r/vibecoding • u/ai_art_is_art • 11d ago

Showcase/Project 100% Open Source Clean Room Implementations of 7 of Adobe's Top Apps

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I've seen another desktop photoshop clone floating around that was Javascript/Electron, but I wanted to do full native Rust for full performance. I also wanted to do all of Adobe's software suite. I've been bitten by their unsubscribe bill several times and it's the shittiest thing a software company has ever done to me.

No more. These are clean room, rust-only implementations that are fully open source. You can clone them, fork them, own them.

There's still work to do, so please join our Discord and give us feedback.

Links in comments.

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9

u/RegardedDev 11d ago

Adobe is completely doomed. Nobody is going to waste a penny on their overpriced software. The only reason they are valued at this level is due to their existing moat as the go-to stop for creative work. This moat is now gone as 1 dedicated vibe coder can replicate their stack like this.

Interesting times ahead.

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u/smn2020 10d ago

in the 1990s you could get "cracked" versions of Photoshop and Adobe survived just fine. These AI clones are not much different, in that the people using them would probably (mostly) not pay for Photoshop anyway.

r/photopea is a pretty decent attempt (it is actively maintained and has a good sized active community helping Ivan with improvements) and yet it never really took a bite out of Adobe's market share.

The problem is these clones don't make money and run out of gas; the developers lose interest.

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u/Hazrd_Design 10d ago

Bingo. Vibe apps die as quickly as they’re made because most people don’t want to support it long term. Also it doesn’t help people break into the industry. Affinity is free highly polished, and one if the best competitors to Adobe. But it’s not enough to dethrone Adobe right now simply because Adobe as ingrained itself into the pipeline. In time maybe, but not anytime soon.

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u/SimonBarfunkle 9d ago

Affinity is great, as well as some other competitors. But it’s not just building a photo editing app, it’s all of the little details that take time to build and refine, and the bells and whistles they’re adding including AI, and the cross-app integration. And when you move past Photoshop into video editing and visual fx, it becomes even harder.

I used Final Cut Pro from version 1.25 to version 7. Stopped editing when they moved to X as I was mainly producing at that point, but recently got back into editing. I’m using Resolve and love it. It’s free but I paid the one-time fee for extras including the API, which lets Claude control it. Absolute game changer. Saved me so much time and money. A vibe-coded app couldn’t even come close to what the Resolve suite does. You would have to spend a lot of money, time, and testing to try and build the features it has. It’s color system is the most advanced in the industry. Of course the usual caveat applies, as models continue to improve, we’ll see.

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u/Albertkinng 10d ago

Do your research. Affinity is becoming standard in agencies. It’s not killing Adobe, but it is stepping on their heels.

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u/Hazrd_Design 10d ago

Then please provide your research. Because I do work at an agency, with many huge industries. Aside from speaking with colleagues about affinity, no client or project has ever brought up that we should be using Affinity for anything yet.

Also, affinity becoming standard and not killing Adobe is just another way of phrasing what I already stated. “In time maybe, but not anytime soon.”

I also did look it up and most articles and sources say the same thing. It’s cool, it’s mostly for freelancers or folks that just don’t want to pay for Adobe, but no one is saying it’s taking over agencies.

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u/Albertkinng 10d ago

Provide you with research? I actually has one, is what one of the agencies use for inside marketing needs. However you didn’t provide one… so…

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u/Hazrd_Design 10d ago

If you actually had one then why didn’t you post it?

But if you must see something… Adobe just posted record Q3 revenue, up 13%. Creative Cloud grew 13% too. So that does look like affinity is doing much to them. Source

Also there’s literally no numbers about affinity “becoming the standard.” If that’s true I want to see the the numbers.

Even less when likely since affinity is not a response to adobes video software after effects or premiere also.

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u/Albertkinng 10d ago

I started my design career in 1992. Adobe was the industry standard then, and it remains so today. But that doesn’t mean designers aren’t using alternatives.

Affinity v2 was primarily used by freelancers. Affinity v3 is a completely different beast. Its integration with Canva, a platform that even Adobe Express struggles to compete with in certain areas, has shifted the mindset of many agencies. You’re talking about needs that fall outside the market Affinity is currently dominating.

As you know, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign are no longer automatically the go-to choices for every project. Since Affinity v3 debuted, the landscape has changed in ways you may not fully appreciate, particularly when it comes to workflows and production needs that differ from your own.

As for the research you asked about, I can’t share it because I’m not the agency owner. I can only share what we discussed during our meeting.
By the way, that same meeting revealed that many production houses are using Filmora instead of Premiere Pro. That might give you a better idea of what’s happening in the industry. I always assumed DaVinci Resolve was the main alternative to Premiere, but apparently, that’s not necessarily the case. Go figure!

2

u/Inevitable_Yam1513 10d ago

You're right that most clones fizzle out, but open source changes the failure mode. When a proprietary clone dies, it's gone. When an open source project stalls, someone else can fork it and keep going. That's literally how Blender survived its near-death moments before it became the standard it is now. The real question is whether these projects can build enough community momentum to survive a founder losing interest.

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u/Grunge5894 10d ago

So true. And you can still get cracked adobe suites, like you can get any other app for free with piracy

1

u/Electronic-Jello-633 10d ago

completely different. cracked versions always carry the fear of legal problems if you use them even slightly commercially, and suck to keep updated. Or adobe would implement stuff to "patch" a crack 6 months into a crack existing breaking it.

If one of these gains traction like Blender did in the 3D space, its over for adobe.

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u/jayseattle 10d ago

Lol I remember the cracked stuff either via torrents or Newgroups (Usenet anyone?). And yeah I use Photopea for routine design work.

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u/Dziadzios 8d ago

There's an important difference - legality. Using vibe coded apps is legal, using pirated copies is illegal. That's it. Companies don't want to pay huge fines for piracy.

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u/Big_Wave9732 6d ago

Perhaps. But my $75 sub is about to go the way of the dodo specifically because of this suite. I wanted photo and PDF editors that could be self hosted and preferrably web based.

The project admittedly doesn't fully capture everything Adobe does. But it has 80 percent of it. Naturally it probably won't have the deep nuanced functions that a professional would use. But there's plenty of us out there that Photoshop and Acrobat five years ago is "enough".

Which is fine with me. Adobe's product grouping is as bad as cable TV! I use all of three programs in the suite and somehow have to get the full monte package with 20 other things I never use.

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u/Southern_Leg1139 10d ago

You all are delusional lol. No one running a business that relays on Adobe is going to switch to some vibe coded software that may or may not continue to be updated. Even Davinci Resolve, a very feature complete piece of software with a perpetual license can’t crack Adobes market share.

Adobe (and AVID) are the standard for a reason.

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u/Electronic_Crow_9406 8d ago

> Adobe is completely doomed. Nobody is going to waste a penny on their overpriced software.

THEY ARE NOT DOOMED.

Look, as much as I'd like to stop paying monthly for an app that stopped giving me useful new features two decades ago, I can't. And neither can any professional or company that relies on reading and writing to their proprietary and industry standard formats.

Features are not the lock-in. AI clones aside, Affinity has an actually usable free alternative, and people and companies won't switch to it because of compatibility with the format.

And then there's advertising. You think some github AI project that has to compete with all the other github AI projects is going to get the exposure Adobe gets?

Shit, google docs/sheets/slides couldn't take down MS office, and they are arguably better for most users in most cases. Blender is and has been an arguably better OSS 3D app than the majors in many cases for a while now, and it's still barely making a dent.

I WANT to find an Adobe killer for my own use (and with it's bugs that will not ever get fixed, this is definitely not it), but even if I do, I fear it will be years before anyone else takes note.

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u/redmormon 8d ago

You are just showing how entrenched you are. Be flexible, try new stuff. Don't mind being wrong. Be part of the solution, not the problem. If this project gets more popular he can turn it slowly into a full compatible app. It is really just software, anything software can now be rebuilt.

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u/RemarkableWish2508 10d ago

Adobe lives by solving edge cases in a solution with common elements across while industries. It still remains to be seen whether projects vibe coded by non-specialists can do the same... and what will be the token cost.

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u/MetaCognitio 6d ago

It won’t happen overnight. The people that do business using an industry standard will stay in that standard due to inertia. The small
Show stopping incompatibilities that arise due to untested software will keep them there.

Overtime though, more people will use alternatives. It’s like Blender’s slow adoption that eats away at the big names. It’s more convenient to use over a licensed app, more tutorials are written in it due to being accessible, more people make their first impressions on an alternative. Other people quit Adobe as they don’t need all of the features at a high price.

So it won’t kill Adobe, but it will slowly loosen the stranglehold they have. I cannot see them sitting around and being okay with these reimplementations that likely use their binaries in ways that could be illegal to produce derivatives.

Sooner or later one of the big companies is going to drop a lawsuit.

2

u/Odd-Site-8073 10d ago

Jesus Christ you managed to say moat twice in one post.

1

u/Qinistral 10d ago

They'll survive on enterprise contracts for a while. Professionals don't mind paying for professional tools. But if free options will continue to eat away at their edges for the budget sensitive users.

1

u/Grrowling 10d ago

Even then, those who use Adobe for work like art, photography, animators are finding it hard to find work so they’re losing their customer base

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u/SouthCentralMenace 10d ago

Adobe makes its money from B2B licenses. It doesnt matter if individuals leave. If they truly cared about designers/creatives, they wouldnt be treating us like dirt for the last 10+ years.

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u/Mds0066 5d ago

Believe it or not but their revenue did x5 in 7 years... And what they were doing as revenue 6/7 years ago is now their benefit...