ArtCraft is a set of free, AI-built apps that look a lot like Photoshop, Lightroom and the rest of Adobe’s apps, and thousands of people are cheering it on. I look at who’s behind it, how it’s paid for, what Adobe could actually do about it, and the five questions I’d ask before installing any new software.
00:00 What ArtCraft is
00:27 Where I’m coming from
01:07 What’s actually happened
01:58 How finished is it?
02:28 “The editor you already know how to use”
02:51 What can Adobe do about it?
04:10 Why Adobe might stay quiet
04:36 Remember when Affinity came out?
04:55 Why he built it
06:01 Who’s behind ArtCraft?
06:45 How it’s paid for
07:37 A question if you’re worried about AI
08:18 A link versus an install
09:13 Would I install it?
09:59 Competition is good
10:43 5 questions before you install any software
🔗 Steve Hanson’s video on the legal side:
🔗 Adobe’s General Terms of Use (Section 17): https://www.adobe.com/legal/terms.html
🚨 Love Photography? Join my Free Photography Community with an active forum, live calls, and monthly challenges with feedback to help you grow 👉🏻 https://www.skool.com/photography-community/about
🪖 39-45 Portraits Project: https://glyndewis.com/3945portraits
🌍 My Website + Blog: https://glyndewis.com/
📰 Weekly Creative Newsletter: https://glyndewis.kit.com/weekly-creative
📚 Books I’ve Written: https://glyndewis.com/books
⚙️ Gear I Use: https://glyndewis.com/gear
🤝 Let’s Connect
Find me on Instagram, X and Facebook under @glyndewis
source
Thanks for all the comments on this one, including from those of you who don’t agree with me, which is absolutely fine.
The thing that’s come up more than anything else is that ArtCraft is open source, so anyone can read the code and see exactly what it does. That’s a fair point, and it’s a big difference from most of the software we install, so I’m genuinely curious: when you install something open source, do you look through the code yourself, or do you trust that others in the community have?
For anyone asking about Adobe, I mentioned at the start of the video that I do occasional paid work for them, recording tutorials for Adobe Learn and presenting. This video isn’t sponsored, and Adobe had no involvement in it.
Also, you only need to give your card details if you buy AI credits; the apps themselves are free to use.
Cheers,
Glyn
yeah, you go ahead and cry about it
If you are using Adobe products for work then you're sessions in that software are likely looking like 4-6 hours or more a day and generating an income, so the subscription is justified as a cost of doing business. What pricing options do we have for non-commercial work? There are no other options, so do you pay a yearly / monthly subscription for something you may only need to open a few times a year? You look at the monthly rate and think that's not too bad, I'll give it a try but you cancel the subscription and they want to charge you a cancellation fee for the full year… these are aggressive tactics and so I'd say hatred of understanding that system is justified, what this guy has done is a labour of love.
When Westerners talk of the biggest jokes – Rule of Law and Rules based order, the world says enough. Where is the rule of law when US goes and takes over Venezuela? Takes over Greenland? Where is free markets when the world can make things better than you? Patenting the knowledge of the world and charging the world for it? West has destroyed the world many times over. Karma is hitting back. UK was built on the loot and plunder of the world. Now that the world has stopped allowing it to loot them, especially Africa and Asia, it is hurtling towards bankruptcy and moral collapse. I do not even need to dip into history.
Question – why those apps are not browser based if it's about killing Adobe?
Dude, really; it's open source, clone it analyse it and install it. The argument of "are you sure what's in it" , is directly against Adobe and For opensource. You call yourself a software engineer and than say that?
Plenty of people trust this BECAUSE they also hate Adobe from previous experience with their abysmal customer service and being held ransom to their subscription model.
The Craft apps were not intended to replace Adobe apps. They were meant to demonstrate what 1 person can do with AI in 1 week.
I also hate that Adobe apps can't update if you're using a vpn.
even paid for software monitors ur usage like adobe for example plus all of your internet providers which u put more sensative info like for online banking . its just the world we live in
I think that anyone who defends Abobe is suspect. Their pricing model is based on greed. Opposing greed is a virtue, not a sin.
In a few weeks it will be much more powerful than what Adobe can make. The open design and cli-friendly tools are animating thousands of creators to make their own plugins, tools, and processes. They use AI too and give them to the public for free. Adobe is screwed.
Giving your card detail to Ai Api, isn't giving it to the coder..
You know nothing about the coder, but it's totaly open source and will be check.
Then you dont have to instal it to use it on windows and linux without a web browser..
How did adobe treated their customers? Quadrupling their pricing within 12 month..
They obviously used or planned to used their customers data for AI training before going to API…
Be honest when you do a vidéo, or just admit that beside working for adobe, you don't understand much about tech
2.) it is open source, community do not always want to make money, imagine there are also people in the world who have fun just to making stuff, like me xD
Sooo… this incredible free open source sw is fine & dandy, but the Elephant in the room is the actual APP confusingly called Artcraft Studio, launched from within Artcraft Launcher that costs you money to use despite being sold as FREE. I am deeply suspicious of that sort of bait & switch nonsense. If you want to provide a free AI generation app, let it use local offline HW & models. My advice, don't feed ai systems online with your or other peoples images. Finally, they need to sort out the naming of their apps. The launcher is called Artcraft, and the App inside it is called Artcraft Studio. It doesn't take a genius to know that is a stupid idea. My guess is that many of these apps will never get to the finished stage, because that requires human coders who aren't just running a reverse engineering AI app.
Adobe user since the late 90s. Bring back the perpetual license Adobe and I'll buy again. I am giving ArtCraft some time to mature and hope to jump on it with all my workstations. I abhor subscriptions for all software, plugins etc. The only acceptable subscription model is something like AI music or video generators where you pay for something and you get it like a vending machine. That is different from Adobe where you rent the tool and lose the tool and access to all your projects once you cancel.
Man doesn't know that GabeN had his spite turned into a flurishing career and an asset to us all.
0:30 Do do
installing doubt in peoples mind with no evidence whatsoever…. sounds like you're still working for Adobe. How many other apps do we know the background of the developer?
Pues el proyecto es open source, está abierto a que cualquier revisor cuestione su contenido y si puede ser malicioso o no.
How much did Adobe pay you?
That's interesting, when you said that we're all careful about clicking a link yet doesn't when installing software, it's very interesting. That argument doesn't really make sense to me, in this particular case. The software itself is open source, meaning you can look at the code yourself, or the community will read it for you as they already have with other open source programs. You argue that you can hold companies to account if something goes wrong, I disagree.
We already have an example that you're giving us, Adobe. To this day, like you said, they never claim to do any wrongdoings, in their cancellation fee "tactics". Is that the accountable that you're looking for? Sure they got plenty of history. But, that don't really mean anything. We don't even know what in the programs, a couple of updates could change the EULA or Terms of Service to something that isn't there before, like the whole AI thing that the CC have now.