be prioritizing applicants with a languages/compilers and low-level GPU (WGPU, Vulkan, OpenGL, etc.) programming background. Even if you're not looking for an internship, but you can lend a hand with a compilers/graphics/game engines background, this is the area we are most bottlenecked on so your open source contributions would go tremendously far in helping us achieve our mission to recreate Blender's success, but in the 2D creative software domain.

Keavon commented on Year in review: 2024 highlights and a peek at 2025 graphite.rs/blog/year-in-... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

Keavon · a year ago

Graphite creator here, AMA!

Keavon · a year ago

This thread, which OP posted before I had gotten the chance to submit to HN, was given a very unideal title and gained no traction as a result. I think the deduplication system prevented me from submitting. But I just tried again and I've successfully done so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42747192 so on account of this thread going unnoticed due to its title, I'm considering this thread abandoned and I'd encourage the mods to do the same (if deduplication or something else is in order). Thanks.

Keavon commented on Graphite (Rusty FOSS 2D graphics editor) year in review and preview of 2025 graphite.rs/blog/year-in-... · Posted by u/Keavon

Keavon · a year ago

Graphite is a 2D graphics editor written in Rust aiming to develop into the go-to alternative to Gimp and Inkscape. Right now it's a vector graphics editor and in 2025 will be growing into a raster editor for photo processing and image manipulation. Its unique feature is the node graph which gives more control over content creation and rendering, turning your artwork layers into fully-fledged programmatic systems that can operate on dynamic data.

Graphite made the top of Show HN in mid October so you may be familiar from that post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41853810

This post now summaries our year growing and maturing the editor throughout 2024 and covers our plans for 2025, which I believe will be the year it really takes off.

Keavon commented on Year in review: 2024 highlights and a peek at 2025 graphite.rs/blog/year-in-... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

Keavon · a year ago

Graphite creator here, AMA!

Keavon commented on Shaderblocks: Block-based image editing thejenkinscomic.net/shade... · Posted by u/rahimnathwani

erinaceousjones · a year ago

Wow, looking at the demos on the website, I am insanely impressed at just how fast the editor loads into them, and just how snappy the procedural editing is, on my mid-range smartphone no less. That's genuinely inspiring! As someone who this week has had the itch to A) learn rust, B) use webassembly for something, and C) pick up Svelte for something, this was a really cool thing to see this morning :)

Keavon · a year ago

Thanks, we'd love to assist you in getting involved with contributing to our project! It's something we take pride in, making it more accessible than most other open source projects to begin contributing to. Come join our Discord (link is on the website home page) and introduce yourself like in your comment here. Cheers!

Keavon commented on Shaderblocks: Block-based image editing thejenkinscomic.net/shade... · Posted by u/rahimnathwani

PaulHoule · a year ago

Could be a Photoshop killer.

Keavon · a year ago

I believe that's plausibly within the range is possible outcomes— which isn't true for any other project like Gimp, which has had its window of opportunity rise and then set forever.

Keavon commented on Shaderblocks: Block-based image editing thejenkinscomic.net/shade... · Posted by u/rahimnathwani

atombender · a year ago

I don't think Graphite is the first. Gimel and GIE already exist, and I think there are other more obscure ones.

Keavon · a year ago

First in the sense that there's nothing in the industry that's a real product. Certainly there are various experimental concepts people have made as a hobby in a limited capacity, but they don't really count as generally useful tool suites. There's nothing even from the commercial software side of the industry either, which I find surprising. But it gives our project an advantage.