AI Developer Brandon Thomas Builds Free Adobe Alternatives After Frustration With Cancellation Fees
16 Sources
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Software is over": Bold AI developer takes aim at Adobe with open source clones
For a while, those hoping to avoid the difficulty and expense of dealing with Adobe's Creative Suite have been able to use several free and/or open-source alternatives that replicate some or all of those capabilities. Now, one developer is using AI-powered reverse engineering to mimic the look,
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Can Vibe Coded Apps Replace Adobe and Microsoft? These AI Apps Hope So - CNET
Katelyn is a reporter with CNET covering artificial intelligence, including chatbots, image and video generators.... Read full bio In this current era of vibe coding -- using AI to create mobile and desktop apps -- it was probably only a matter of time until someone made free versions of popular
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I replaced the Adobe suite with a free open source alternative that Claude can control directly
Dhruv Bhutani has been writing about consumer technology since 2008, offering deep insights into the personal technology landscape through features and opinion pieces. He writes for XDA-Developers, where he focuses on topics like productivity, networking, self-hosting, and more. Over the years, his
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"Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees
Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Big quote: Adobe, a company that was once sued by the US government over its early cancelation fees, has seen plenty of customers abandon its products in favor of free alternatives. One developer
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Someone Vibe Coded a Free Knockoff of Adobe Creative Suite
To get this out of the way, you should probably be more cautious than I've been about downloading and using a vibe coded piece of software today. Having said that, holy toledo, someone vibe coded their own entire version of Adobe Suite and dumped it on GitHub as open-source software. Using Claude
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Someone was tired of paying for Adobe products, so they used AI to make their own alternatives
* AI helped build an open-source, 100% Rust suite recreating seven Adobe apps for free. * The maintainer says they're a 15-year industry vet with ~10 years of Rust experience and funded support. * If matured, this could either topple paid tools or just add more AI-generated, vibe-coded slop to
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Someone Rebuilt Free, Open-Source Versions of Photoshop, Premiere, and Lightroom Using AI
Software engineer Brandon Thomas has built and released an open-source, free alternative to Adobe's Creative Cloud suite, including versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom (not Classic), Acrobat, After Effects, and InDesign. The apps live under the ArtCraft banner and are available
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Creator of Free Adobe Suite Strikes Again, Reverse Engineers Microsoft Office
More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. As the fiery debate surrounding AI and copyright infringement continues to boil, the software world has run into its own controversy head
[9]
AppleInsider.com
Vibe-coded alternatives to Adobe Creative Cloud apps such as Photoshop and Premiere have been released. They may help Mac users save money, but there are some nuances to the situation. AI has been a major driver of change in the software development landscape, and it may have claimed its biggest
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From GTA V on iPhone to Free Photoshop: This AI Tool Is Upending Software
Developer Brandon Thomas released ArtCraft, free Rust-built Adobe alternatives made with Claude, but calls it a clean-room rebuild that never touches Adobe's code. Would you like to kill a boss in Skyrim using an AK47 from Counter Strike? Give your NPCs a real genius-level brain that gives you
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I Tried 'PhotoCraft,' the AI Clone of Photoshop, and It's Almost Exactly Like the Real Thing
Love it or hate it, AI is changing tech at a rapid pace. Case in point: AI is now being used to reverse-engineer big-name software packages. Once complete, developers upload the cloned versions online as open-source tools that anyone can use for free. It seems no company is immune from these dupes,
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Developer says 'software is over' after using AI to recreate Adobe's entire Creative Cloud suite for free
AI-assisted development has recently been making headlines in gaming, with modders using it to port titles to new platforms, reverse-engineer code, and even merge entire games into playable crossovers. Now software is getting the same treatment, and the first major target is Adobe. Developer
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It Turns Out the Only Thing People Like Less Than AI Is Paying for Adobe Creative Cloud
Creative professionals have plenty of reasons to dislike artificial intelligence. Aside from the fact that frontier AI models have been trained on basically the entirety of creative output, there's also the fact that generative AI tools are really bad at creating what most people would consider
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Free Artcraft Suite Created With Claude AI Replaces 7 Adobe Apps
An open source project called Artcraft offers a free alternative to Adobe's creative software suite, as highlighted by Jay E. Developed entirely in Rust, the suite includes seven applications that mirror the functionality of programs like Photoshop, Premiere and After Effects. Artcraft's clean room
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I tried those free AI-coded Adobe Creative Cloud clones, and they have some big problems
In 2026, there are more Adobe alternatives than ever. We have Canva's free Affinity, which can do most of what you would do in Photoshop and Illustrator in a single platform. There's also now raw photo editing in DaVinci Resolve, which has a reasonable one-off cost for the Studio version. Now
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Someone just rebuilt Adobe Creative Cloud with AI - then gave it away for free
The world of Photoshop alternatives has become a lot more interesting in the last few years, and not just because of the plethora of worthy candidates that have emerged. The likes of Canva and Affinity continue to give Adobe a run for its money, but Adobe itself has also pushed some users away,
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Brandon Thomas used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to create Artcraft, a suite of seven free open source alternatives to Adobe's Creative Suite. The AI developer built Photocraft, Lightcraft, and five other apps in Rust after facing Adobe's cancellation fees one too many times. While currently in early alpha, Thomas promises 99% feature parity within months.
AI Developer Challenges Adobe With Free Open Source Alternative
Brandon Thomas, a 15-year software industry veteran, has released Artcraft—a suite of seven free open source alternatives to Adobe's Creative Suite built using Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5
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. The AI developer used AI-powered reverse engineering to create what he calls "clean-room replacements" for Adobe's closed source software, programming them in Rust with WebAssembly versions available for browser use1
. Thomas announced the project on Reddit, declaring boldly that he had "one-shotted Photoshop" and proclaiming that "software is over"1
.Frustration With Cancellation Fees Sparks Open Source Revolution
The motivation behind Artcraft stems from Thomas's personal frustration with cancellation fees. He told Hacker News he was "bit by the dark pattern 'cancellation fee' one too many times"
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. This frustration is well-founded—Adobe reached a $150 million settlement with the US government in March 2026 to resolve allegations that it trapped consumers in subscription plans with hidden fees and an intentionally convoluted cancellation process2
. The settlement included a $75 million civil penalty and $75 million in free services to affected users4
.Seven Adobe Creative Suite Clones Available on GitHub
Source: TweakTown
Artcraft includes alternatives to Adobe's most popular applications. Photocraft replicates Photoshop, while Vectorcraft and Filmcraft take on Illustrator and Premiere respectively
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. Lightcraft, Effectcraft, Designcraft, and Printcraft serve as Adobe alternatives for Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro4
. All seven vibe coded apps are available as native packages for macOS, Windows, and Linux, with browser versions also available in some cases3
. The apps are released under MIT/Apache licenses on GitHub, making them completely free to use, modify, and distribute1
.Feature Parity Promises Amid Early Alpha Limitations
Source: Lifehacker
Thomas initially promised to reach 100% feature parity within a month, though he later amended this to say that 99% parity would take months rather than years
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. The apps currently exist in a "super early alpha" state with numerous reported shortcomings1
. Users testing Photocraft report it feels like "glitchy, but real, Photoshop," with basic functions working but some features like Free Transform behaving unpredictably5
. Lightcraft faces RAW compatibility gaps and color rendering differences compared to Lightroom, though it successfully replicates keyboard shortcuts and workflow3
.Model Context Protocol Integration Enables AI-Powered Editing
Artcraft's apps include built-in support for Model Context Protocol (MCP), allowing AI assistants like Claude to communicate directly with the software
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. Lightcraft implements AI-powered masking using Meta's SAM 3 model, which users download for on-device image segmentation3
. This approach differs from Adobe's cloud-based AI servers, offering users more control over their data while maintaining advanced AI functionality3
.Related Stories
Funding Model Avoids Subscription Trap
Development of these free open source alternatives will be funded by selling token-based access to Artcraft's pre-existing visual AI model and IDE, which is offered as an imagery-generation option inside the apps alongside third-party models
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. Thomas emphasizes this revenue stream ensures the project won't become "some orphaned small-team project," stating "We have a team building popular software for filmmakers, so supporting this is fully funded"1
. He's also offering bug bounties to encourage developer contributions to the open-source project5
.Legal Questions Surround Trade Dress Similarity
Source: Geeky Gadgets
While reverse engineering to replicate software functionality without copying code has generally been found legally acceptable, the Adobe Creative Suite clones could face legal challenges if their "trade dress" too closely mimics Adobe's familiar appearance and interface
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. CNET's vibe coding expert Blake Stimac warns, "Vibe coding can make it super easy to swap out old software tools, but it's legally questionable. What works great for you as a quick fix could easily turn into a legal battlefield the second you try to share it with the world"2
.Vision to Democratize Software Development and De-Enshittify Tech
Thomas has been coding exclusively with AI tools since February and envisions a future where everyday developers can recreate open source versions of popular paid software to "take back the internet and own tech forever"
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. He predicts developers will follow suit to democratize software development, writing: "Now you can just create 1:1 functional equivalents, clean room, that are highly performant and cross-platform. Nothing is stopping you. We'll replace Google Search, we'll build our own smartphones, we'll build better infra. We'll remove all the ads and de-enshittify the entire tech world"1
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. This vision taps into growing frustration with subscription models and bloated software, particularly as companies like Adobe and Microsoft continue raising prices while embedding AI features that many users don't want2
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