The Adobe AI Clone: How ArtCraft Rebuilt 7 Adobe Apps

When people search for an Adobe clone this month, they almost always mean ArtCraft. The ArtCraft team published seven “Crafting Apps” that copy Adobe’s creative tools: PhotoCraft for Photoshop, VectorCraft for Illustrator, FilmCraft for Premiere Pro, LightCraft for Lightroom, PdfCraft for Acrobat, EffectCraft for After Effects and DesignCraft for InDesign.

Every ArtCraft app is a native program for macOS, Windows and Linux, and six of them also run in a browser through WebAssembly. The code sits under the storytold account on GitHub. Coverage names Brandon Thomas as the developer behind ArtCraft. The ArtCraft README files say the project is independent and not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Adobe Inc.

The story spread quickly. PetaPixel reported on Oct 7, 2026, PhotoWorkout called them vibe coded Adobe clones on Oct 8, and Tom’s Hardware later reported that the same developer unveiled open-source replicas of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, with Autodesk tools possibly next. For a product-by-product comparison with prices and file formats, read ArtCraft vs Adobe. This page focuses on the Adobe AI clone story itself.

Here is every Adobe clone in the ArtCraft suite, with the Adobe app it targets and its status on the official apps page. Two are labelled early alpha: the Photoshop clone PhotoCraft and the Acrobat clone PdfCraft. The Lightroom clone LightCraft and the other four ArtCraft apps are marked in development. Each card links to the official ArtCraft page or to our guide for that app.

The ArtCraft apps are written from scratch in Rust. PhotoWorkout reported on Oct 8, 2026 that the code was generated with Claude Opus 5.5 running eight parallel AI agents, a style of work often called vibe coding: the developer directs AI agents rather than typing most of the code. That is why many outlets call ArtCraft an Adobe AI clone or an AI Adobe clone.

The ArtCraft team describes its method as clean-room. The PdfCraft repository, for example, calls itself a clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Acrobat. Xataka explained on Oct 9, 2026 how clean-room work normally runs: one team writes functional specifications by watching how a program behaves from the outside, and a separate team writes new code without seeing the original. IBM-compatible BIOS chips were famously built this way.

Speed is the striking part. The seven ArtCraft apps appeared within weeks, and PdfCraft alone shipped three releases between Oct 8 and Oct 11. Tom’s Hardware described the developer as targeting full parity within a month. Whether that pace produces maintainable software is the open question for every open source Adobe clone built this way.

PSDraw does not give legal opinions, so this section only reports what has been said publicly. Is the Adobe clone legal? Nobody has tested it in court as of Oct 11, 2026.

Some people on social media asked whether the ArtCraft developers decompiled Adobe’s code to speed up the AI work. Xataka reported on Oct 9, 2026 that there is no evidence for that claim, while noting that the similarity reached in so little time is striking. According to the same report, Brandon Thomas and his team say they did not use Adobe’s code, proprietary resources or shaders. They attribute PhotoCraft’s ability to open PSD files to Adobe publishing that format’s specification.

Other commentators raised trade dress, meaning the look and feel of an interface rather than its code. The ArtCraft apps deliberately feel familiar, which is part of their appeal and part of the debate. The ArtCraft license itself keeps the ArtCraft name and logo out of the open source grant, so forks must rename themselves. Our ArtCraft open source guide covers that license and the trademark exception in more detail.

For light work, yes; for professional jobs, not yet. The ArtCraft apps page labels PhotoCraft and PdfCraft early alpha and the other five in development. The PhotoCraft README says it is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work.

The projects publish their own estimates. VectorCraft rates itself about 65% usable for real work. LightCraft rates itself about 61% as an everyday Lightroom clone replacement, while PhotoWorkout put its RAW support around 55% and its AI and computational features around 15%. PdfCraft, the Acrobat clone, rates itself about 55% for everyday use. PhotoWorkout also found that none of these Adobe clones imports a Lightroom catalog cleanly.

Early users split sharply. Some praise how fast the ArtCraft apps start on Linux; others report missing effects, slow brushes on large canvases and shortcuts that do not work yet. Our ArtCraft Reddit roundup summarizes those threads with links. If you only need to open a PSD without installing an alpha app, a browser viewer is the safer first step.

ArtCraft is the biggest name, but it is not the only AI-built Adobe clone. PhotoWorkout’s Oct 8, 2026 article also covered Photon Studio, a free, offline Photoshop-style editor made by a single developer. That developer said the project cost about $2,000 in AI model tokens and claimed more than 20,000 users, while independent trackers suggested the real number was in the low thousands.

The pattern matters more than any single project. AI coding tools now let a small team produce a convincing clone of Adobe software in weeks. That is why the term “Adobe clones” started trending alongside ArtCraft, and why the same developer moved on to announce Microsoft Office replicas next, according to Tom’s Hardware.

Before AI, the free alternatives were long-running projects such as GIMP, Krita, Inkscape and darktable, built by communities over many years. They are slower to change but proven in daily use. A free Adobe clone built in weeks has to show that it can be maintained for years. Our ArtCraft alternatives guide compares both kinds side by side.

Not for paid client work yet. An Adobe Creative Cloud clone that costs nothing is tempting: the ArtCraft apps are free, while Adobe’s Photography plan listed US$19.99 a month billed annually; check Adobe’s own page before comparing. Being free does not make an alpha app safe for deadlines, and your shortcuts, libraries and plugins do not carry over.

A sensible path is to keep Adobe Creative Cloud for production and try one ArtCraft app on a copy of a real project. If the Photoshop clone or the Lightroom clone handles your files, you have a backup that will never ask for a subscription. The apps themselves are free and open source; the separate ArtCraft AI studio sells optional credits, starting at about US$8 a month billed yearly on getartcraft.com/pricing.

If you want the full app-by-app answer, including the Acrobat clone and a feature table for each, read ArtCraft vs Adobe. It is the companion page to this Adobe clone story and is updated whenever the ArtCraft releases change.

Some people who search for an Adobe clone are not looking for ArtCraft at all. They want the Clone Stamp tool in Photoshop, which copies pixels from one part of an image to another to remove spots or duplicate details.

You set a source point by holding Alt on Windows or Option on Mac and clicking, then paint over the area you want to cover. Lightroom has a similar clone mode inside its healing tools. Adobe’s own walkthrough is the best reference: Retouch images with the Clone Stamp tool.

PhotoCraft, the ArtCraft Photoshop clone, also lists retouching tools, but its README says fifteen Photoshop tools are still missing, so check the release notes before relying on it. If you were researching the ArtCraft apps after all, start with the PhotoCraft guide, which tests the Photoshop clone in detail.