A screenshot from ‘PhotoCraft’, the free vibe-coded Photoshop alternative. Photo credit: ArtCraft
While Adobe’s photo-editing suite, including Photoshop and Lightroom, is still regarded as the best photo-editing software around, increased prices and lock-in contracts with high cancellation fees have caused many users to look for alternatives. And one user, software engineer Brandon Thomas, has gone the extra mile by building his own.
Using Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5, Thomas has built his own free, open- just Photoshop and Lightroom but also Illustrator, Acrobat, After Effects and InDesign
These tools are hosted by Artcraft, an ‘open-a similar naming convention: the Photoshop dupe is ‘Photocraft’, Lightroom is ‘Lightcraft’, Premiere is ‘Filmcraft’ – you get the idea
Thomas has posted his versions of the programs on several subreddits, though in many cases they are being quickly removed. He claims to have been motivated by frustration with Adobe’s pricing model, saying in a comment on Reddit, ‘They charged me the “cancellation fee” on multiple occasions and I’ve hated them ever since.’
To be fair, he’s far from the only one – in March 2026, Adobe reached a $150 million settlement with the US government over its pricing practices, with the US Department of Justice accusing the company of ‘concealing hefty termination fees and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions,’ per Reuters.
The ‘Craft’ versions of the programs are currently in Alpha, though Thomas says that he expects to achieve feature-parity with Adobe ‘within a month’, which certainly seems ambitious. As you might expect, there is a lot of excitement in the community about a free alternative to Adobe, despite the fact that there are already many capable Photoshop alternatives, such as the powerful Canva-owned Affinity Photo, which is free to use. Video editors also have DaVinci Resolve – again, completely free at point of use.
With these alternatives available, I’m not sure if we exactly needed an exact Adobe dupe – though I suppose now that we’re firmly in the era of vibe-coding, it was only a matter of time before someone made one.
It will be interesting to see if and how Adobe responds to Thomas’ work – the company has not shied away from litigiously protecting its interests in the past. I’ll also declare my priors and acknowledge that I have previously called in these very pages for photographers to boycott Adobe – though judging by Brandon Thomas’ Reddit handle (u/ai_art_is_art), I suspect my reasons for doing so were markedly different from his.
The ‘Craft’ versions of Adobe’s programs are still available to download (for now). Thomas says the team are eagerly soliciting feedback and bug reports.
- I’m a photographer, and this is why I WON’T be boycotting Adobe
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About
Jon is a freelance journalist who has been writing features and reviews for Amateur Photographer for more than a decade. His writing also appears in Digital Camera World, Black + White Photography magazine, Photomonitor and many more. He’s an avid film photographer, despite the expense, and has contributed a few features to AP on how to shoot film on the cheap. See more at jonstapley.com.
