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"Adobe just got replaced": engineers used Claude to clone the whole Adobe suite for free

TikTok · Oct 2026

The claimEngineers used Claude Opus to fully reverse engineer and open source Adobe's entire suite. PhotoCraft is a one-to-one, perfectly running Photoshop in Rust, with every filter including Liquify, Lens Correction and Vanishing Point, and it's free. Adobe just got replaced.

The apps are real. ArtCraft launched a set of free, open-source Adobe look-alikes this week (Crafting Apps), written in Rust and licensed MIT/Apache-2.0. PhotoCraft does layers, masks, adjustment layers, 70+ filters and opens real PSD files; the project reports 134 of 135 test PSDs round-tripping byte for byte. The rest of the pitch is inflated. Only PhotoCraft and PrintCraft are early alpha; the Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects and InDesign equivalents are still in development. The makers call it a clean-room rebuild from public specs, not a reverse engineering of Adobe's code. The project's own pages don't say Claude wrote it. And Liquify, Lens Correction and Vanishing Point are not on its published feature list.

What holds up

Free, open-source Photoshop-style editor exists (PhotoCraft, Rust, MIT/Apache-2.0)
Real layered PSD/PSB open and save
Runs on Mac, Windows, Linux and in the browser
Launched as part of a 7-app suite the week of Oct 5, 2026

What doesn’t

"One-to-one, runs perfectly": the makers label it early alpha and say it is not yet a daily Photoshop replacement
"The entire suite": 2 apps in early alpha, 5 still in development
"Reverse engineered": the project describes a clean-room rebuild, not decompiled Adobe code
"Using Claude Opus": not stated anywhere by the project
Liquify, Lens Correction, Vanishing Point: not on the published feature list
Early hands-on reports on Hacker News call it very broken

The catch

"Free and open source" is true, and so is "alpha." The video skips the second half. For client work, an alpha editor that mostly opens your PSDs is a risk, not a replacement. The maker also sells a separate paid AI image and video studio, so the free suite is a funnel, which is fine but worth knowing.

How to actually do it

Photo editing: try Affinity Photo or Photopea (free, in the browser, opens PSDs) before canceling anything.
Vector work: Inkscape (free) or Affinity Designer.
Video: DaVinci Resolve (free tier) covers most Premiere work.
Run one real client job end to end in the replacement before you cancel Adobe.
Install PhotoCraft on a spare machine to watch it mature; don't put deadline work on it yet.
Keep one month of Adobe overlap so old files can be exported cleanly.

The outcome people want is to stop paying Adobe roughly $60 a month. That's doable today with tools that are past alpha, and PhotoCraft is worth watching for when it matures.

Effort: An afternoon to test; one real project to trust it
Cost: $0 to about $70 one-time for Affinity, vs. ~$60/month for Adobe
Stack: Photopea or Affinity Photo, Inkscape, DaVinci Resolve; PhotoCraft on the watch list
Confidence: High
Posted by: a creator with ~1.6k followers (~230k views)

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