PhotoCraft: The Free, Open-Source Photoshop Alternative in Rust

Short answer: PhotoCraft is a free, open-source desktop image editor that rebuilds the Photoshop way of working – layers, masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, type, vectors and brushes – from scratch in the Rust programming language. It opens and saves real layered PSD files, runs offline without an account, and is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0. It comes from the team behind ArtCraft and lives on GitHub at storytold/photocraft.

PhotoCraft is not made by Adobe and is not affiliated with it. Its README calls it a "clean-room reimplementation": the code was written from public specifications and testing, not copied. That is why the name suddenly became a search in October 2026 – the repository passed roughly 38,800 GitHub stars and 5,600 forks (as shown on GitHub on October 10, 2026), and people want to know whether it is a real replacement.

Below is what it does, where it comes from, and what to check before you rely on it.

What PhotoCraft can do

The project's own feature list is long. The parts most people care about:

Familiar layout. Menus, panels, tools and shortcuts sit where Photoshop users expect them (for example ⌘J to duplicate a layer, ⇧⌘D to reselect). The README's pitch: "If you know Photoshop, you already know PhotoCraft."
Non-destructive editing. 16 adjustment layers – including Curves, Levels with a live histogram, Vibrance, Hue/Saturation, Black & White, Channel Mixer, Gradient Map, Selective Color and Color Lookup (.cube, .3dl, .look) – that you can mask, reorder and switch off without touching the original pixels.
Layer styles. Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Glows, Bevel & Emboss, Satin, Stroke and Color/Gradient/Pattern Overlay, live on any layer including text.
Selections. Marquees, lassos, Magic Wand, plus Quick Selection, Object Selection and Select Subject. The README says smart selection runs on your own machine, with no cloud and no account.
Type and vectors. Editable point and paragraph text, shape layers, the Pen tool, boolean shape operations and vector masks.
Filters with live preview. A wide set of blurs (including Tilt-Shift, Iris and Spin from a Blur Gallery), sharpening, noise reduction, distortions, Oil Paint, Lens Flare and more – and they can stay editable on smart objects.
53 tools in total, from Crop and Healing Brush to Content-Aware Move, Clone Stamp, Dodge and Burn.

Does PhotoCraft really open PSD files?

Yes – that is its main selling point. PSD support is a separate module written from Adobe's public file specification. The project reports that opening and re-saving keeps the render identical for 307 of the 309 files in the public psd-tools test set, and that anything it doesn't understand yet is carried over instead of dropped. A re-saved PSD is not byte-identical to the original, though, because PhotoCraft rewrites parts of the file.

Other formats listed in the README: PSB, layered TIFF, Paint.NET PDN (read), SVG, PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP, TGA, OpenEXR, HDR and its own .pcraft format. iPhone HEIC photos are read-only, and Affinity documents open read-only. Colour work covers RGB, Grayscale, CMYK and Lab at 8, 16 and 32 bits per channel, with ICC colour management and soft proofing.

Why it is fast

PhotoCraft is a native app, not a web page in a wrapper. It composites on the GPU through wgpu (Metal, Vulkan, DX12 or WebGPU), stores images in copy-on-write tiles and runs filters on all CPU cores. The README's own example: a radius-180 Gaussian blur on a 3.6-megapixel image in under a second. Those are the project's figures; independent benchmarks had not been published when we checked.

"Agent-ready": controlling it from scripts and AI

Every action in PhotoCraft is a command, so the same engine can be driven from the user interface, a command line, a JSON control channel or an MCP server. In practice that means an AI assistant or a script can open a file, add an adjustment layer and export – useful for batch work. All the screenshots in the README were rendered this way.

PhotoCraft and ArtCraft – how they relate

PhotoCraft is one of the "Crafting Apps" from the ArtCraft team: free, open-source creative tools written in Rust, each of which works on its own. ArtCraft itself is a different program – a desktop "IDE for artists" for AI image and video generation with 2D and 3D scene tools. If you came here from a search for ArtCraft, see our guide to ArtCraft on GitHub.

Be careful with the name: several unrelated phone apps on the App Store and Google Play are also called "PhotoCraft" (AI photo editors and filters), and there is a photo printing lab with a similar name. The open-source Photoshop alternative is the one on GitHub under storytold/photocraft and on getartcraft.com.

How to try PhotoCraft

Open the repository github.com/storytold/photocraft or the PhotoCraft page on getartcraft.com.
Download a build from the project's Downloads / Releases section, or build it yourself from source with Rust (the repo includes the Cargo workspace and build scripts).
Open a copy of an existing PSD first, not your only original, and check that layers, text and effects look right.
Learn the shortcuts you already know – most of them carry over.

Should you switch from Photoshop?

That depends on your work. PhotoCraft covers the everyday core – layers, masks, adjustment layers, styles, selections, type, filters, PSD round trips – for free and offline. What to check before switching:

Your plugins and actions. Third-party Photoshop plugins will not run. PhotoCraft has its own plugin example and its own Actions.
Generative features. PhotoCraft is an image editor; the AI generation side of the ArtCraft family is in ArtCraft, not here.
Print and colour-critical work. CMYK and ICC support exist, but test your own print pipeline before a client job.
Team files. PSDs round-trip well in the project's tests, yet re-saved files are rewritten – keep originals when collaborating.

For hobbyists, students and anyone who just needs a capable layered editor without a subscription, it is worth a try today.

FAQ

Is PhotoCraft free? Yes. It is open source under MIT or Apache-2.0 (your choice), with no account required.

Is PhotoCraft made by Adobe? No. It is an independent, clean-room reimplementation by the ArtCraft team and contributors.

Does PhotoCraft work offline? Yes. The README describes it as "open source, offline, and yours", and smart selection runs locally.

Can PhotoCraft open my PSD files? Yes, layered PSD and PSB files open and save. In the project's tests 307 of 309 sample files re-render identically after saving.

Is PhotoCraft the same as the PhotoCraft AI apps on my phone? No. Those are unrelated mobile apps that share the name.

What is PhotoCraft written in? Rust, with a GPU compositor on wgpu – no Electron or web view.