vectorcraft/docs/effects-parity.md

Effects parity

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-16 · Change: minor (Zig Zag's Smooth points make a continuous wave, #2343; G2: Effect › Sketch › Halftone Pattern; Photoshop filters 30/57, 27 remaining (22–38 h); Round Corners also rounds corners where a curve meets a line or another curve, with Live Corners' cut; straight corners unchanged; score unchanged; Revolve: automatic smooth shading and default-on Cap with continuous rims; wide shadows and glows at high zoom, #1706; stacked Transform effects, #1705; 3D on nonzero compound paths, #1724; pattern tiles redraw, #1723; scores unchanged; Roughen's Smooth turn-backs, #1643; Scribble per region, #1648; score unchanged; Warp Arc bends in the object's proportions, #1578; Zig Zag ridges evenly spaced, #1558; effect parameters checked, #1592; score unchanged; raster effects after a pattern, radial or freeform gradient fill export at their place and size, #1536; score unchanged; 3D and Materials on outlined type and other shapes of many small curves, #1481; Twist 0° to 360°, #1524; twisted walls keep their faces, #1525; score unchanged; 3D and Materials: Inflate takes Twist, Taper and Cap; score unchanged; 3D and Materials: Perspective as the documented 0°–160° angle; 3D and Materials: the documented light settings) · Target: Adobe Illustrator 2026 (30.x)

Every entry of Illustrator's Effect menu, by its public feature name, against VectorCraft's effects catalogue (effect_catalog() in crates/effects/src/lib.rs) and the Effect menu built from it (crates/ui-egui/src/menus.rs). Counts are measured from the catalogue; "depth" notes are estimated. Part of target-app-parity.md; open work is in gaps.md.

Summary

Group	Illustrator	VectorCraft	%	Remaining (h)
Illustrator effects (vector and stylize)	50	45	90%	6–10
Photoshop effects (raster, Effect Gallery)	57	33	58%	21–35
3D and Materials	4 (+3 Classic)	4 (initial: Extrude & Bevel, Revolve, Inflate, Rotate)	~25%	25–45
Beyond Illustrator: Effect › Color Adjustments (6), effect plug-ins (WebAssembly)	—	6 + plug-ins	—	—

Illustrator effects

Submenu	Items	Ours	Missing
Convert to Shape	Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse	3/3	—
Crop Marks	Crop Marks	1/1	—
Distort & Transform	Free Distort, Pucker & Bloat, Roughen, Transform, Tweak, Twist, Zig Zag	7/7	Free Distort's dialog has a handle on each corner of the object's bounds, moved by dragging or with the arrow keys; Transform's Transform Objects/Patterns and Scale Strokes & Effects options, invisible Reflect checkboxes (#885); Zig Zag's ridges are evenly spaced along each segment (#1558), and Smooth points make a continuous wave whose peaks and valleys have handles along the path (#2343); Roughen with Smooth keeps turn-backs smooth instead of cusps that draw as spikes (#1646)
Path	Offset Path, Outline Object, Outline Stroke	3/3	With Use Preview Bounds on, Align, Distribute and the Transform panel still measure type that carries Outline Object by its layout box (preview bounds leave out effects)
Pathfinder	Add, Intersect, Exclude, Subtract, Minus Back, Divide, Trim, Merge, Crop, Outline, Hard Mix, Soft Mix, Trap	10/13	Hard Mix, Soft Mix, Trap
Rasterize	Rasterize… (as a live effect)	0/1	the live effect (Object › Rasterize exists)
Stylize	Drop Shadow, Feather, Inner Glow, Outer Glow, Round Corners, Scribble	6/6	Scribble Options' Settings presets
SVG Filters	Apply SVG Filter… and the filter list	0/1	the whole submenu (SVG filters on import round-trip already)
Warp	Arc, Arc Lower, Arc Upper, Arch, Bulge, Shell Lower, Shell Upper, Flag, Wave, Fish, Rise, Fisheye, Inflate, Squeeze, Twist	15/15	warp point editing in envelopes; Arc is a circular arc in the object's own proportions (#1578)

Document Raster Effects Settings exists. When the 64 million pixel cap on an effect image lowers its resolution, PDF export warns once per object with the requested and the lowest achieved ppi (crates/engine/src/tests_pdfraster.rs).

Photoshop effects

Submenu	Items	Ours	Missing
Artistic	Colored Pencil, Cutout, Dry Brush, Film Grain, Fresco, Neon Glow, Paint Daubs, Palette Knife, Plastic Wrap, Poster Edges, Rough Pastels, Smudge Stick, Sponge, Underpainting, Watercolor	4/15 (approximate Cutout, Film Grain, Neon Glow, Poster Edges)	Colored Pencil, Dry Brush, Fresco, Paint Daubs, Palette Knife, Plastic Wrap, Rough Pastels, Smudge Stick, Sponge, Underpainting, Watercolor
Blur	Gaussian Blur, Radial Blur, Smart Blur	3/3	—
Brush Strokes	Accented Edges, Angled Strokes, Crosshatch, Dark Strokes, Ink Outlines, Spatter, Sprayed Strokes, Sumi-e	8/8	—
Distort	Diffuse Glow, Glass, Ocean Ripple	3/3	—
Pixelate	Color Halftone, Crystallize, Mezzotint, Pointillize	4/4	—
Sharpen	Unsharp Mask	1/1	—
Sketch	Bas Relief, Chalk & Charcoal, Charcoal, Chrome, Conté Crayon, Graphic Pen, Halftone Pattern, Note Paper, Photocopy, Plaster, Reticulation, Stamp, Torn Edges, Water Paper	1/14	Bas Relief, Chalk & Charcoal, Charcoal, Chrome, Conté Crayon, Graphic Pen, Note Paper, Photocopy, Plaster, Reticulation, Stamp, Torn Edges, Water Paper
Stylize	Glowing Edges	1/1	—
Texture	Craquelure, Grain, Mosaic Tiles, Patchwork, Stained Glass, Texturizer	6/6	Texturizer's Load Texture
Video	De-Interlace, NTSC Colors	2/2	—
Effect Gallery	the combined browser and stack dialog	0/1	all

The pixel-filter pipeline (vectorcraft_effects::pixel) is in place: each new filter is one function, a catalogue row, a menu entry and translations. Measured throughput: 0.7–1.2 agent hours per filter (see calibration), so the 24 missing filters are ~17–29 h and the Effect Gallery dialog another 4–6 h. These parallelize well across agents.

Film Grain (artistic.filmGrain, Effect › Artistic) adds stable monochrome noise to shadows and midtones, with Grain, Highlight Area and Intensity sliders, live preview and appearance editing. Its smooth grain field follows translations, preserves transparency and stays in document units; zoomed-out rendering uses bounded approximate footprint filtering. Changing the bounds shifts the pattern. Command exports bake it to an image in SVG and PDF, while the native document keeps the effect editable. Behaviour is an original visual approximation based on Illustrator's public effects reference and the public Artistic filters guide, not a pixel-identical proprietary implementation. Intensity is interpreted as highlight strength and quieter highlight grain. Grain strength stays even across shadows and midtones and rolls off above mid-grey to a quarter-strength floor at full Intensity before highlight headroom; cream retains soft grain, black takes light speckles and white stays clean. The tonal curve and endpoint behaviour are interpretations, not verified proprietary behaviour. Saturated colour channels may clip. The parameter ranges and defaults are chosen for VectorCraft, not asserted as measured proprietary defaults.

Cutout, Neon Glow and Poster Edges (artistic.cutout, artistic.neonGlow, artistic.posterEdges) follow the same two public references, with original algorithms. Cutout softens the object's colours (Edge Simplicity, less with Edge Fidelity), splits each colour channel into Number of Levels steps, and paints each resulting piece in the average colour that falls into it, so hues survive. Poster Edges posterizes each colour channel to Posterization + 2 levels and draws black lines on the edges of any channel and of the object's outline, wider with Edge Thickness and darker, on fainter edges too, with Edge Intensity. Neon Glow redraws the object in dimmed greys screened with a glow colour from its light areas (positive Glow Size) or its dark ones (negative), spread by the size and as strong as Glow Brightness; with no foreground and background colours in Illustrator's model, the glow colour is the effect's own parameter. All three keep coverage, work in document units at any Document Raster Effects resolution, and use the generic effect dialog with live preview. Ranges and defaults are chosen for VectorCraft. Evidence: crates/effects/src/pixel/artistic.rs, the artistic_*, cutout_*, poster_edges_* and neon_glow_* tests in crates/effects/src/pixel/tests.rs, and artistic_settings_survive_a_save_and_open in crates/engine/src/tests_rasterfilters.rs. Near white, highlight headroom can limit grain equally at every Intensity; highlight lift still depends on Intensity when Highlight Area is nonzero. The two rotated, variance-normalised noise layers can leave a faint diagonal weave at high magnification. Removing that remaining direction would require a more expensive field; the current implementation keeps bounded per-pixel work. Film Grain is still slower than Texture Grain (Regular), particularly when its wider footprint needs four samples. Calibration on uniform grey at Grain 20, using 32×32 fine samples per coarse pixel, measured grain standard deviation within about 15% of the dense area average at pixel widths of 2, 4 and 8 document units (ratios 1.13, 0.89, 0.85). This is evidence for the bounded approximation, not an accuracy guarantee for arbitrary artwork. Tests: pixel::tests::film_grain_*, tests_rasterfilters, tests_adjust::film_grain_dialog_* and tests_labels::effect_menu_lists_film_grain_*.

3D and Materials

Item	Ours
Revolve	initial: live, editable profile, rotation and light gizmos, default-on Cap with continuous curved rims, smooth vector shading and round seam joins, SVG/PDF output, Expand Appearance (revolve.md, #846)
Extrude & Bevel, Inflate, Rotate	initial: live, depth, twist, taper, solid or hollow caps, five original bevel shapes, Inflate volume, both sides, twist, taper and cap, Rotate of every fill and stroke, Position presets, rotation and light gizmos, SVG/PDF output, Expand Appearance (three-d.md)
Materials panel, lighting, ray-traced render	one directional light with the documented Intensity, Rotation, Height, Softness and Ambient Light, Revolve uses smooth vector shading, the other types use flat facets; no materials, several lights, light colour or presets, shadows or ray tracing
3D (Classic): Extrude & Bevel, Revolve, Rotate	none
Turntable (30.0 beta)	none
Export 3D objects (OBJ, USDA, glTF)	none

The three-d crate (depends on geom and pathops, with no UI or GPU dependencies) builds, rotates, projects, shades and depth-sorts the surfaces; the effects crate turns them into art. What's left (materials, several lights and shadows, ray-traced rendering, angular cut caps, exact visibility, 3D Classic, Turntable, 3D export) is 25–45 h.

Revision history

Date	Change	Summary
2026-10-16	minor	Zig Zag with Smooth points draws a continuous wave: every peak and valley is a smooth point with handles along the path, a third of the way to the next ridge, so each span follows a half cosine through the path instead of a straight diagonal with rounded tips, also at the ends of open paths and for ridges much taller than they are apart (#2343); score unchanged (estimated)
2026-10-16	minor	G2: Effect › Sketch › Halftone Pattern (Size, Contrast, Pattern Type Circle, Dot or Line; black ink on white paper, Size in points at any Document Raster Effects resolution); measured Photoshop filters 30/57, 27 remaining (22–38 h).
2026-10-15	minor	Round Corners rounds corners whose anchor carries a handle (where a curve meets a line, or two curves meet) with the round cut Live Corners uses (#1144), reaching radius along each side; before, they were left sharp. Corners between handle-less anchors are rounded as before; score unchanged (estimated)
2026-10-14	minor	Revolve: automatic smooth vector shading, default-on Cap with continuous curved rims, and bounded seam joins; angular cut sides remain open. Scores and hour estimates unchanged at this rounding
2026-10-14	minor	Wide drop shadows and glows at high zoom render within the raster budget (#1706); stacked Transform effects are bounded (#1705); 3D effects keep the area a nonzero compound path fills (#1724); pattern tiles redraw when a symbol, pattern or image their art shows changes (#1723) (all #1864). Scores unchanged (estimated)
2026-10-14	minor	Roughen with Smooth keeps turn-backs smooth instead of making cusps that draw as spikes (#1646, #1643); Scribble draws one zig-zag per region, with no lines across holes and notches; convex shapes are unchanged (#1651, #1648); scores unchanged (estimated)
2026-10-13	minor	Zig Zag spaces its ridges evenly along each segment, so lines and curves get a regular wave in Corner and Smooth (#1558); Warp › Arc (the effect and Envelope › Make with Warp) bends in the object's real proportions: a circular arc with concentric edges and no fold-over at 100%, so Arc on art that isn't square draws differently from before (#1581, fixes #1578); effect.apply and effect.setParams give an error for a misspelt or wrongly typed effect parameter instead of running the effect with its default (#1623, #1592); scores unchanged (estimated)
2026-10-13	minor	3D lighting takes the documented Intensity, Rotation, Height, Softness and Ambient Light (to 200 %), and a light behind the object; earlier lights read as the same (three-d.md); 3D stays ~25%, 25–45 h
2026-10-13	minor	3D Perspective is the documented 0°–160° angle, earlier strengths read as the same view (three-d.md); 3D stays ~25%, 25–45 h
2026-10-13	minor	Raster effects (blur, shadow, glow, grain) drawn after a pattern, radial or freeform gradient fill export at their place and size (#1541, fixes #1536); scores unchanged (estimated)
2026-10-13	minor	3D and Materials: outlined words and other shapes of many small curves take Rotate, Extrude & Bevel and Inflate (curves are sampled by a tolerance; Rotate takes up to 65,536 outline points; #1481); Extrude & Bevel's Twist runs 0° to 360° as the public panel reference gives it, a negative value drawing untwisted (#1524); a twisted extrusion keeps its walls, which were dropped from about 45° (#1525); details in three-d.md; 3D stays ~25%, 25–45 h (estimated)
2026-10-13	minor	Inflate takes Twist, Taper and Cap (three-d.md); 3D stays ~25%, 25–45 h: materials, lights and shadows are the bulk of what remains
2026-10-12	minor	Extrude & Bevel, Inflate and Rotate (initial, three-d.md); 3D ~8% → ~25%, 45–75 → 25–45 h
2026-10-12	minor	G2: Artistic › Film Grain added with live controls and raster exports; measured Photoshop filters 29/57, 28 remaining (23–39 h).
2026-10-11	minor	PDF cap warnings identify original objects after appearance splitting and report the lowest achieved ppi; cap/rendering and scores unchanged
2026-10-11	minor	Zig Zag's dialog: Size and Ridges per segment sliders, Points as Smooth / Corner radio buttons (#1133)
2026-10-11	minor	Brush Strokes landed (8 filters): 28/57 Photoshop effects
2026-10-10	minor	Initial Revolve landed (#846)
2026-10-10	major	First checklist, counted from the effects catalogue (20/57 Photoshop effects, 44/50 Illustrator effects)