r/macapps • u/MaxGaav • 1d ago
Free Thirteen apps. One craft. Native, open-source apps from the ArtCraft team, built in Rust and free to use.
Through this post on Microsoft Office 2021 for Mac I found out about the Art Craft Suite. I thought it would be nice to make a separate post of this, so that it would get some more attention here.
Disclaimer: I'm in no way affiliated.
As the website says: "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."
It runs on MacOS and Windows, and there are web versions too.
The ArtCraft Launcher installs every app and keeps them all up to date. But each app also has its own installers.
Interesting short YouTube video on ArtCraft, reversed engineering and the clean room approach.
ArtCraft currently is only 3 weeks old though... and I only downloaded the spreadsheet app (GridCraft) so far, but I must say the app looks wonderful. And it's extremely light: Installed it takes 68 Mb. Quite a difference with Microsoft Excel 2024 on my Mac (2.63 Gb).
The ArtCraft apps:
PhotoCraft - The image editor you already know how to use
VectorCraft - Vector illustration
FilmCraft - Professional video editing
LightCraft - Your photos. Your pixels. Your machine
PdfCraft - The open-source PDF workbench
SoundCraf - Professional audio recording and mixing
WordCraft: A fast, open-source word processor
FigCraft - Interface design
DesignCraft - Page layout and publishing
EffectCraft - Motion graphics and visual effects
DeckCraft - Fast, dynamic slide presentations
CADCraft - Computer-aided design and drafting
GridCraft - Fast, native spreadsheets
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u/banana_zest 18h ago
This AI cloning stuff is interesting. As the maker of an image editor you'd think I'd be worried about PhotoCraft but I'm really not. Photoshop is the best we have but it certainly isn't perfect, so things like this make me focus on the ways to improve and advance beyond Photoshop.
What does worry me though is that someone could come in and clone Mojave Paint (soon to be renamed to Mojave Studio).
It'll be interesting to see if this is determined to be IP theft or not. The whole Apple v Microsoft lawsuit showed that "look and feel" generally isn't protected, or if it is there's a high bar. Pixel-precise cloning might meet that bar?
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u/marcmjax 1d ago
You downloaded one app and “it looks wonderful”. Next thing you are posting this fanboy link dump.
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u/MaxGaav 1d ago
So you think it is wrong that I post something I discovered and want people to know about so that it can be discussed? What a sour remark.
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u/Mstormer 1d ago
I've watched reviews of some of the adobe alternatives, and they were pretty sad in how they handle color and other more complex processes.
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u/Sufficient-Expert817 1d ago
no lol. there's no author, no accountability, no support for this app. idk why these are all being pushed as industry replacements its absurd.
their website is already breaking https://storyteller.ai https://storyteller.ai/legacy https://storyteller.ai/about
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u/karatsidhus 1d ago
I tried a couple of them when they released it. It was extremely unstable, like seriously vibed software. I'm sure since then they;ve been updated and are more usable. But its hard to recommend them for any serious users
For people who really want an FOSS version, libreoffice does exist and has been around for years.
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u/RoggowFl 1d ago
did they feel like actual native apps or just basic wrappers when you tested them?
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u/carlossap 1d ago
Photography ones don’t even load Sony RAW files.
If they’re being released without basic features how are we supposed to expect they’ll maintain and develop long term?
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u/GroggInTheCosmos 1d ago
Thanks for this! I think I bumped into it in it's very early days and forgot about it
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u/SaltishPeppercorn 1d ago
Not commenting on good or bad, but this whole AI reverse engineering is like distillation in models.
Frontier labs scraped the internet and stole/pirated stuff to train models. Now, they have run out of stuff, so they use expensive Reinforcement Learning for training new models. Chinese labs distill their models from Frontier models for a fraction of the cost and feel they are doing the same to OpenAI and Anthropic that they did to the internet and rights holders. The problem is you can only distill or reverse engineer what someone else has already built. You can’t exceed that by much.
Of course, distillation and reverse engineering are a financial annoyance to the trailblazers. Not sure where it all leads.
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u/Ok_Bar_5182 1d ago
Copying the functionality is an impressive feat. But you have to consider the years of design, user feedback, ingenuity and creativity that came up with the features in the first place
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u/Substantial-Code-514 9h ago
I would not migrate anything important into it on day one. Try it on a copy of a real file, something with your actual formatting and weird edge cases, and see if it holds up for a week. If it does, great, you found something light and free. If it starts feeling rough around the edges, you have lost nothing and your old setup is still intact.
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u/DazzlingMastodon5178 1d ago
I'm struggling to relate with some of the comments about accountability and comparisons with the originals. This is open source (https://github.com/storytold/artcraft) and the community will (or won't) drive accountability like any other open source ecosystem.
Thanks u/MaxGaav for posting this.
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u/MaxGaav 1d ago
Just did some research:
Founder: https://www.linkedin.com/in/possibilistic/
Background info: https://ai.miraheze.org/wiki/ArtCraft
Reddit sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtCraftAI/