Developer Brandon Thomas has launched a collection of seven open-source applications aimed at recreating the interfaces and tools of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro. The project relies on artificial intelligence to accelerate what the developer describes as clean-room reverse engineering, with the software written in Rust and WebAssembly versions available to run inside the browser.
The project operates under the name Artcraft, which began last year as a controllable artificial-intelligence tool for artists, allowing them to edit generated images and video clips after production. The new direction offers a free, open-source alternative to a broad range of Adobe applications, under the MIT and Apache licenses, while integrating the Artcraft visual model and its development environment as optional sources for image generation.
An Ambitious Project, but at a Very Early Stage
The source acknowledges that the new applications are still in an early alpha state, and that Hacker News users and others have identified numerous flaws and shortcomings. Nevertheless, Thomas said in a Reddit post that the team is targeting 100% functional parity within a month. Days later, he softened that estimate, saying that reaching 99% parity would take months, not years.
These promises do not mean that the applications have become a ready, practical replacement for Creative Cloud. The gap between simulating the interface or basic functions and providing comprehensive compatibility with file formats, workflows, performance, and stability remains unproven in the available material.
What Changes in Practice?
If the project succeeds, it could provide users with an open-source option for avoiding subscription costs and some of the pricing practices criticized by Thomas, including cancellation fees. It could also give developers and artists the ability to inspect and modify the code and run the tools across different platforms, rather than relying entirely on closed-source applications.
However, funding does not depend on selling the applications themselves; Thomas said that the team will finance their development by selling token-based access to the Artcraft visual model and development environment. According to him, this is intended to prevent the project from becoming a small, abandoned initiative, while noting that a team is working on software aimed at filmmakers.
Artificial Intelligence and Legal Questions
Thomas believes that artificial-intelligence tools significantly reduce the time required for reverse engineering, and said that he has developed exclusively with their assistance since February. However, imitating software functions without copying its code does not eliminate all legal risks. The source points to the possibility that Adobe could object if the new applications come too close to the distinctive commercial appearance of its products, including their visual design and interface layout.
certi.news analysis: The importance of the project does not lie in announcing a completed alternative to Adobe, but in providing a practical test of how capable artificial-intelligence tools are of accelerating the development of competing open-source software. The decisive question remains open: Can a broadly ambitious prototype be turned into a stable suite that is genuinely compatible with professional workflows without running into performance, compatibility, or intellectual-property constraints?