Free, Open-Source Copies of Photoshop, Premiere, and Lightroom are Here

Software engineer Brandon Thomas has published an open-source suite of free creative apps designed as alternatives to seven of Adobe's most popular products.

Key points

• The suite includes alternatives to Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, Acrobat, After Effects and InDesign.
• Although Thomas notes users have already requested a Lightroom Classic-style application, lightCraft is designed as an open-source alternative to Lightroom CC rather than Lightroom Classic.
• Adobe already faces competition from products such as DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Affinity, and various RAW photo editing and management applications.
• He notes he employed Anthropic's Opus 5.5 AI model to support recreate the seven applications in Rust.
• Thomas notes his goal is to reach 100% feature parity with Adobe's applications within a month.

For context, the apps are part of ArtCraft and are available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Notably, the suite includes alternatives to Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, Acrobat, After Effects and InDesign. Built in Rust With Support From Claude.

Thomas founded ArtCraft almost a year ago and previously worked as CEO of Storyteller.ai and as a software engineer at Square.

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.

As well as robotics and optics automation, he remarked his previous work includes payment infrastructure handling billions of dollars in daily transaction volume. Adobe Is Making Photoshop More AI-Powered Than Ever. Adobe App ArtCraft Alternative. After Effects ArtCraft alternative.

While FilmCraft follows a layout similar to Premiere, photoCraft closely resembles Photoshop.

Although Thomas notes users have already requested a Lightroom Classic-style application, lightCraft is designed as an open-source alternative to Lightroom CC rather than Lightroom Classic. Goal Is 100% Feature Parity.

In practice, the software is at present in alpha, and he hopes to move it to beta swiftly.

Nevertheless, feature parity does not necessarily mean identical performance, stability, or functionality in every professional workflow.

Areas such as color accuracy, calibration, plugin compatibility, efficiency, backing and handling unusual edge cases remain particularly notable 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.

Nevertheless, 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 Funds. The core ArtCraft applications can be applied without a subscription.

Meanwhile, the firm additionally offers optional subscriptions that include generative AI credits for AI features inside the apps.

Users can purchase credits separately without subscribing and can additionally employ their own computing resources or third-party AI subscriptions for generation tasks. Adobe Firefly Can Now Generate Music, Voiceovers and Sound Effects. Growing Demand for Adobe Alternatives.

Thomas notes the project was partly motivated by frustration with Adobe's subscription model, including cancellation fees he states he was charged multiple times.

Interest in Adobe alternatives has remained solid, particularly as Creative Cloud carries recurring subscription costs.

ArtCraft is taking a broader approach by attempting to recreate an entire creative software suite rather than competing in only one category.

Thomas notes the project is intended to be maintained long term and is not a one-off experiment.

Although it remains at an early stage of development, the software is already available through ArtCraft and GitHub. Stay Connected with ProPakistani.

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In short, free, Open-Source Copies of Photoshop, Premiere, and Lightroom are Here is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.