Stop Paying Adobe $68.97 a Month? Try the New Free Open-Source PhotoCraft, FilmCraft and EffectCraft
Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects, each on its own plan, add up to $68.97 a month. This week a developer released free, open-source copies of them, PhotoCraft, FilmCraft and EffectCraft, and says he built them with Claude. They are very new and still rough, so this page says what each one does, how to install them (one Homebrew line gets two), prompts to test them on a real job, and what you will honestly miss, plus the older free apps if you need something proven today
Adobe sells Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects as separate subscriptions. At about $22.99 a month each, the three together come to $68.97 a month, according to third-party price trackers in mid-2026 (check adobe.com for today's price; the all-apps Creative Cloud plan is a different, bigger plan). The video shows that bill counting down to $0.00 as each paid app is swapped for a free one.
The free ones are brand new. A developer named Brandon Thomas, of ArtCraft, released a suite of free open-source apps made to copy Adobe's, and says he built them with Claude. They are not made or approved by Adobe, and they are early software: their own pages call them "early alpha", "in development" and "young and moving fast". They are worth trying next to your Adobe apps today, and not yet worth cancelling for.
What you swap
- Photoshop to PhotoCraft. An image editor with layers, masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, type, vectors and brushes. It opens and saves Photoshop (.psd) files with their layers. Its own page says it is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work.
- Premiere Pro to FilmCraft. A video editor with a timeline, colour, effects, audio, titles and captions, and export. Its makers estimate it is about half to 60% ready for real work.
- After Effects to EffectCraft. A motion graphics and effects app with compositions, layers, keyframes, hundreds of effects, 3D cameras and lights, and a render queue. It can't open After Effects project files.
All three are free, with no subscription and no account. Their code is public on GitHub under the MIT or Apache-2.0 licence, and they run on Mac, Windows and Linux.
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