Software engineer Brandon Thomas has released an open-source suite of free creative apps designed as alternatives to seven of Adobe’s most popular products.
The apps are part of ArtCraft and are available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
The suite includes alternatives to Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, Acrobat, After Effects and InDesign.
Built in Rust With Help From Claude
Thomas founded ArtCraft nearly a year ago and previously worked as CEO of Storyteller.ai and as a software engineer at Square.
He says he used Anthropic’s Opus 5.5 AI model to help recreate the seven applications in Rust.
Thomas stressed that the project is not simply the result of casual AI-assisted coding, pointing to his 15 years of software engineering experience and roughly a decade of work with Rust.
He said his previous work includes payment infrastructure handling billions of dollars in daily transaction volume, as well as robotics and optics automation.
Seven Adobe Alternatives
ArtCraft’s applications include:
| Adobe App | ArtCraft Alternative |
|---|---|
| Photoshop | PhotoCraft |
| Premiere | FilmCraft |
| Lightroom | LightCraft |
| Illustrator | ArtCraft alternative |
| Acrobat | ArtCraft alternative |
| After Effects | ArtCraft alternative |
| InDesign | ArtCraft alternative |
PhotoCraft closely resembles Photoshop, while FilmCraft follows a layout similar to Premiere.
LightCraft is designed as an open-source alternative to Lightroom CC rather than Lightroom Classic, although Thomas says users have already requested a Lightroom Classic-style application.
Goal Is 100% Feature Parity
Thomas says his goal is to reach 100% feature parity with Adobe’s applications within a month.
The software is currently in alpha, and he hopes to move it to beta quickly.
However, feature parity does not necessarily mean identical performance, stability, or functionality in every professional workflow.
Areas such as color accuracy, calibration, plugin compatibility, efficiency, support and handling unusual edge cases remain particularly important for professional users.
Designed as Clean-Room Reimplementations
On GitHub, Thomas describes the projects as clean-room reimplementations of Adobe’s software.
That means the applications aim to reproduce similar functionality without using Adobe’s copyrighted source code or assets.
However, questions could still arise around patents covering software designs, interfaces, or specific technical methods. Adobe holds thousands of patents, and how those might apply to ArtCraft remains unclear while the project is still new.
Legal precedent can protect independently created software that reproduces functionality, provided it does not infringe protected designs or technologies.
Open Source, but AI Features Can Cost Money
The core ArtCraft applications can be used without a subscription.
The company also offers optional subscriptions that include generative AI credits for AI features inside the apps.
Users can buy credits separately without subscribing and can also use their own computing resources or third-party AI subscriptions for generation tasks.
Growing Demand for Adobe Alternatives
Thomas says the project was partly motivated by frustration with Adobe’s subscription model, including cancellation fees he says he was charged multiple times.
Interest in Adobe alternatives has remained strong, particularly as Creative Cloud carries recurring subscription costs.
Adobe already faces competition from products such as DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Affinity, and various RAW photo editing and management applications.
ArtCraft is taking a broader approach by attempting to recreate an entire creative software suite rather than competing in only one category.
Thomas says the project is intended to be maintained long term and is not a one-off experiment.
The software is already available through ArtCraft and GitHub, although it remains at an early stage of development.
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