Have you heard about LightCraft yet?

[Eduard]

If you haven't heard about this yet, software engineer Brandon Thomas has built and released an open-source, free alternative to Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite, including versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom (not Classic), Acrobat, After Effects, and InDesign. The apps are available for Mac, Windows, and Linux at the ArtCraft website. I've played around a bit with LightCraft and it solid. Might be extremely useful on older machines that still have some life in them.

Interestingly, he has also created a related alternative to Microsoft Office which I'm very impressed with so far! From the website: "Image editing, vector illustration, video, photography, PDFs, motion graphics, page layout, interface design, word processing, audio, presentations, CAD and spreadsheets. Native, open-source apps from the ArtCraft team, built in Rust and free to use."

Here is a screenshot from LightCraft editing a RAW file:

 

[Clovishound]

How is the masking? The review I saw on it showed screen shots, and the subject detection was less than stellar. I'm not trying to trash the software, just wondering how well it does with an essential feature for most folks.

I also wonder if this will be able to stick around. The layout looks like a clone of LR, although the code is likely different. Adobe has lots and lots of lawyers.

I've thought about downloading it. I really like LR, but I have issues with it running slow with certain operations, even though I have a fairly capable machine, with a fair amount of memory.

 

[Eduard]

I haven’t tried the masking yet. I was mostly trying to see how it handled a RAW file, color profiles, and crop/alignment tools. I may play with it some more later this evening.

Wonder who will react first: Adobe or Microsoft?

 

[Woodyg3]

Yeah, and the videos I've seen on it seem to show it has a long ways to go. I'll gladly pay Adobe $120 a year for professionally coded and updated software.

I wonder, as well, how long until there is a cease and desist order and the threat of a very large suit. They are almost exactly copying the interface, it looks like.

 

[Woodyg3]

A point of view that makes a lot of sense to me:

 

[BF Hammer]

I watched the F-stoppers video. Looks to me like it needs some more time to bake. And Adobe's legal team needs time for the ink to dry on the cease and desist letter and send it with a courier.

And the open-source alternative to MS Office has been out there and working well for 20+ years. OpenOffice and the branch project Libre Office.