ArtCraft publishes free open-source rebuilds of Photoshop, Premiere and Lightroom

ArtCraft publishes free open-source rebuilds of Photoshop, Premiere and Lightroom

7 October 2026: The ArtCraft team has published free, open-source applications written to do the job of Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Lightroom: PhotoCraft, FilmCraft and LightCraft. The three GitHub repositories under the storytold organisation were created on 30 September 2026, and each describes itself as a clean-room reimplementation in pure Rust. The code is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0, and the apps run on macOS, Windows and Linux, with web builds through WebAssembly for some.

Not yet independently verified. PetaPixel could not be opened, so the figures here come from the project's own repositories only. The author is not named in the repositories we read, and how much of the code was written by AI agents is not quantified there. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

The projects are open about how far they have come. PhotoCraft is labelled early alpha, and its README says it is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work, citing missing AI and generative features, about twenty missing tools and no plug-in compatibility. FilmCraft gives two numbers: a feature checklist about 87% complete and roughly 50 to 60% readiness for real work. LightCraft puts the checklist at 79% and day-to-day replacement at 60 to 70%.

The repositories also list what does work. PhotoCraft opens, edits and saves layered PSD files; it says re-saving keeps the render of 307 of the 309 psd-tools test files. FilmCraft ships its own H.264, HEVC, ProRes and AAC codecs rather than FFmpeg and exchanges projects through Final Cut Pro 7 XML, FCPXML, CMX 3600 EDL and AAF. Its stated gaps are H.264 as the only delivery codec for export, no plug-in hosting, thin testing on Windows and Linux, and speed on large footage. LightCraft reads XMP sidecars and Lightroom develop settings, but opens Canon CR3 and compressed Fujifilm and Olympus raws as embedded previews only, and non-DNG raws develop with a neutral colour matrix.

On the AI side, the roadmap describes continuous development by four to six parallel agents, and the apps can be driven by AI agents through an MCP server. The maintainers say the code avoids Adobe assets and GPL raw-processing code, and carry a disclaimer that the projects are not affiliated with Adobe.

For a business, the checks are practical: confirm which licence option you take, test your real PSD and raw files before moving a workflow, and note that support is community-based, through GitHub issues and Discord. A website for the apps is at getartcraft.com.

Sources

• LightCraft README and roadmap, GitHub (storytold/lightcraft), 8 October 2026
• PhotoCraft README, GitHub (storytold/photocraft), 8 October 2026
• FilmCraft README, GitHub (storytold/filmcraft), 8 October 2026
• PetaPixel: Someone Rebuilt Free, Open-Source Versions of Photoshop, Premiere, and Lightroom Using AI (headline only, page blocked), 7 October 2026