Adobe Illustrator vs PhotoCraft
Adobe Illustrator and PhotoCraft are both image editing software. Adobe Illustrator is a commercial product from Adobe Inc. PhotoCraft is open source under Apache-2.0, with 76k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Adobe Illustrator when
- You produce professional vector artwork or need to exchange AI and EPS files with print and brand agencies.
- Pick PhotoCraft when
- You want to try a native open-source Photoshop-style editor and can accept missing features.
Side by side
The standard vector graphics editor for logos, illustration, icons and print layouts.
A Rust image editor positioned as a clean-room Photoshop reimplementation, with layers, masks, adjustment layers, type, vectors, brushes and PSD files.
Subscription only and steep to learn; Affinity Designer covers much of it without a subscription.
Created one month ago; the star count far outruns its track record, and PSD fidelity is unproven.
Production-ready
Experimental
Desktop app (both)
Not published
Rust and WGSL
Closed source, sold by Adobe Inc.
Open source, Apache-2.0 (permissive)
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
2.8k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
76k GitHub stars
Not known
New: started 1 month ago, latest release v0.20.1.
Other comparisons
More image editors
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.