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ArtCraft AI Guide

PhotoCraft · by the ArtCraft team

PhotoCraft: a free, open-source Photoshop alternative

PhotoCraft rebuilds the way Photoshop works in pure Rust: layers, masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, type and real PSD files. Native, offline, and no account needed.

Download freeGitHub
  • Early alpha
  • v0.7.0
  • GitHub ★ 45.5k
  • MIT / Apache-2.0
  • Windows · macOS · Linux · FreeBSD · Web

If you know Photoshop, you already know PhotoCraft

Familiar by design

Menus, shortcuts, panels and tools sit where your hands expect them, from ⌘J to ⇧⌘D. Choose a dark Pro theme, airy Studio themes or a Classic look.

Curves adjustment layer in PhotoCraft’s Properties panel showing an S-curve over the image histogram

Adjustment layers you can change later

16 adjustment layers, including per-channel Curves, Levels with a live histogram, Black & White, Channel Mixer, Selective Color and LUTs. Your original pixels never change.

Selections and masks

Marquees, lassos and the Magic Wand, plus Quick Selection, Object Selection and Select Subject running on your machine. Turn any selection into a layer mask.

PhotoCraft Layer Style dialog with Drop Shadow settings and Stroke enabled on a type layer

Layer styles and type

Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Glow, Bevel & Emboss, Stroke and overlays stay live, on any layer. Type layers stay editable and round-trip through PSD.

Twirl filter dialog with live canvas preview applied to Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog in PhotoCraft

Filters with live preview

Blur Gallery, sharpening, Reduce Noise, distortions, Stylize and Render filters all preview on the canvas, and stay editable on a smart object.

A layered PSD reopened in PhotoCraft with type, shape and masked adjustment layers in the Layers panel

Real PSD files

Open, edit and save layered PSD and PSB documents. In the project’s tests, re-saving keeps the render of 307 of the 309 psd-tools test files.

Built for AI agents

Every menu item, tool and dialog in PhotoCraft runs a command from one registry of 500+ commands. The UI, the CLI, a JSON control channel and an MCP server all call the same commands, so anything you can click, a script or an AI agent can do too.

CLI example: open, sharpen, add Curves, export

photocraft-cli run photo.psd \
  --cmd filter.sharpen.smartSharpen --params '{"amount":80}' \
  --cmd layer.newAdjustmentLayer.curves \
  --out photo-final.png

photocraft-cli mcp   # let an AI agent drive it

Does PhotoCraft have AI?

PhotoCraft has no generative AI like Generative Fill yet. Its smart selections, Remove tool and Content-Aware run on your machine and never upload your image. For AI images and video, pair it with the same team’s ArtCraft AI studio, or let your own AI agent drive PhotoCraft over MCP.

ArtCraft AI

How ready is it?

The project’s own assessment against Photoshop 2026 (2026-10-10, measured on v0.6.0).

Feature breadth (does each Photoshop feature exist?)~76%
Ready for someone who uses core features only~61%
Ready for professional daily work~45%

Biggest gaps: generative AI, 15 missing tools, depth in type and pro workflows, plug-in compatibility, and speed and stability on big files.

Read the full assessment

A good fit today

  • Everyday photo edits, graphics and learning
  • Linux and FreeBSD users
  • Creators who want out of a subscription
  • Developers batch-editing images with AI agents

Better to wait

  • Pro workflows built on Photoshop plug-ins or action files
  • Teams swapping PSDs with Photoshop users all day
  • Anyone who relies on Generative Fill and other AI tools

Get started

Install on WindowsInstall on MacInstall on Linux
Our hands-on reviewPhotoCraft vs PhotoshopTutorialsGitHub guide

PhotoCraft questions

How are PhotoCraft and ArtCraft related?
PhotoCraft is one of the ArtCraft team’s crafting apps, focused on image editing. ArtCraft is the same team’s AI image and video studio. Both are open source and work independently.
Is PhotoCraft open source? Where is the code?
Yes, dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0. The code is at github.com/storytold/photocraft.
Can I change the interface language?
Yes. The interface is translated into many languages, including fully translated Simplified Chinese, and the language can be switched in Preferences without a restart.
Where is the web version?
Each release ships a static WebAssembly build that you can host on your own server and run in the browser.

Based on PhotoCraft 0.7.0 · October 11, 2026

Artworks shown: Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field with Cypresses (1889, The Met, CC0); Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (c. 1660, Rijksmuseum); Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (c. 1817); The Blue Marble (NASA, 1972); Pillars of Creation (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), 2014). All public domain. Screenshots: PhotoCraft 0.7.0, captured by ArtCraft AI Guide.