It can only be an alternative if 1) it is an exact clone of Adobe apps including feature set and the UI/UX, or 2) it has a different design but provides the same features along with good UX and can help user complete various tasks effectively (which requires tons of UX research on its own). Even small details can matter.

Which is why people still go to Adobe products despite similar products exist, especially for people who are getting paid to use software. They want things to simply work.

I very much doubt a vibe coded application can achieve that, but I'll be happy to be proven wrong.

DesignCraft is also a portable app. It works fine, behaves really good. Some things are a little different. You can import idml files (exported from InDesign) and what I see as real progress that its format is described (both Affinity and Adobe use closed formats).

How many hours do you spend on it daily and collaborating with others? Do you use it for professional work?

I've seen these posted and amplified in a few places over the past few days now, has anyone who is familiar with the adobe suite actually tried these in depth and can comment on their fidelity/quality?

I tried Lightcraft (Lightroom alternative) for some color correction. It worked fine and the UI is very similar to Lightroom. Though I must disclose I'm not an advanced Lightroom user by any means.

Apparently the web version doesn't have the Photoshop clone.

I compiled and ran the macOS version in a sandbox, and it's indeed a working Photoshop clone, all the features I expected were there.

I only played with it for 10 minutes, and I did not use regular PhotoShop for some time, but this felt very similar to me.

When trying to Export my DNG as a JPG, the file is not being written and there is no error message. It might be because I'm running it in a sandbox.

DesignCraft - see my comment below / above here in thread.

I've used this Photon Studio[0] one and it's very much like Photoshop, no difference on anything I tried to edit my photos.

[0] https://tenzen.studio/photon/

Also their GitHub repo: https://github.com/storytold/artcraft

Yes, like last time this was brought up, you can criticize them as both vibe-coded and far from complete, but their Illustrator clone Vectorcraft is quite functional at least -- I think it is more useful than Inkscape now, even in its incomplete form.

Which of the last 4 times "this was brought up" in the last 5 days do you mean? https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=getartcraft.com

I've only seen one of those -- the first I think. If you are criticizing that it is being brought up too often, you might be right -- I'm just a user, not the developer or submitter.

The license of choice seems a bit strange considering it's created by a machine. Shouldn't CC0 be a lot more appropriate in this case?

the irony of generative AI maximalists vibe coding software for artists...

Is it my imagination or have there been a bunch of similar submissions in the last week? Is one-shotting the Adobe suite in Rust the new pelican on a bicycle?

Yes, covered extensively over several few days.

There is a full Ars Technica article about this one [1]. Already posted to HN few hours before [2].

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/software-is-over-bold-ai-...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50000426

this one is an actual duplicate:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958850

Finally, an alternatives

Ehm, Affinity...

Happily paying Affinity user here. It took a little getting used to but I haven’t used Photoshop in YEARS.

It's "free" since Canva bought it. They basically use it as funnel for people to buy Canva subscription (online sharing, ai features).

They keep adding features and recently added scripting which was one of the last things that kept professionals from using Affinity. And you can see it in industry (atleast graphic design) even big names are testing how to switch.

I wonder which Adobe apps do they mean. From the screenshots/videos it looks like it has zero overlap with the functionality of Photoshop or Illustrator. This is just a slop generator.

Artcraft seems to be part of their suite. The Photoshop clone is this one https://github.com/storytold/photocraft for example.

Overlap is quite huge, check their Rust-based app list, not their web app. https://getartcraft.com/apps

5 posts in the last 3 days for vibe slop. Can we get a ban on this website?

In discussions about 'coding being solved' and the ability to produce large, well working projects with AI, a common question was why we do not see a vibecoded PhotoShop clone then.

This claims to be that.

It's relevant for discussion here about the quality of vibecoded software.

Fine, but it’s “asked and answered” at some point.

Not really.

I have seen zero discussion on HN previous to this post. A working photoshop clone should have been discussed earlier and extensively.

Now we have a post with 28 votes and it's already Flagged.

You mean like this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958850 [131 points | 208 comments]

Where the community basically says "yeah cool, but this is garbage software"?

Yes, I saw it earlier. Also flagged.

It seems like some sort of attempt to censor discussion around it.

Would it have stayed up, I'm sure this would get more attention.

In any case, the author didn't post the project himself since it's not yet ready to show off, being an early alpha and all.

Let's see if it will get a post once it is working better.

Played around with the photoshop equivalent. It's pretty impressive what it has so far, everything seems to work on my existing PSD projects. The main thing I can't seem to do now is import Actions.