SoftwareNov 6, 2026, 5:32 PM UTC·1 min read

ArtCraft: Developer Builds Open-Source Adobe Rivals Using AI

Developer Brandon Thomas, angered by Adobe cancellation penalties, used Anthropic's Claude to build free, open-source Photoshop and Premiere alternatives in Rust.

Developer's screen showing a Photoshop-style image editor interface built as an open-source alternative to Adobe software. — Image: genbeta.com

Brandon Thomas, a developer with 15 years of experience, has released a family of free, open-source creative apps designed to mimic Adobe's best-known software. The project, called ArtCraft, includes PhotoCraft, FilmCraft, VectorCraft and LightCraft, inspired respectively by Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Illustrator and Lightroom.

Thomas says his motivation was frustration with Adobe's subscription model: after receiving several penalties for cancelling subscriptions, he began building alternatives of his own. He says he used Claude Opus 5.5, Anthropic's AI model, to generate much of the code, which is written mainly in Rust.

Open code, three platforms

The projects are published on GitHub, so anyone can inspect how they work and contribute improvements. The apps are available for Windows, macOS and Linux, which is notable for Linux users, since Adobe does not officially support that system.

Because the code carries open licenses, it can be studied and modified, something many users have welcomed. Others, however, have raised questions about how closely the interfaces and features resemble Adobe's products.

Still early days

The interfaces may look familiar, but the tools are not yet ready to replace the originals. Thomas himself acknowledges that the apps are at an early stage, with bugs and incomplete features. PhotoCraft's documentation states that it is not ready to replace Photoshop in daily professional work, citing limits in some advanced tools and missing support for certain file formats.

Thomas argues that AI will make it far easier to build alternatives to commercial software, but he concedes that demonstrating this with early versions is not the same as maintaining stable applications for years. For now, ArtCraft shows that AI can speed up the development of complex programs. Whether these alternatives become dependable tools for real users remains to be seen.

Apps worth a look

SUMO: the number puzzle

Tap the right tiles, add them up, hit the target. Easy to learn, hard to master. Free, for all ages.

Dialo: learn languages by speaking

Talk to an AI conversation partner; every sentence comes back corrected and explained in your language. 9 languages, A1 to C2.

ediviewer: read EDI files like documents

Open EDIFACT and X12 messages, see every segment explained, convert to JSON/XML, export PDF and Excel. Runs locally, no upload.

giftdetect: the right gift in minutes

Pick who it is for, the occasion and their personality. The search engine reads product descriptions from local shops and ranks what fits. Free, no sign-up.

Tags:adobeartcraftopen sourceclauderustphotoshop alternative