Software developer Brandon Thomas and his company ArtCraft have done the unthinkable by using AI and Rust to reverse-engineer and build an open-source version of the Adobe Creative Suite.
ArtCraft includes open-source versions of Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom (not Classic), Acrobat, After Effects, and InDesign that are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
The developers didn’t just create a suite of apps that mimicked those of the Adobe Creative Suite; they created nearly 1:1 drop-in replacements for them that are lightning fast and already showing signs of stability. PhotoCraft is the app that is already getting a ton of promotion because 1) it’s free and 2) Linux users have been clamoring for Photoshop for decades.
It’s finally here.
Hands-On Testing
I spent the day testing PhotoCraft, and I have to say, it’s a seriously impressive piece of work. Not only does it look and feel incredibly similar to Photoshop, but it’s as fast as any app that I’ve ever used, and it already feels quite stable (even in alpha). After installing PhotoCraft on both Linux and macOS, I fired it up and immediately opened a .psd file (Photoshop’s default file format). PhotoCraft had zero problems not only opening the file but preserving the layers as well.
All of the usual features were present; however, the locations of some of the tools had changed. That’s to be expected, as PhotoCraft isn’t a Photoshop clone. As someone who’s spent decades working with GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program), the second I opened PhotoCraft and began working with it, I felt as if an entirely new world of graphics capabilities had been opened for me. This tool contains everything I’d envied about Photoshop and knew I’d probably never get with GIMP.
And yet, here it is.
PhotoCraft even has Actions, which is quite exciting. One difference between the PhotoCraft and Photoshop Actions tools is that the Photoshop version includes several prebuilt actions to choose from. PhotoCraft, on the other hand, requires that you build all of your own actions from scratch. You do also have to add the Actions tool to the right sidebar by clicking Window > Actions. Once you’ve added it, you can then begin recording your actions and have them ready to use at any time.
My experience with PhotoCraft was an absolute joy, and I’m fairly certain that it will become my go-to image editor (sorry, GIMP) because it simply has more tools and is exponentially faster.
The Big Announcement
When Thomas announced the app on Reddit, he said, “No more subscriptions with cancellation fees. These are yours to own forever. You can fork them, build them. Whatever. They are yours to own. They’re open source.”
This venture was started, according to Thomas, when they (Adobe) “…charged me the ‘cancellation fee’ on multiple occasions and I’ve hated them ever since.”
Is This All About Vibe-Coding?
Thomas states up front that AI was used in the reverse-engineering process. In his Reddit post, Thomas adds, “I’m not just some casual vibe coder. I’m a 15-year industry veteran who has written everything from six-nines payment rails that move billions of dollars of transaction volume a day to advanced robotics and optics automation.” He continues, “I’ve used Rust extensively for about a decade, and I know how to build and maintain large-scale Rust projects.”
Thomas also listed the links to the GitHub repositories for each app’s code, such as PhotoCraft (Photoshop), VectorCraft (Illustrator), FilmCraft (Premiere), LightCraft (Lightroom), PrintCraft (Acrobat Pro), EffectCraft (After Effects), and DesignCraft (InDesign).
There’s also the ArtCraft installer, which is a centralized app that allows users to install and launch each app from one location.
Thomas claims that the project will reach 100% feature parity within a month, and they’ve already got quite the head start.
Although PhotoCraft is free, if users want to add AI into the mix, they’ll have to subscribe to one of four plans:
- Basic – $8/month
- Pro – $28/month
- Max – $48/month
- Enterprise – Contact for a quote
ArtCraft is already planning on expanding their offerings with apps like:
- CadCraft (AutoCAD)
- DeckCraft (PowerPoint)
- GridCraft (Excel)
- SoundCraft (Avid Pro Tools)
- WordCraft (Word)
It would seem as if ArtCraft was intent on reverse engineering the whole of popular software titles across many sectors. To make this happen, Thomas used Anthropic’s Opus 5.5 AI LLM to recreate these apps, and there’s no telling where it will end.
Thomas makes it very clear that this was a clean-room reimplementation, meaning zero Adobe code was used for building the apps. His next target is Microsoft Word and other de facto standard tools. In fact, I took my testing one step further and installed WordCraft (their take on MS Word).
WordCraft on Linux
In a word…wow.
I am currently writing this piece on WordCraft running on Fedora Linux with KDE Plasma and it is fast, reliable, and has all of the features you’d not only expect from Word but need. I spend a lot of time in word processors and have avoided MS Word for years, opting instead for open-source projects such as LibreOffice. When working with my publisher’s editor, I have been using Apple Pages because the review tools on LibreOffice are not up to the task.
That all changes now, thanks to WordCraft.
You see, my issue for some time now is that Apple Pages cannot be trusted. I’ve lost too much work because, out of nowhere, Pages will say that a file cannot be saved because “it’s missing.” It’s been frustrating, but I’ve stuck with Pages because the collaboration tools work well.
Now that I have WordCraft, I can essentially use MS Word, and it’s spectacular. WordCraft’s collaboration tools (track changes, comments, markup, etc.) are every bit the equal of MS Word’s, and that’s a huge selling point for anyone who has to collaborate.
Beyond the review tools, I’ve found that anyone who migrates from MS Word to WordCraft will not miss a thing. There’s even Zotero integration for adding citations, bibliographies, etc.
Like all of the other *Craft tools, WordCraft is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows and can be used for free.
