Open Source Photoshop? ArtCraft and 7 Free AI-Powered Alternatives to Adobe

At the end of September 2026, an American developer published seven free applications on GitHub that individually remake Adobe's most popular programs: Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat. He wrote them with the help of... Claude Opus 5.5, in a few days, and in just over a week they have become one of the most followed open source projects of the moment. Here's what they really are free alternatives to Adobe of ArtCraft, starting from PhotoCraft, a Open source Photoshop written with AI, how much they are worth today and what they say about the future of software.

What are ArtCraft Crafting Apps?

Crafting Apps are seven free, open-source creative programs, written from scratch in Rust by the ArtCraft team, that mimic the interface, shortcuts, and workflows of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. They run locally on macOS, Windows, and Linux, six out of seven also run in the browser thanks to WebAssembly, and do not require a subscription or account.

The project presents itself as a clean-room reimplementation: The programs are built from public specifications and the observed behavior of the original software, without using any Adobe code, shaders, or resources. The code is published on GitHub with MIT or Apache 2.0 license, at the choice of whoever reuses it.

ArtCraft wasn't born with these tools: it's a studio for AI image and video generation, founded in 2025. Crafting Apps is a parallel line, and the team says it wants to fund it by selling access to its own AI model, available within the apps alongside third-party models.

Who created them, and why against Adobe?

Brandon Thomas is behind Crafting Apps, a developer from Atlanta with fifteen years of experience, former CEO of Storyteller.ai and software engineer at Square. When presenting the project on Reddit, he explained his motivation bluntly: he was tired of paying the cancellation fee of Adobe subscriptions.

The issue isn't just personal. In June 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Adobe, accusing it of hiding the cancellation fee for annual plans paid monthly in the terms and conditions and making cancellation unnecessarily complicated. In March 2026, the matter was settled with a settlement proposal from 150 million dollars: $75 million in civil penalties and $75 million in free services to customers. Adobe has admitted no wrongdoing.

This is the ground on which ArtCraft has planted its flag: a market of professionals who use Adobe every day but can't stand the subscription model. The product is free, but the message is political.

The 7 Adobe Apps and Programs That Mimic

Each app has a name that ends in "Craft" and a specific equivalent in the Adobe suite. The development status is as stated by the team on the official page.

Crafting App	What does it do?	Adobe Reference Program	State
PhotoCraft	Photo editing with layers, masks and PSD files	Photoshop	Early alpha
VectorCraft	Vector illustration	Illustrator	In development
FilmCraft	Video editing, color and audio	Premiere Pro	In development (desktop only)
LightCraft	Photo library and RAW development	Lightroom	In development
EffectCraft	Motion graphics and visual effects	After Effects	In development
DesignCraft	Layout and publishing	InDesign	In development
PdfCraft	Read, merge, split, and protect PDFs	Acrobat Pro	Early alpha

But the catalog doesn't stop at Adobe. On October 7th, two new repositories appeared, GridCraft (an Excel-style spreadsheet) and DeckCraft (PowerPoint-style presentations), and the site already announces other titles for writing, audio, and CAD. The stated goal is to also cover office software: we discuss this in the article on Microsoft Office alternatives like GridCraft and WordCraft.

To give you an idea of how the apps look and perform, here's a field test from the FUTC channel:

Really cloned in a week with vibe coding?

Partly yes, but the story is less magical than the headlines make it out to be. The first public commit of PhotoCraft dates back to September 30, 2026, and within eight days, the seven repositories had combined surpassed 42,000 stars on GitHub. Today, PhotoCraft alone has over 47,000, with more than 7,500 forks. This is a rare rate of adoption for an open source project.

The code was written with Claude Opus 5.5 as a programming assistant, and Thomas claims to have been coding exclusively with AI tools since February. But he also clarified that he's not "just a vibe coder": behind it are fifteen years of experience and a decade of experience in Rust. vibe coding, that is, describing to the AI what you want to achieve instead of writing the code line by line, here it is guided by someone who knows exactly what to ask for and how to verify it.

The structure of the projects proves it. PhotoCraft is divided into 24 Rust modules and has more than 1,700 automated tests, including pixel-by-pixel comparisons with Photoshop-generated files. Every command in the program, over 500, can also be called from the command line and from a MCP server, so that an AI agent can use the app like a person would. AI has accelerated writing, but the method is for engineers.

Is PhotoCraft a true open-source Photoshop? How close are they to the originals?

Today, Crafting Apps are not a replacement for Adobe in everyday professional work, and the team is the first to say so. The PhotoCraft README makes it clear: many Photoshop features exist in some form, but the program is not yet a replacement for those who work with it every day. The roadmap places real coverage between 25 and the 35% of what a professional needs.

The data that circulates the most, that is, that all 625 menu items Photoshop's commands are linked to a command, so read carefully: measure the wiring, not the behavior. Thomas had promised the 100% features within a month, then corrected his position, saying the 99% would be available in less than a year.

The main gaps, according to the project documentation and the first tests in the specialized press:

• No generative functionsFor example, Content-Aware Fill, one of Photoshop's most used tools, is missing.
• Incompatible plugins: No support for .8BF plugins, ExtendScript and UXP scripts, .atn actions, Adobe Fonts and Libraries.
• Typography and pro flows still immature, with fifteen instruments declared missing.
• Widespread bugs: Hundreds of open reports about saving, exporting, shortcuts, and performance.

But there are also concrete results. By opening and re-saving the test files from the psd-tools library, PhotoCraft returns an identical render in 307 out of 309 files, and those who have tried it report menus and shortcuts where the hand expects them. The most honest comparison is not with Photoshop, but with alternatives like Photopea or GIMP: in that respect, the project is already interesting.

Can they be used in companies? Licenses, trademarks, and risks

Licensing-wise, yes: MIT and Apache 2.0 allow commercial use, modification, and redistribution. The apps are called "Craft," don't use Adobe trademarks, and the project states that it is not affiliated with the company. The ArtCraft name and its logos, however, remain trademarks of the team and are not covered by the free license.

The open point is another. The concept of clean room Traditionally, there are two separate groups: one studies the original, the other writes the code without ever having seen it. Here, there's a single developer and an AI model trained on huge amounts of code and public documentation, and several observers point out that Adobe holds thousands of patents on the functions and mechanics of its software. To date, Adobe has not issued any public statements or legal action, but the lack of reaction doesn't mean it's green lighted.

For a company the advice is pragmatic: try them on low-risk jobs, without deadlines or clients at stake, and don't migrate production processes to alpha software. This applies to any newly created tool, regardless of who wrote it.

How to Download and Try Crafting Apps

The easiest way is the official Crafting Apps page at getartcraft.com, or the ArtCraft Launcher, which installs all the apps and keeps them updated. Note a confusing detail: the main "Download" page on the site downloads the ArtCraft AI studio, which requires registration, not the Crafting Apps.

1. Go to getartcraft.com/apps and choose the app.
2. Download the installer for your system: .msi on Windows, .dmg on Mac, AppImage, .deb or .rpm on Linux.
3. Alternatively use the web version, available for all apps except FilmCraft.
4. If you are a developer, you can clone the repository from GitHub and fill it with Cargo.

What changes for those who develop and buy software

The real news isn't that someone copied Adobe, but how much the cost of writing software has dropped. Until recently, replicating even the Photoshop interface required a team and years of work. Today, a skilled user, using a model like Opus 5.5, can line up seven native applications in a matter of days.

For companies, this has two consequences. The first is that custom-made tools Once out of budget, such as an internal management system, an automation tool, or an app for a specific process, become accessible even to an SME. The second is that the value shifts: writing code matters less, while design well, test and maintain over time It matters much more. Crafting Apps illustrate this well: hundreds of bugs opened in a week are the price of speed.

If you are considering how to bring this change of pace into your business, without finding yourself with a fragile instrument in your hands, this is the work we do with Artificial intelligence consulting for companies: understand where AI really saves money and build solutions that withstand everyday use.

Conclusion

ArtCraft's Crafting Apps aren't yet the free Adobe alternatives that will replace Photoshop on graphic designers' desktops. However, they are a concrete, public, and verifiable demonstration of what an experienced developer can build today with AI. It's worth trying them out, following their evolution over the coming months, and, above all, asking yourself which tools in your company could be redesigned with the same logic.

Software isn't finished: it's just become a lot cheaper to write, and a lot more important to design well.

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