ArtCraft rebuilds seven Adobe apps as free, open-source software

Software engineer Brandon Thomas has released ArtCraft, a free and open-source suite that recreates seven of Adobe's best-known Creative Cloud apps: Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, Acrobat, After Effects and InDesign. The apps run on macOS, Windows and Linux, as reported by PetaPixel.

Each tool gets its own name. PhotoCraft takes on Photoshop, FilmCraft takes on Premiere, and LightCraft is an open-source take on Lightroom CC. Thomas says he has received many requests for a Lightroom Classic competitor too. On GitHub, he describes the apps as a "clean-room reimplementation" of Adobe's software, which recreates its functionality without relying on copyrighted assets or a protected codebase.

Rebuilt in Rust

Thomas founded ArtCraft nearly a year ago, after working as CEO of Storyteller.ai and as a software engineer at Square. On Reddit, he wrote that he used Anthropic's Opus 5.5 to recreate the seven apps in Rust, while insisting that he is "not a casual vibe coder." He presents himself as a 15-year industry veteran who has used Rust extensively for about a decade.

His motivation is personal as much as technical. Thomas wants to give artists free, open-source tools without Adobe's subscriptions, and says Adobe charged him its cancellation fee on multiple occasions. His attempt to present ArtCraft on r/Adobe did not stay online for long.

Still an alpha

The suite is currently in alpha, and Thomas hopes to reach the beta stage quickly. He is aiming for "100% feature parity" with Adobe's software within a month, an ambitious target even with AI tools. Feature parity does not guarantee the same performance, and professionals who depend on color accuracy, calibration, plug-ins and support may stay cautious.

The legal side also remains open. Clean-room reimplementation is a standard practice, but Adobe holds thousands of patents, and whether the ArtCraft apps infringe any of them is still an open question. Adobe already faces competition in individual segments, from DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro in video editing to Affinity. ArtCraft's angle is different: the whole suite is free, and it covers Linux, which Adobe does not support at all.