Eight Rust apps, one team, and a PSD parser written from Adobe’s public spec

Somebody on Bluesky summed up the PhotoCraft repo as "AI stole Photoshop and now it's open source?" That's a catchy line, and it's also not what the README says. So I went through the READMEs for storytold/artcraft and the apps around it to see what's actually there.

Caveat before anything else: GitHub blocks automated browsing of source trees, so this is a read of the READMEs and public write-ups, not of the Rust code. I'm flagging which claims are the team's own and which come from third-party coverage.

What ArtCraft is, and what it isn't

ArtCraft itself is not a Photoshop clone. The team describes it as an AI image and video studio "for artists who want real control." Third-party coverage describes a desktop app on a Rust foundation, split into advanced crafting for controlled production work and quick prompting for fast ideas. Several features (scene blocking, canvas editing, relighting, inpainting) are listed as "preview coming soon", so treat it as work in progress.

The Adobe-shaped part is the family around it, which the team calls the Crafting Apps. Each is written from scratch in Rust and meant to stand on its own.

The suite, mapped

Which Craft covers which Adobe workflow?

App	Does	Adobe workflow it targets	Status
PhotoCraft	Layers, masks, type, real PSD files	Photoshop	Early alpha
VectorCraft	Vector illustration	Illustrator	In active development
DesignCraft	Page layout and publishing	InDesign	Runs on desktop and in the browser via WebAssembly
FilmCraft	Video editing, color, sound	Premiere Pro	See repo
LightCraft	Photo library and raw development	Lightroom	See repo
PdfCraft	Reading, organizing, protecting PDFs	Acrobat	See repo
EffectCraft	Motion graphics and effects	After Effects	See repo
DeckCraft	Presentations	PowerPoint (Microsoft, not Adobe)	See repo

PhotoCraft, VectorCraft and DesignCraft say outright that they reimplement Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. For the other four I matched them by description, using the Adobe product list in the shared trademark notice. Check each repo before you quote me.

Every README carries the same disclaimer: the apps are independent, "not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Adobe Inc.", and Adobe's names are used only to describe compatible workflows.

PhotoCraft is the one worth reading closely

It's the most documented of the group, and the README is blunt about its own state. It says "early alpha" and, per coverage of the project, "not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work."

What it reportedly ships today:

• 34 tools and 16 adjustment layers
• A GPU compositor on wgpu, aimed at Metal, Vulkan, DX12 and WebGPU
• ICC colour management, with soft proofing and gamut warning
• Over 1,700 tests, including a check that diffs renders against Photoshop's own merged images
• PSD import that matches 307 of 309 files in the psd-tools test corpus, and 116 of 116 shape layers in the team's own corpus The PSD support is a separate crate written from Adobe's public specification, and the README admits a re-saved file won't be byte-identical to the original. I like that. A file format claim with a failure rate attached is more believable than one without.

The agent angle

PhotoCraft and VectorCraft both expose an MCP server, so an AI agent can drive the editor. One write-up counts 500+ commands behind a JSON control channel, and the README shows a headless photocraft-cli for batch work. DesignCraft is also described as drivable over MCP.

This is the real thesis, I think. Photoshop is hard for an agent to script cleanly. An editor built with a command interface from day one is a different kind of target.

What did this do to Adobe?

I looked for it and couldn't find much. As of mid-October 2026 I found:

• No statement from Adobe about the Craft apps
• No reported legal action
• No evidence of any effect on Adobe's products or pricing What exists is smaller and still worth noting. The project is getting shared as "Photoshop, but open." One Spanish-language write-up tells readers to audit their Adobe lock-in and to evaluate photocraft-cli mcp as an alternative backend to Adobe's API. The team also had to put a long trademark disclaimer on every repo, which tells you they know where the sensitive line is.

The open question is legal, not technical. "Clean-room" is a claim about process, and I can't verify it from outside. Whether it holds up isn't something I can judge, and I'm not a lawyer. If you're thinking about using these apps in a company, ask someone who is.

My honest take on who should try it

If you edit PSDs for a living, not yet. The README tells you that itself. If you build tooling for creatives, or you want to see what a Rust and WebAssembly editor looks like from the inside, it's worth an afternoon. DesignCraft is the easiest to poke at, since it opens in the browser.

Try it

git clone https://github.com/storytold/photocraft
cargo run --release -p photocraft -- image.psd

ArtCraft Launcher, also early alpha, checks each app's GitHub releases and updates the ones you have installed.

Your turn

Which of these would you actually swap for the Adobe version, and what would have to be true first? File format fidelity? Plugin support? Leave it in the comments. I'm especially curious about video, since FilmCraft is the one I know least about.