PhotoCraft tested: the AI-built open-source 'Photoshop' from ArtCraft

A small company called ArtCraft says it has rebuilt Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, Illustrator and more, as free open-source apps. In about two weeks it put 13 of these "Craft" apps on GitHub, and they got 136,244 stars together. Most of the code was written with AI agents like Claude. We tested the biggest one, PhotoCraft, on 315 real Photoshop files. It opened 314 of them, and 225 of the 252 files we could compare fairly looked the same as in Photoshop. But the makers themselves call it early alpha, not a Photoshop replacement.

What are the ArtCraft Craft apps?

ArtCraft is the name of the company behind them, and it posts its code on GitHub under the name storytold. It started with ArtCraft itself, an app to make AI images and videos. Since 30 September 2026 it has added a whole row of copies of well-known programs:

There are more: copies of Excel, AutoCAD, InDesign, PowerPoint, Pro Tools and Figma. Each README says the app is a "clean-room reimplementation". That means they rebuilt it from public descriptions and by watching how the real program behaves, without using its code. The apps look and work like the originals on purpose: same menus, same panels, same shortcuts.

They are popular. Release files of the 13 apps were downloaded 6.2 million times by 13 October, GitHub counts. ArtCraft was also on our GitHub Trending list last week.

Built in two weeks, mostly with AI

Big programs like Photoshop took decades to build. These copies are days old. PhotoCraft's first commit was on 30 September 2026. Two weeks later it had 2,151 commits: saved changes to the code. FilmCraft had 1,946, VectorCraft 2,567.

That speed comes from AI. A commit message can name a co-author. We counted how many commits name an AI agent such as Claude or Codex as co-author: 64% for PhotoCraft, 47% for FilmCraft and 84% for WordCraft. Most name Claude Opus 5.5. The real share may be higher, because not every AI change is marked.

The makers are open about it. Their repos have rules for AI agents in a file called AGENTS.md. And FilmCraft's roadmap measures the work left in "agent-hours": hours of Claude Opus 5.5 working on its own. By its own estimate, reaching full parity with Premiere Pro still takes 1,550 to 2,750 of them.

What they claim, and what they admit

On the outside the claims are big: "a clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop". Inside, the READMEs and roadmaps are much more careful, and that is to their credit:

• PhotoCraft (Photoshop) calls itself "early alpha" and says it is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work.
• FilmCraft (Premiere Pro) is alpha. It rates itself at about 86% of Premiere's features, but only about 56% "ready for real work". It can't open Premiere project files yet.
• LightCraft (Lightroom) says it has about 81% of Lightroom's features, but is nearer 61% as a real replacement.
• VectorCraft (Illustrator) estimates about 65% "ready for real work".
• EffectCraft (After Effects) says it isn't yet a replacement, and can't open After Effects projects.

All these numbers are scored by the makers themselves. So we checked one claim we could measure.

Our test: 315 real Photoshop files

A Photoshop file (PSD) holds all the layers, effects and masks of an image. It also holds a flat picture of the end result, made by Photoshop itself. That flat picture is a perfect answer key: if PhotoCraft draws the layers the same way, its result should look the same.

We used the test files of psd-tools, a well-known open-source PSD reader: 315 files full of layers, blend modes, adjustments, masks and effects. PhotoCraft uses the same set in its own tests, so these files are not new to it.

We did not run PhotoCraft on our own computer. We ran it in a Vercel Sandbox: a rented Linux computer that is thrown away afterwards. The Linux download needed a newer system library than the sandbox had, so we built the command-line version of PhotoCraft 0.8.2 from its source code there. That took 2 minutes and 44 seconds. Then we let it open every file and save it as a PNG image, and compared each one with Photoshop's own picture, pixel by pixel.

Does PhotoCraft draw it like Photoshop?

Mostly, yes. PhotoCraft opened 314 of the 315 files, in a median of 26 milliseconds each. The one it refused is shorter than its own header says, so that file is broken.

Not every file can be compared fairly. We left out 43 files in other colour modes (like CMYK for print) or with 32 bits per colour. We also left out 18 files that hold no real flat picture, and one with a random pattern. That left 252 files:

"The same" means at most 5% of the pixels differ by more than a tiny amount (8 of 255 levels). Every file in the test set's folders for layers, blend modes, layer effects, transparency and path shapes came out right. The uncertain ones are mostly greyscale images. PhotoCraft saves those with a colour profile, and our check does not do colour management, so we can't say who is right there.

Where it went wrong

In 5 files PhotoCraft's picture was clearly different from Photoshop's. In three of them you can see what went wrong:

• A vector mask with a soft edge came out hard: the pink fade on the left is missing.
• An adjustment that should only change the right half of the image did nothing.
• A saturation change on one band of a photo is missing.

The other two were a gradient on a text outline and a small blurred edge in a file made by another program. Nine more files had small shifts in colour or brightness that you only notice side by side.

For a two-week-old app, that is a strong result. But it also shows where the gaps are: the more unusual Photoshop features, the ones real designers use every day.

Their own claim: re-saving keeps the picture

PhotoCraft's README makes one exact claim: opening and re-saving a file "renders the same for 307 of the 309 files" in the psd-tools test set. We checked that too. We saved every file again as a Photoshop file, opened that copy, and compared the two pictures.

All 314 of the 314 files gave exactly the same pixels. So this claim holds up, and with the current version even slightly better than the README says. This matters if you swap files with people who use Photoshop: PhotoCraft does not damage the layers it understands.

It does not prove that Photoshop shows the re-saved file the same way. For that you need Photoshop itself, and we did not use it for this test.

Is PhotoCraft a good free Photoshop alternative?

For trying things out and simple layered work: it is worth a look. It is free, works offline, opens real Photoshop files and in our test drew almost nine in ten of them right. If you know Photoshop, you will find your way, because the menus and shortcuts are copied on purpose.

For paid client work: not yet. The makers say so themselves, and our test found real gaps in less common features. An app that is two weeks old and changes a hundred times a day can also break things between versions.

The same goes for FilmCraft and the other Craft apps. They are impressive for their age. But by their own numbers, they are still only about halfway to replacing the real thing. We did not test FilmCraft ourselves; the numbers above are its makers' own.

How we checked

On 13 October 2026 we read the GitHub data of all 13 Craft apps through GitHub's API, its data service for programs: stars, licence, every commit message, release downloads and the README. We counted a commit as AI co-written when its message names Claude, Codex, Copilot or another AI agent as co-author. The quotes come from each app's README and roadmap.

For the test we downloaded PhotoCraft 0.8.2 for Linux from its GitHub release and checked it against the published SHA-256 checksum. It needed a newer system library than our sandbox had, so we built the same version from its source code, with Rust 1.99. We used the 315 test files of psd-tools at commit 3160145. PhotoCraft saved each file as PNG; we read Photoshop's flat picture from each file with our own small script and compared the two. Everything ran in a Vercel Sandbox, not on our own computer.

The screenshots are real and cropped. The charts and side-by-side images were made by us from our own results. None of the images was made by AI.