12MB vs 6,455MB: a Photoshop built by a former Apple designer to cancel Adobe, 51 days to 18k stars

One person spent a few weeks building a free Photoshop for Mac, posted a single tweet, and got 18,466 stars in 51 days. The code isn't hard to copy, and PhotoCraft launched two weeks later and got 4 times as many stars. What's really worth learning is how that tweet was written: a "because I wanted to cancel" reason, a set of numbers you can drop straight into a headline, and a demo video that looks like an Apple promo. Below: how it took off, where the stars came from, and which parts you can still compete on.

One tweet, and a set of numbers

On Sep 18, 2026, Robbie Tilton posted a tweet with a demo video on X:

I built a Photoshop-like image editor. It's called Compositor. … I originally built it for myself to get off my Adobe subscription, but decided to release it for free and make it open source. … The entire app is 12MB. Photoshop is 6,455MB on my machine.

He had worked on design in Apple's Human Interface group and at Google on Daydream and Glass. At posting time he had about 23k followers on X. The GitHub repo was created two days earlier (09-16) and was the only repo under his name.

The tweet later reached about 2.4M views, 20k likes, and 19k bookmarks. Bookmarks and likes were nearly equal, which suggests many people were "saving it to download later". That night levelsio (950k followers) quoted it with "New (and better) Photopea!", and that quote alone got 95k views.

The first line of the repo README says the same thing as the tweet: "Photoshop is expensive, GIMP-style tools don't feel right, and I couldn't keep my state. So I built Compositor."

What it is

An image editor that runs only on Mac, written in Swift, MIT-licensed, free, with no account required. It requires macOS 26 and Apple silicon.

It copies Photoshop rather than inventing a new interaction model. Blend-mode order matches Photoshop, shortcuts match too (and can be changed), and dragging the label in front of a number changes its value, all the feel Photoshop users expect. The feature list is long: layer masks, adjustment layers, a Camera Raw filter, content-aware fill, select subject, and it can open PSD files. The installer is signed and notarized, and it auto-updates.

There's a less obvious design choice too: the project file .comp is a folder containing PNG layers and a manifest file. An AI agent can write into it, and an open project on the canvas updates live. Someone has already built compositor-mcp, which lets Claude edit images directly.

How the stars grew

(GitHub data, 11-06; daily numbers for the first few days of September are not available.)

One thing needs to be clear up front: these stars didn't come from developer circles. The author's own published download counts are 75k in three weeks and 110k in just over a month, with about 3,000 daily active users (he didn't say how that was calculated). Stars are roughly a sixth of the download count. Most of the people who starred it are designers and ordinary Mac users who clicked after downloading. The repo was less than 60 days old and couldn't get onto GitHub trending, so every star came from outside the platform.

Where users come from

The author kept posting. After the first post, he posted again with each release and each milestone: v1.1 (09-2.15M views), "27k downloads in one week" (09-2.57M), "75k downloads in three weeks" (10-10.1M), "updating almost every day" (10-2.75M). The LinkedIn post with "110k downloads, 3,000 daily active" got 846 reactions. Within a few weeks the version number went from 1.0 to 1.5.x, and each version was another reason for people to repost.

Free Photoshop alternative accounts in other countries kept reposting it. This is where it went further than a typical open-source project:

• @EngMoElgaraihy in Arabic (10-07), 847k views, more than the Chinese and English reposts listed below combined;
• Chinese: @denziideng (09-1.96M views, copy leads with "15 years of design at Apple and Google"), 程序员鱼皮 (10-443k, specifically highlights the AI-agent file format), @FuSheng_0306 (10-1.23M, "former Apple designer… our company started considering cancelling Adobe");
• On English-language "Hidden GitHub gems nobody knows about" posts, it's ranked #10 in several of them.
• On TikTok, Spanish creator @javiniguezoficial got 143K views, Indonesian creator @hexalab.tech got 58K views, and there are also Vietnamese and Portuguese alt accounts.
• Mac sites like OSXDaily (09-21) and open-source alternative directories.

Others made ports, which kept it going. Someone built a Linux (Omarchy) version and tagged DHH; that post got 87K views. Windows, .NET and Linux port authors all linked from the README.

October "AI clones Adobe" wave (inferred). PhotoCraft launched 09-30 and around Oct 8 it was covered by OMG Ubuntu, AppleInsider, Gizmodo and Engadget; 10-12 there was an HN thread "Attack of the Vibe Coded Photoshop Clones" with 134 points. Compositor's single-day peak of 10-10 stars falls right between these events and an Arabic-language account's repost. The PhotoCraft articles I spot-checked don't mention Compositor, so it likely rode the broader "free Photoshop alternative" topic.

What didn't work: On Product Hunt someone launched it 09-19 ago and got 1 upvotes; no HN post about Compositor passed 5 points; on Reddit there's only a small r/FuckAdobe post with 14 upvotes. I saw no paid ads.

Why this one

• "Ditch Adobe" is a feeling designers have held for years. Comments and repost captions keep repeating "Adobe had it coming" and "cancel the whole Creative Cloud." This isn't just a topic for programmers, which is why it spread to Arabic, Spanish and Chinese tech accounts.
• One set of numbers everyone copies: 12MB vs 6,455MB, 0.6-second launch, $0. Nearly every repost and TikTok repeats those three figures.
• The author's background makes it credible. A former Apple designer, and the demo video looks like an Apple product film. Chinese reposts put "former Apple designer" in the first sentence to ease doubts that it's "just another toy."
• Lowest switching cost. To users it feels more like Photoshop than Affinity does (Affinity went free 2025 years ago too, but it needs a Canva account and works differently), feels more like native software than Photopea, and is easier to pick up than GIMP.
• It launched early. Two weeks ahead of PhotoCraft, it claimed the "first real Photoshop alternative of the AI era" spot.

Who it's competing with

Around it there are 1,833 forks and several Windows and Linux ports. The Shokunin Studio article says AI-written Photoshop clones now number "a dozen or more."

This table shows one thing: building an AI-era Photoshop alternative no longer has a barrier. PhotoCraft got 4 times the stars two weeks later, while most of the October copycats stalled at dozens. The difference isn't the code; it's whether the author is believable and what story they told at launch. Criticism has also arrived: HN and Shokunin focus on large-canvas performance, the brush engine and color management.

If it were you

Verdict: the Photoshop slot is full, so don't build the #13 Photoshop alternative. What you can copy is its playbook: take a big-company app everyone complains about over subscriptions, and ship a Mac-native, free, open-source version with the same workflow, launched with the same kind of post.

Who it suits: designers or developers who use a subscription app every day and know its feel, who can make a polished UI and a 30-second demo video, and who have a few thousand to tens of thousands of real followers on X or can find a big account willing to repost. Compositor's author is a former Apple designer with 23K followers, plus a repost from levelsio.

Who it's not for: If you only want another PS alternative (PhotoCraft has 77k stars, and October's copycat projects each sit at a few dozen), if you can't make a good-looking demo video (these projects spread almost entirely through that video), or if you're counting on Product Hunt or HN for traction (it's basically 0 on both).

How to do it:

• Pick the target. Look for Adobe apps that haven't yet been seriously challenged by a free native version, such as Lightroom's photo editing and library management, Illustrator's vector work, or simple After Effects motion graphics. You could also change platforms: Compositor is Mac-only, its README says it won't accept translations, and Windows and Linux currently have only third-party ports (inferred: a native Windows version and a Chinese-interface version both look unclaimed).
• Copy the original app's workflow: shortcuts, panel layout and drag-to-adjust values should all match, so people don't have to relearn anything.
• Keep it small and fast, and prepare a set of comparison numbers that can go straight into a headline: size, launch time, price.
• Use a file format an AI agent can read and write directly, to pick up reposts from the AI crowd.

How to get users:

• The launch post should cover only three things: I built this because I wanted to cancel X; here's how big, fast and cheap it is versus X; and a 30-second demo.
• After launch, post every version and every download milestone: one week, three weeks, one month.
• Proactively send your tweets and videos to "free alternative" and "GitHub gems" repost accounts in each language. Arabic, Spanish, Chinese and Indonesian accounts all reposted Compositor, and its biggest repost was in Arabic.
• List third-party ports in your README. Their posts will count toward your reach too.

How early is early: the sooner the better. The "AI clones Adobe" topic peaked in October, and by early November Compositor was gaining only 30 to 40 stars a day. Once every Adobe app has been cloned at least once, "first" stops being a selling point. At the current pace I'd estimate one to two months left (estimate).

How you could be wrong:

1. The app you pick already has a free native version with over a thousand stars before you start, which takes that spot;
2. Your launch post gets fewer than ~100K views in 48 hours, or fewer likes than half your bookmarks, meaning the story didn't land; don't prop it up by piling on features;
3. Compositor ships its own Windows version or Chinese interface, closing off the platform route;
4. Conversely, if Adobe raises prices again or changes its terms and it makes the news, that door reopens for a while, and that's the best time to launch.