That's some pretty aggressive editorializing in the title. The linked page doesn't once use "faster", "VIPS" or "PIL".
The page does link to benchmarks [0] but Photon isn't the clear victor. It's slower on the PNG benchmark but faster on the JPG benchmark. There are no benchmarks for PIL.
It's an interesting project but the differentiating factor is more portability and security than speed. WASM means that this can be run in a nice sandbox where its ability to harm the system is drastically reduced.
The page does link to benchmarks [0] but Photon isn't the clear victor. It's slower on the PNG benchmark but faster on the JPG benchmark. There are no benchmarks for PIL.
It's an interesting project but the differentiating factor is more portability and security than speed. WASM means that this can be run in a nice sandbox where its ability to harm the system is drastically reduced.
[0]: https://github.com/silvia-odwyer/photon/wiki/Benchmarks