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 scalp. A group of vibe coders has decided to take on Adobe by coming up with their own alternatives.

Released under the banner of ArtCraft, the releases on GitHub are referred to as "open-source, clean-room reimplementations" of well-known productivity software. Albeit software trying to be legally distinct enough from Adobe's products to avoid a lawsuit, while still being recognizable to users.

Said to be a combination of prompts to Claude Opus and developed in Rust, the initial releases include tools like Photoshop called PhotoCraft, Lightroom redone as LightCraft, and Premiere Pro as FilmCraft. Other Adobe products appearing in the repositories include Illustrator as VectorCraft, Acrobat as PDFCraft, and After Effects as EffectCraft.

They aren't stopping there. WordCraft is a take on Microsoft Word, alongside PowerPoint's DeckCraft, Excel's GridCraft, AutoCAD's CADCraft, and Avid Pro Tools' SoundCraft.

All of the cloned projects by ArtCraft are provided without any fees. Obviously, "free" Photoshop has helped the project get a lot of attention online, and they may stick around for quite a while.

That's assuming the Adobe lawyers don't try to pound them into the ground like a railroad spike.

Carbon-ish copy

The actual process of how the apps are being made are not fully spelled out by those behind the recreations. However, we can guess by claim of "clean-room implementations" that the apps were vibe-coded, rather than code being analyzed and copied.

While not a direct copy of Adobe's apps, it's safe to say that there has been a fair amount of inspiration taken from the interfaces.

We downloaded PhotoCraft to see just how close the project got to the original. It turns out that it's very close, to the point that someone who knows Photoshop will potentially think it's a slightly different resolution to the one they're used to seeing.

Opening a blank document and pasting it in, there are obvious differences between the applications. For example, seeing colors and gradients by default isn't what I'm seeing in Photoshop, and there's no AI suggestions bar either.

But that said, there are a lot of elements that are almost identical. The left-hand tools bar, the icons on it, and the layers panel are very alike, if just tweaked enough to be a tiny bit different.

It's the uncanny valley, but for user interfaces.

Close, but too close?

We're very familiar with subscription services and the associated ire, especially when it comes to Adobe Creative Cloud's very high monthly fee.

However, the situation with what ArtCraft is doing is a difficult one to judge from a legal standpoint.

Assuming it's true, and we have no reason to to believe it isn't, the whole "clean-room" claim means that it's not a case of someone telling an AI to decompile code.

The classic example of that is Phoenix Technologies and American Megatrends making their own version of the IBM BIOS for PC clone manufacturers to use. That was found to be legal, after almost a decade of courtroom fights about it.

If the Adobe app clones were made legitimately without looking at the code, or decompiling the product being copied, then that becomes less of a legal issue.

What does remain a problem is recreating the overall interface. While there are typical conventions in play when it comes to user interfaces for specific kinds of apps, there is usually some level of variance between them.

Sure, you can rearrange the GIMP interface to be more like Photoshop's UI, but even that isn't directly copying every single element. The original GIMP layout is also a very different animal.

Here, copying the interface design is on purpose.

The problem becomes one of finding where the line in the sand is. That, and working out what Adobe's well-funded legal team will be tempted to fight over.

As usual for a legal fight involving a major company, Adobe doesn't even have to win, but instead threaten others with expensive litigious action. That alone is a hefty threat.

While this may feel like a legal issue that can affect end users, it's tough to work out what could ultimately happen to them.

This isn't direct piracy of a product. You're not downloading Photoshop illegally, but someone's vibe-coded version of it.

But at the same time, since it is software that has been produced quickly using AI, it may not necessarily have the same style of battle-hardened code as the real thing. Indeed, the current iterations aren't at feature parity with the real things right now, and may never get there either.

The code is open-source though, and we know people are poring over it as we speak. From a security standpoint, so far, we haven't seen any untowards internet traffic to strange servers while using the apps.

What this does demonstrate is that anyone with enough money to pay for lots of Claude or ChatGPT tokens can quickly come up with full applications. Some that can look and act like apps made by a major corporation.

While this may seem like a potential lawsuit-based train wreck in the making, the next big attempt to take on Adobe could go a different route. One that stands up on its own, without leaning on Adobe's interface and feature set as a template.

That's what Adobe should be worried about.