# Adobe Charged Him to Cancel. So He Rebuilt Adobe.

Channel: Rough Cut Pete
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTAZtrsU-84
Duration: 16 min
Language: English
Words: 2196
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/pTAZtrsU-84

---

[0:00] A developer in Atlanta tried to cancel his Adobe subscription. They charged him a fee to leave, like a nightclub that charges you on the way out. So, he rebuilt Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat. Seven apps in about a week. It takes me longer than that to choose a font.

[0:20] And he's giving them away for free. Adobe charges a professional $70 a month. Over 10 years, that's more than $8,000. He's charging nothing. So, here's the question. Can Adobe survive? I'm Pete. I make films. And on this channel, I look at the industry I work in, warts and all. So, let's dive in. If you've ever edited a photo, a video, or a poster, you've probably had a

[0:49] complicated relationship with Adobe. Love the tools, hate the bill. It's the gym membership of software. Today, we're going to look at the guy who just tried to break that relationship for good. Then Adobe's rap sheet, because it's long. And then, what happens next? Lawsuit? Or is the cat already out of the bag? His name is Brandon Thomas. He's based in Atlanta, and he describes

[1:16] himself as an engineer and a filmmaker. About 15 years in software, about 10 years of them writing a programming language called Rust. This isn't the first rodeo. He founded Fake You, an app that does AI celebrity voices, then an AI film startup called Storyteller, which has now become Artcraft. So, this is the man who taught computers to do impersonations, and now

[1:43] he's doing an impersonation of Adobe. And why did he do this? In his words, he'd been hit by Adobe's dark pattern cancellation fee, more than once. Here's the timeline, and it's ridiculous. On the 30th of September, the first line of code, on the 2nd of October, the first release of Photo Craft. On the 7th, he posts it on Reddit and Hacker News and the internet loses its collective mind. Which for the internet

[2:15] is a very short trip. Seven apps: Photo Craft for Photoshop, Vector Craft for Illustrator, Film Craft for Premiere, Light Craft for Lightroom, Effect Craft for After Effects, Design Craft for InDesign, and Print Craft, now renamed PDF Craft, for Acrobat. They run on Mac, Windows, and Linux and even in a web browser. And they're open source under the MIT and Apache licenses, which means anyone can download the code, change it, and

[2:46] share it forever. So, how do you build seven apps in a week? AI. He built them with Claude, Anthropic's AI. And full disclosure, I use Claude to help research this show. So, take that how you like. I went through the public code history across seven apps. There are around 7 and 1/2 thousand changes in about 10 days and around 60%

[3:13] of them list Claude as the co-author. And people noticed in a few days Photo Craft alone picked up nearly 40,000 stars on GitHub, which is basically the developer version of likes. Developers don't do hearts, too emotional. And it was copied or forked nearly 6,000 times. Then he said this, "Software is over," he said. "We'll replace Google Search, build our own smartphones, and de-inshittify

[3:42] the entire tech world." Big words. So, is it actually any good? My honest answer, it's impressive. But it isn't Photoshop yet. One reviewer tested it on a weak laptop and found it fast. Layers, masks, smart objects, brushes, and it opens Photoshop files. But blend modes and filters didn't match Photoshop. It ate 5 gigs of memory opening one file, which to be fair,

[4:12] is also very Photoshop. And the verdict was not for professionals. And he says it himself. He calls it a super early alpha. He first promised a 100% match with Adobe within a month. He since walked that back to months, not years. And a couple of footnotes the headline skipped. He's not exactly a lone genius

[4:36] in a bedroom. He comes out of his funded startup with a small team and dozens of volunteers who are now adding code. Small team in an office just doesn't make as good a headline. And free isn't quite free. The apps cost nothing. The company makes its money selling AI image and video credits and cloud storage on top. Oh, shh. And he's already started on PowerPoint, Excel, AutoCAD, and Pro Tools. He's not coming

[5:03] for Adobe, he's coming for everyone. Now, here's the weird bit. On paper, Adobe has never been richer. In its last quarter, Adobe made a record $6.7 billion. It says more than a billion people use its products every month. But the people who own Adobe shares are terrified. In November 2021, the stock was worth about $680

[5:32] a share. Last week, around $240. That's roughly 65% gone. Goldman Sachs put a rare sell rating on it. Goldman saying sell is like your mom telling you your hair gets bad. They don't do it lightly. The amount of new subscription business it's adding fell by about a third. And the man who's run Adobe for 19 years

[5:57] is stepping down in December. So, the money's still coming in, but the market thinks the party's ending. And honestly, Adobe has spent a long time making itself very easy to leave the party from. Let's go through Adobe's greatest hits. They're comfortable. It's a double album. 2013, Adobe stopped selling its software outright. Before that, the whole Master

[6:24] Collection was a one-off $2,500. And you owned it. Now, you rent it. Forever. Like a flat. Except the landlord can put the rent up whenever he likes. And he keeps doing it. Tens of thousands sign a petition against it, and Adobe did it anyway. The plan started at $50 a month. It's now 70. Or 105 if you pay

[6:52] month-to-month. Also 2013, hackers steal the details of 38 million Adobe users and the source code for Photoshop. 38 million, that's nearly the population of Canada. 2019, Adobe pulls older versions of its apps and warns people still using them they may face potential claims of infringement. Using software you paid for? Imagine Ford ringing you up to say

[7:23] driving your old car might get you sued. So, the same year, US sanctions. Adobe announces it'll shut down every account in Venezuela. Refunds only come after a severe backlash. 2022, and a licensing deal changes overnight. Pantone colors in people's files turn black unless you pay for another subscription. 50 shades of pay. And then the big one. The cancellation fee. The thing that made Brandon build

[7:56] this. Sign up for the popular annual plan, paid monthly, and try to leave early, and you could be charged a fee of half of what's left on your year's subscription. The Hotel California had better exit terms. The US government sued Adobe over it in 2024, alleging the fee was buried in fine print, and that canceling was made deliberately hard, and even named two

[8:23] executives personally. This March, Adobe agreed to a $150 million settlement. 75 million in penalties, 75 million in free services. Adobe denies doing anything wrong. And in the UK, the competition watchdog has opened its own investigation. Quick one. If you enjoyed this, do me a favor and click like. Costs nothing. You can cancel at any

[8:51] time. No fee. Right, let's go back to it. 2024. New terms pop up saying Adobe may access your content through both automated and manual methods. Creators panic that their work is training AI. Adobe rewrites the terms and promises it won't. Pinky promise. Meanwhile, it sells its own AI, Firefly, as the ethical one. Then, Bloomberg reports some of its

[9:23] training images were made by Midjourney. Stock [snorts] contributors couldn't opt out. And the estate of Ansel Adams told Adobe publicly, "You are officially on our last nerve." Which is not a sentence any company wants to get from a photographer's estate. And when a rival got too good, Adobe tried to buy it. The classic if you can't beat them,

[9:49] buy them. Figma for 20 billion dollars. Regulators blocked it, and Adobe had to pay Figma a billion dollars as a breakup fee. And while all that was going on, the competition got good. Canva has over 260 million users. And last year, it made the Affinity apps completely free. DaVinci Resolve has had a free version for years. And full disclosure again, this video was edited in Resolve, not

[10:22] Premiere. Even Adobe seems to know. On its last earnings call, the boss said he was glad they'd deferred pricing actions in favor of user growth. The translation in plain English, we can't keep putting the prices up. So, what happens now? Can Adobe just sue? On copyright, history isn't on Adobe's side. In 1995, a US court said a software menu structure is a method of

[10:54] operation. So, you can't copyright it. Apple tried to own the look and feel of a desktop and lost. And in 2021, the Supreme Court sided with Google against Oracle over copying how software talks to other software. Courts have also ruled that taking apart a product to build a compatible one can be fair use. Adobe even publishes the specification

[11:24] for the Photoshop file format. And Brennan says this is a clean room rebuild, no Adobe code. There are already free Photoshop look-alikes. has been around since 1996. Photopea was built by one developer and runs in your browser. As far as I can find, Adobe has never taken any of them to court. But, there are pressure points. Reviewers say some of these apps look almost identical to Adobe's, which could

[11:54] invite a trade dress claim. That's legal speak for copying the look of a product. Adobe's names turn up in the project tags, and Adobe owns thousands of patents. I'm not a lawyer. I have watched every series of Suits, which I'm told doesn't count. But, that's where the experts point. Has a giant ever stamped out an

[12:19] open-source project? Nintendo did. It went after Switch emulator called Yuzu, got a $2.4 million settlement, and had over 8 and 1/2 thousand copies taken off GitHub. But, that case was about breaking Nintendo's encryption, so people could play pirated games. A free photo editor written from scratch is a very different fight. And when the music industry got the YouTube downloader youtube-dl pulled from GitHub,

[12:52] it was put back within a month. Years ago, when Hollywood tried to ban the code that cracked DVDs, people printed it on t-shirts. Here's the thing. The MIT and Apache licenses cannot be taken back for copies already out there. Photo Craft has been copied nearly 6,000 times in a few days on laptops all over

[13:15] the world. So, let's play it out. Scenario one, the most likely. Adobe ignores it, like it ignored and Photopea, says nothing, and hope it fizzles out. Scenario two, a lawyer's letter. Change your icons, change your layout. That's annoying, but the code survives. Scenario three, Adobe goes nuclear with patents. And then the company that just paid a $150 million over cancellation fees is suing the guy who built this because of a cancellation

[13:55] fee. That's not a lawsuit. That's a free advert for Artboard. Scenario four, [snorts] Adobe competes. Cheaper plans, free tiers, easier canceling. It's already moving that way. Its free users jumped 70% last year. So, which one do you reckon? One, two, three, or four? Let me know in the comments. But, here's what I think the

[14:19] real story is, and it isn't Artboard. It's the recipe. If a small team and an AI can build the rough versions of seven apps in 10 days, someone else will do it next week. And the week after. Even if Adobe shut Artboard down tomorrow, it wouldn't matter. The cat isn't just out of the bag, it's

[14:41] teaching other cats how to open bags. So, can Adobe survive? As a company? Probably yes. Studios and agencies do not switch tools overnight. They got plugins, pipelines, training, and decades of files. And Artboard right now is an alpha. But, can Adobe survive as the company it's been? Charging rent forever, raising the price, and making it hard to

[15:12] leave. I don't think so. When the competition can rebuild your product in a week and give it away, you can't win by trapping people. You have to be the one that choose anyway. If you want to try these apps, I'll add a link in the description. Go for it. But a few things. Download them only from the official project page. This is AI written alpha software, so don't trust it with a client deadline yet. And

[15:41] keep backups. And if you are paying Adobe, check what kind of plan you're on before you cancel. I want to know I want to know. Would you switch or is Adobe staying on your machine no matter what? Let me know in the comments. I'm Pete. Thanks for watching. Every source is in the description. Check

[16:04] them. Don't just trust me either. Have a good one. Catch you in the next one.

---

About this transcript
Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com).
ViewRank AI finds the videos already beating a creator's own average on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, transcribes them from the audio itself in more than 60 languages, and turns what worked into new ideas and scripts.
Free transcript tools, no account needed: https://viewrankai.com/tools
How to read any video this way: https://viewrankai.com/llms.txt