Vibe-coded alternatives to Adobe Creative Cloud applications such as Photoshop and Premiere have been released. They can help Mac users save money, but the situation has some nuances.
AI has been a major driver of change in the software development landscape, and it has perhaps claimed its biggest scalp. A group of mood coders decided to take on Adobe by offering their own alternatives.
Released under the ArtCraft banner, the versions on GitHub are billed as “open source, cleanroom reimplementations” of well-known productivity software. Although the software tries to be legally distinct enough from Adobe products to avoid a lawsuit, while still remaining recognizable to users.
Believed to be a combination of prompts for Claude Opus and developed in Rust, initial releases include tools such as Photoshop called PhotoCraft, Lightroom remade as LightCraft, and Premiere Pro under the name FilmCraft. Other Adobe products appearing in the repositories include Illustrator as VectorCraft, Acrobat as PDFCraft, and After Effects as EffectCraft.
They don’t stop there. WordCraft is a version of Microsoft Word, alongside PowerPoint’s DeckCraft, Excel’s GridCraft, AutoCAD’s CADCraft, and Avid Pro Tools’ SoundCraft.
All projects cloned by ArtCraft are provided at no cost. Clearly, “free” Photoshop has helped the project get a lot of attention online, and they might stick around for quite a while.
That’s assuming Adobe’s lawyers aren’t trying to drive them into the ground like a railroad nail.
Carbon copy
The actual process of creating the apps is not fully explained by those behind the recreations. However, we can guess from “clean room implementations” that the applications were ambient coded, rather than parsed and copied code.
While it’s not a direct copy of Adobe’s apps, it’s safe to say that there was a fair amount of inspiration taken from the interfaces.
Adobe Photoshop (left), PhotoCraft (right)
We downloaded PhotoCraft to see how close the project came to the original. It turns out it’s very close, to the point where someone familiar with Photoshop will potentially think it’s a slightly different resolution than what they’re used to.
By opening a blank document and pasting it, there are obvious differences between the applications. For example, seeing colors and gradients by default is not what I see in Photoshop, nor is there an AI suggestion bar.
But that said, there are a lot of elements that are almost identical. The left toolbar, the icons there, and the layers panel look very similar, if just tweaked enough to look a little different.
It’s the uncanny valley, but for user interfaces.
Close, but too close?
We’re very familiar with subscription services and the anger associated with them, especially when it comes to Adobe Creative Cloud’s sky-high monthly fees.
However, the situation of what ArtCraft is doing is difficult to judge from a legal point of view.
Assuming this is true, and we have no reason to believe it isn’t, the “clean room” claim means it’s not someone asking an AI to decompile code.
The classic example is Phoenix Technologies and American Megatrends creating their own version of the IBM BIOS for PC clone makers to use. This turned out to be legal, after nearly a decade of legal battles over it.
If the Adobe application clones were created legitimately without reviewing the code or decompiling the copied product, this becomes less of a legal issue.
What remains an issue is recreating the overall interface. Although there are typical user interface conventions for specific types of applications, there is usually some level of variation between them.
Sure, you can rearrange GIMP’s interface to make it more like Photoshop’s UI, but even that doesn’t directly copy every element. The original GIMP layout is also a very different animal.
Here, copying the interface design is voluntary.
GridCraft (left) and VectorCraft (right)
The problem then becomes finding where the line in the sand is. That, and figuring out what Adobe’s well-funded legal team will be tempted to fight for.
As usual in a legal battle involving a big company, Adobe doesn’t even need to win, but threatens others with costly legal action. This alone poses a significant threat.
While this may sound like a legal issue that could affect end users, it’s difficult to determine what might ultimately happen to them.
This is not a direct piracy of a product. You are not downloading Photoshop illegally, but the version coded by someone.
But at the same time, since it’s software that was produced quickly using AI, it doesn’t necessarily have the same seasoned code style as the actual software. Indeed, current iterations aren’t at feature parity with the real thing yet, and might never get there either.
The code is open source, however, and we know people are looking into it as we speak. From a security perspective, so far we haven’t seen any unwanted internet traffic to strange servers while using the apps.
What this demonstrates is that anyone with enough money to pay for many Claude or ChatGPT tokens can quickly come up with full applications. Some may look and act like apps created by a large company.
While this may seem like a possible train wreck being chased, the next big attempt to take on Adobe could take a different route. One that stands out on its own, without relying on Adobe’s interface and features as a model.
This is what Adobe should be worried about.
Gn tech
