Developer uses Claude Opus 5.5 to open-source seven Adobe Suite clones
Ars Technica AI · rss · 2026-10-08
Artcraft debuted a suite of seven open-source apps reverse-engineering the UI and tools of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign and Acrobat Pro, under the banner "software is over".
Key points:
- Developer Brandon Thomas says he used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to build "clean-room replacements" in Rust, with WebAssembly versions that run in the browser
- Artcraft started last year as "controllable AI for artists" for precise post-generation editing of AI images and video, and pivoted to the full suite over the weekend
- The project is a "super early alpha"; Hacker News commenters flagged many shortcomings, but Thomas promises fidelity eventually matching Adobe's products
Interesting for users tired of Adobe's pricing, though practical utility today is limited.
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