Photoshop's Paid AI Tools Meet a Free AI-Built Rival

Quick answer: Adobe’s Photoshop beta just added Relight, a generative lighting tool that costs 30 credits every time you click Done. In the same fortnight, a solo developer used Anthropic’s Claude to build a free, open-source Photoshop clone called PhotoCraft that already has tens of thousands of GitHub stars. Neither is a straightforward win for working photographers yet: Relight is a narrow compositing tool with a real cost per use, and PhotoCraft is alpha software that its own maker says isn’t ready to replace your daily editor. If you want a stable, no-subscription alternative that already ships, Affinity by Canva is the safer move right now.

Photoshop’s Relight turns lighting into a metered feature

Photoshop’s new Relight feature lets you move the light falling on a subject after the shot is already taken, a job that used to mean hours of dodging, burning, and hand-painted highlights. It arrived in Photoshop Desktop Beta version 27.12.0, dated 20260927.m.3691, available from 9/28/26, so it isn’t in the shipping release yet.

The workflow is deliberate about cost. The tool works one layer at a time, so you cut out your subject first, then create a new Relight layer from the Layer menu, which duplicates whatever layer you have selected. You can stack up to three lights, and the tool works on single images as well as composites. It’s built for defined subjects like people and products, so landscapes and backgrounds are off the table.

The free part stops at the preview. Each Relight costs 30 generative credits, as Aaron Nace of PHLEARN demonstrates with a composite of a hiker photographed under cloudy skies and dropped onto a sunlit rock. Resolution is the catch. Clicking Done spends the 30 credits and bakes the lighting into a higher-resolution version of the layer, yet zooming in shows it falls well short of the original file. Nace then runs Harmonize, an older Photoshop feature built specifically for composites that costs five credits, adds a shadow under the subject, and offers three variations to pick from. Comparing all three layers up close, Harmonize lands sharper than Relight, while neither matches the original.

On raw cost, a single Relight render is cheap in isolation. One Adobe community member worked out that US$10 buys you 2000 Generative Credits, so using this tool could cost you $0.15 cents per render. The problem is repetition: dial in the wrong color temperature or light position and you pay again every time you click Done, and that adds up fast if you’re iterating on a composite for a client.

A solo developer built a free Photoshop with AI, and it has 57,000 GitHub stars

While Adobe was metering light, a much smaller story in photo editing software was spreading through GitHub and Hacker News. Brandon Thomas, a 15-year industry veteran and software engineer, unveiled a suite of free apps built under the banner project ArtCraft. Using Claude Opus 5.5 model and the Rust programming language, Thomas created functional (albeit very alpha) open-source alternatives to seven of Adobe’s flagships: Photoshop (PhotoCraft), Illustrator (VectorCraft), Premiere (FilmCraft), Lightroom (LightCraft), Acrobat Pro (PrintCraft), After Effects (EffectCraft), and InDesign (DesignCraft).

The motivation reads like a protest. Available across macOS, Windows, and Linux, the latter of which Adobe has never officially supported, the tools aim to free creatives from what Thomas calls predatory software-as-a-service (SaaS) models, driven by personal frustration over “the dark pattern ‘cancellation fee’ one too many times.”

The attention has been fast and large. As of October 14 the seven repositories have more than 113,000 GitHub stars combined, with PhotoCraft alone at 57,663. In eight days the seven repositories had passed 42,000 stars combined, and as of October 12, 2026 they are above 97,000, with PhotoCraft, the Photoshop clone, at 50,300 and about 790 open issues. For context on how young this is, the repositories were created between 30 September and 7 October 2026, so this is software with two weeks of life.

Thomas has not been quiet about any of it. Overnight after the first commit, he posted on Hacker News: “Software is over.” Then: “I just one-shotted Photoshop. The whole thing.” Whether that claim survives contact with a real retouching job is a separate question, covered below.

What PhotoCraft can actually do right now

PhotoCraft bills itself carefully. PhotoCraft, an open-source Photoshop clone built with Claude, calls itself clean room, meaning the team says it was built by observing behaviour rather than copying Adobe’s code, a distinction that matters if Adobe ever challenges it legally. Even so, generative AI, fifteen tools and plug-in compatibility are still missing from the current build.

The app’s own documentation is unusually blunt about its limits. PhotoCraft’s own page says it “is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work”, and lists the biggest gaps as AI and generative features, about twenty missing tools, typography and pro workflows, and plug-in support.

Where it does land some real engineering is file compatibility. PhotoCraft opens and saves layered PSD files, and re-saving keeps the look of 307 of 309 files in a public PSD test set. It ships with more than 1,700 automated tests. That’s a genuinely useful thing for a two-week-old project: if you need to open a client’s layered PSD on a machine without a Creative Cloud login, it will probably open. Whether it will look identical once you start layering adjustment layers, type and effects on top is less certain, and early reports from people actually running it have been mixed.

Affinity already made the free argument, without the AI drama

If the goal is simply to stop paying a monthly fee for photo editing, there’s a less experimental option that shipped a year ago and has had time to stabilise. Canva launched the unified Affinity app on 29 October 2025, combining vector, photo, and layout tools in one workspace. The company’s own line on pricing is direct: “Affinity is now completely free, forever.”

The free part is the core editor: layers, masks, RAW development, curves, the full retouching toolkit. AI sits outside that. Using those AI tools requires a Canva premium account, which costs $120 per year. On the monthly billing cycle, Canva Pro runs $15 per month billed monthly or $120 per year billed annually. So the honest framing is: the photo editor is free, and the AI generative fill, expand and background removal sit behind a Canva subscription, just priced lower than Adobe’s.

Three ways to edit, side by side

Software	Platforms	Price	Best for
Photoshop (Adobe Creative Cloud)	Windows, macOS, iPad, web	$22.99/mo standalone, or $19.99/mo Photography plan with Lightroom	Paid client work, plug-ins, reliable file handling, generative AI backed by Adobe’s own models
PhotoCraft (ArtCraft)	Windows, macOS, Linux	Free, open source	Curious tinkerers and Linux users testing a PSD-compatible editor; not daily paid work yet
Affinity by Canva	Mac, Windows (iPad coming)	Core app free; Canva Pro $15/mo or $120/yr for AI tools	Leaving subscriptions entirely while keeping a full retouching and layout toolkit

Four Adobe plans exist in total: Photography and Firefly Pro at $19.99/mo, standalone Photoshop at $22.99, and the full Creative Cloud Pro suite at $69.99/mo. The generative credit allowance is where the plans actually diverge. Standard AI like Generative Fill is metered by credit, and the standalone plan gives you just 25 a month. Firefly Pro and Creative Cloud Pro hand you 4,000 and make standard AI unlimited, while Photography sits at 1,000.

That credit gap matters if you plan to use Relight or similar generative tools often. At 30 credits a render, the 25 credits on standalone Photoshop don’t even cover one Relight click, while the Photography plan’s 1,000 credits stretch to roughly 33 renders before you need a top-up.

Generative AI credits included per month

What this means for you

If you shoot composites or product work and lean on Photoshop daily, Relight is worth testing in beta but budgeting carefully. Set your lighting fully in the free preview before you click Done, and reach for Harmonize instead when you’re blending a cutout into a scene rather than genuinely repositioning light sources; it costs a sixth of the credits and reportedly holds detail better.

If you’re curious about PhotoCraft, treat it as a side experiment rather than a production tool. It’s genuinely free and the PSD compatibility numbers are promising for an early alpha, but the developer’s own documentation flags missing generative features, missing tools, and no plug-in support. Keep your paid workflow intact and don’t point it at a client’s only copy of a file until the open issue count comes down and more people have run it against real jobs.

If your actual goal is to stop paying Adobe every month, Affinity by Canva is the more dependable route today. It’s a funded, shipped product rather than a two-week-old GitHub repository, the core editor costs nothing, and you only pay if you want Canva’s AI layer on top. For most enthusiasts who don’t lean hard on generative fill, that free core is enough to do real retouching and RAW work without a subscription at all.

Sources

Header image: official press images combined from adobe.com, github.com, canva.com.