{"id":877714,"date":"2026-10-10T18:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T18:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/877714\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T18:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T18:28:11","slug":"photocraft-is-an-open-source-ai-built-clone-of-photoshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/877714\/","title":{"rendered":"PhotoCraft is an open-source, AI-built clone of Photoshop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was only a matter of time before someone would point AI coding tools Photoshop and get it to build a copy.<\/p>\n

PhotoCraft<\/a> is that copy \u2013 an open-source<\/a>, cross-platform image editor written in Rust. The app is part of several creative tools created by the ArtCraft project, lead by\u00a0Brandon Thomas, the former CEO of storyteller.ai. <\/p>\n

ArtCraft bill the app as \u201cclean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop\u201d, and so swerve any copyright issues as it\u2019s not reverse engineering anything (that isn\u2019t publicly documented) \u2013 words FOSS fans will to cheered to hear.<\/p>\n

Features-wise, PhotoCraft is already well stocked despite being in alpha. It has layers, masks, layer styles, smart objects a brush engine and more. It also boasts 34 tools, 27 blend modes and various filters. It can also open\/save to Adobe\u2019s .psd file format.<\/p>\n

It also copies the placement of menus, keyboard shortcuts and tools from the real-deal since the idea is those who are familiar with Photoshop can switch to PhotoCraft and carry on1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Performance settings <\/p>\n

GPU-acceleration works via Vulkan on Linux, Metal on macOS and DX12 on Windows (or WebGPU in the WebAssembly build you can self host). The app also has reams of agentic hooks for every feature so that AI agents can \u201cuse\u201d the app too.<\/p>\n

It starts up incredibly fast \u2013 even on my workhorse Chuwi laptop (with a weak m3-8100y CPU, integrated GPU and room for a pony<\/a>) it feels responsive. Ballooned to 5GB in RAM a few minutes after opening a PSD, just like the real Photoshop!<\/p>\n

Why make it?<\/p>\n

From what he\u2019s posted on Reddit, Thomas was early motivated to clone Adobe\u2019s wares because of fees, hurdles and general contempt involved in cancelling his Adobe subscription. That and, I guess, as a developer with experience and a history in AI, it\u2019s an obvious target. <\/p>\n

It won\u2019t replace Photoshop for pros<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A superficial facsimile with pronounced flaws<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty familiar with the real Photoshop and was a little cynical about the \u201cclone\u201d aspect. Having tried PhotoCraft, it does come close in the real UI and UX \u2013 more than \u201cmake GIMP look like Photoshop\u201d efforts I\u2019ve written about in the past.<\/p>\n

But it is only a superficial similarity. To that end, it reminds me of PhotoPea<\/a>, the free online Photoshop clone that\u2019s been around for many years (pre-AI, made by a human). It\u2019s to that which PhotoCraft feels more indebted.<\/p>\n

Having similar features in similar locations with similar names\/icons is not the same2<\/a> as features behaving or outputting that is the same. While this gets uncannily close to resembling Photoshop, it\u2019s some way off feeling like it\u2019s Photoshop.<\/p>\n

Adobe\u2019s fine-tuned its blending modes, filters, content-aware tools, object detection and spot removal algorithms over many decades. Clones can follow public specifications and tune to observed behaviour, but it can\u2019t replicate the exact same output.<\/p>\n

Does that matter?<\/p>\n

It depends how well you know Photoshop. <\/p>\n

To casual users doing basic edits won\u2019t notice difference (until they try follow with a detailed Photoshop tutorial on YouTube). For that cohort, plenty of image editors already exist, with features comparable to Photoshop \u2013 Affinity runs well on Linux via Wine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For pros, PhotoCraft\u2019s missing features, bugs, different output and results and all of the \u201cinvisible\u201d things may sound small in isolation, but in a day-to-day workflow, they do add up.<\/p>\n

This may be a clone created with a genuine end-goal, or it might be a development flex with an upturned middle-finger to one particular company. <\/p>\n

Try PhotoCraft on Ubuntu<\/p>\n

PhotoCraft is free, open-source software that supports Windows, macOS and Linux. The project\u2019s Github releases page<\/a> has alpha builds for all major OSes, including a DEB installer for Ubuntu (Intel\/AMD and Arm64). I opted for the AppImage.<\/p>\n

Though free to use, the ArtCraft website lists monthly and yearly subscription tiers. Ponying up cash nets you AI credits to use generative AI features inside of the apps \u2013 though, right now, those aren\u2019t included in this app3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like other AI generated apps, the development pace is breakneck: version 0.1.0 released 5 days ago, and there have been 8 further releases, big and small, since. I tested v0.3.0 whilst writing this, and v0.5.0 is already out.<\/p>\n

Given the hate people hold for Adobe, and PhotoCraft\u2018s gratis price tag, no surprise that this effort is already attracting both interest and goodwill (the repo has 17k stars and counting).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was only a matter of time before someone would point AI coding tools Photoshop and get it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":877715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[14406,3298,369177,32870,74],"class_list":["post-877714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-adobe","tag-ai-agents","tag-llm-assisted","tag-photoshop","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}