Artcraft: Open-Source AI Suite Aims to Rival Adobe Photoshop
Developer Brandon Thomas and a four-person team have released Artcraft, a free open-source creative suite built with AI as an alternative to Adobe's Creative Cloud.
SUMO· the number puzzle
Dialo· learn languages by speaking
ediviewer· read EDI files like documents
giftdetect· the right gift in minutesDeveloper Brandon Thomas has unveiled Artcraft, a free, open-source software suite for creatives that is meant to rival Adobe's Creative Cloud. The project is still in an early stage of development, but it has already drawn attention among designers and developers.
Thomas built the suite with a team of four. On Hacker News he claimed he had rebuilt Photoshop with the help of AI in a single session. The apps closely mirror Adobe's tools: Photocraft replaces Photoshop, Lightcraft takes the place of Lightroom, and so on. The goal is to reverse-engineer Adobe's software and offer an equivalent product without cloud dependence or high monthly fees. For comparison, individual users pay around 78 euros a month for Adobe's Pro subscription, which includes Photoshop, Premiere and Firefly.
Early stage, with gaps
The team itself says the current version is early but evolving quickly. First testers point to various shortcomings, and Thomas says it will take several more months before 99 percent of the features are covered. According to the developers, they used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 as the AI tool and Rust as the programming language. The programs run on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Thomas stresses that this is not a pure vibe-coding project. He cites 15 years of software development experience and work on large Rust projects, and says he wants to show what current AI tools can do. Personal motives likely play a role too: in a Reddit post he says Adobe charged him cancellation fees several times and that he has "hated it since." Many Reddit users welcome the idea of an Adobe alternative.
Legal questions remain
Artcraft illustrates how far AI has come in building complex programs from specifications. Thomas sees it as the start of an era in which anyone can create and customize their own alternatives to commercial software.
Whether he can deliver on those ambitious promises remains to be seen, as Artcraft is still far from a finished product. The project also raises legal questions: because it resembles the Creative Cloud so closely, it is unclear whether Adobe will tolerate the replica.
Apps worth a look
SUMO: the number puzzleTap the right tiles, add them up, hit the target. Easy to learn, hard to master. Free, for all ages.
Dialo: learn languages by speakingTalk 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 documentsOpen 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 minutesPick 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.
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