A developer using the name “ai_art_is_art” has announced seven open-source applications written in Rust and intended as free alternatives to major Adobe creative tools. The developer says the projects were built with help from the Opus 5.5 AI model.
- A Photoshop alternative
- An Illustrator alternative
- A Premiere Pro alternative
- A Lightroom alternative
- An After Effects alternative
- An InDesign alternative
- An Acrobat Pro alternative
The announcement was posted on Reddit in the r/SaaS community. The developer claims to have 15 years of industry experience and roughly a decade of experience with Rust, but it is not clear how much of the code was written directly by the developer versus generated with AI.
The developer also promises long-term support for all seven projects, saying that a team behind established software for filmmakers is involved and that funding for maintenance is in place. The stated aim is to reach functionality comparable to Adobe’s applications, address reported issues and use automated testing to prevent bugs.
The main unanswered question is whether the applications can deliver reliable, competitive performance in practical creative workflows. AI-assisted development may accelerate the creation of complex software, but the quality, feature depth and ongoing maintenance of these projects remain to be proven.
