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About this video
PhotoCraft is a free, open-source, clean-room rebuild of Photoshop, written in Rust. Its GitHub repo was created on 30 Sep 2026 and had 76,102 stars on 2 Nov 2026. The same team, ArtCraft, has rebuilt more apps you pay for. The five most-starred, ranked by GitHub stars (2 Nov 2026):
- #5 LightCraft, photo editing like Lightroom ($11.99/month): 15,302 stars
- #4 WordCraft, documents like Microsoft Word (Microsoft 365 Personal $9.99/month): 17,015 stars
- #3 FilmCraft, a Premiere-style video editor (Premiere Pro $22.99/month): 17,275 stars
- #2 PdfCraft, edit the text in any PDF like Acrobat (Acrobat Pro $19.99/month): 19,191 stars
- #1 PhotoCraft, opens real Photoshop PSD files (Photoshop $22.99/month): 76,102 stars
The catch: all five are early alphas (PhotoCraft's own README says it is not yet a replacement for daily professional work), GitHub stars measure attention, not quality, and the "clean-room" claim has not been tested in court. They are free apps worth watching.
Sources:
- ArtCraft's apps: https://getartcraft.com and https://github.com/storytold (stars read on 2 Nov 2026)
- PhotoCraft: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft
- Eric S. Raymond's post (7 Oct 2026), reported at https://explainx.ai/blog/photocraft-open-source-clean-room-photoshop-rust-esr-closed-source-dead-2026
- Prices (US, annual plan billed monthly, 2 Nov 2026): https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/plans.html , https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom/plans.html , https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/pricing.html , Premiere Pro single app, Microsoft 365 Personal
Screen recordings are real sessions recorded on 2 Nov 2026, each app's own web build running in Chrome: LightCraft (its sample lavender photo, Exposure, Contrast and Shadows), WordCraft (its sample "Open Studio Handbook" and the ribbon tabs), FilmCraft (its demo project playing), PdfCraft (an invoice made for this video, its total retyped in Edit mode) and PhotoCraft (a 4-layer PSD made for this video from Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, public domain). Played faster where the apps redraw slowly. App names, icons and logos belong to their owners and are shown for commentary; this video is not affiliated with ArtCraft, Adobe or Microsoft. Type: Geist and Geist Mono (Vercel, SIL Open Font License) and Instrument Serif (SIL Open Font License). Animated with Remotion.
Music: Hypnothis by Kevin MacLeod, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hypnothis_(ISRC_USUAN1100634).mp3)
Follow @PranavInnovates: dev tools, ranked on real data.
What the video says
Someone rebuilt Photoshop and gave it away for free. Seventy-six thousand stars in one month. And they didn't stop there. LightCraft edits photos like Lightroom. WordCraft? It opens like Microsoft Word. FilmCraft looks just like Premiere. One open-source legend even posted: closed source is dead. PdfCraft edits PDFs, Acrobat-style. And number one, PhotoCraft, opens real Photoshop files. The catch: these are early alphas, and stars measure hype, not quality. Five free apps from one team, worth watching. So which subscription would you cancel first?