What is PhotoCraft
PhotoCraft is an open-source image editor written in pure Rust. This page explains the project, its license and the team.
PhotoCraft is a clean-room, open-source image editor that sets out to cover the same ground as Adobe Photoshop: layers, masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, type, vectors and brushes, all backed by real PSD read and write support. It is written entirely in Rust, and it is one of the free Crafting Apps from the ArtCraft team, led by author Brandon Thomas.
The editor targets macOS, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD as a native application, and it also compiles to WebAssembly so it can run in a browser. It is not an Electron wrapper: the compositor talks to the GPU through wgpu, across Metal, Vulkan, DX12 and WebGPU.
This site is an independent guide to that project. The authoritative source for anything about PhotoCraft is the project itself, so treat the facts here as a starting point and check the repository before you rely on a detail.
Project at a glance
- Project
- PhotoCraft, an open-source image editor
- Team
- ArtCraft, led by author Brandon Thomas
- License
- MIT or Apache-2.0, at your option
- Written in
- Rust, with no Electron and no web view
- Platforms
- macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and WebAssembly
- Formats
- PSD, PSB, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, WebP, OpenEXR, HDR, AVIF and .pcraft
- Automation
- A headless CLI, a JSON control channel and an MCP server
- Status
- Early alpha
The MIT and Apache-2.0 dual license, in plain terms
PhotoCraft ships under two permissive licenses. You choose whichever one fits your situation, and either way the code stays free to use.
MIT
A short, permissive license with very few conditions attached.
- Reuse the code in commercial or closed-source products.
- Modify it and redistribute your own version.
- Keep the copyright notice and the license text with the code.
Apache-2.0
Also permissive, with one meaningful addition: an explicit patent grant.
- The same freedom to use, modify and redistribute.
- An express grant of patent rights from contributors to users.
- A requirement to state which files you changed.
PhotoCraft ships under a dual license, which means you choose the one that fits your situation rather than accepting a single fixed set of terms. For someone using the editor, that choice rarely matters in daily work: both licenses let you run it freely, including at a company. For a contributor, it is the usual open-source bargain, you keep your copyright and the project gets to use your contribution under the same terms.
The ArtCraft name and wordmark are trademarks and sit outside the code license. Forks and modified builds are expected to remove them, so the brand stays attached to the team's own releases.
What clean-room actually means
Clean-room means PhotoCraft was written from public specifications and observed behaviour only, without copying proprietary code, shaders or assets. That matters in two directions at once.
Legally, it keeps the project clear of claims that would come from reusing someone else's implementation. Technically, it forces every subsystem to be understood rather than borrowed, which is why the layer stack, the PSD parser and the two compositors are all first-class parts of the codebase instead of dependencies smuggled in from elsewhere.
The project is engine first: a pure-data document model and a command registry sit underneath a thin UI, and the crate boundaries are enforced at build time. A CPU compositor acts as the reference oracle while a wgpu compositor draws on the GPU, and the two are tested against each other. Copy-on-write 256 by 256 sparse tiles keep undo cheap and large canvases light.
- 24
- crates in the workspace, layered and enforced at build time
- 1,700+
- tests covering round trips, compositors and depths
- 307 of 309
- psd-tools files keep their render after a re-save
The Crafting Apps behind it
PhotoCraft is one of a family of free, open-source creative tools from the ArtCraft team. Each one is written from scratch in Rust and can stand on its own.
PhotoCraft
Image editing: layers, masks, type and real PSD files
VectorCraft
Vector illustration
FilmCraft
Video editing, colour and sound
LightCraft
Photo library and raw development
EffectCraft
Motion graphics and visual effects
DesignCraft
Page layout and publishing
PdfCraft
Reading, organizing and protecting PDFs
The Crafting Apps share a philosophy: clean-room, pure Rust, native on the desktop, available in the browser through WebAssembly, and drivable by agents. PhotoCraft is the image editor in that family, not a standalone experiment.
It is early alpha, and that matters
The team labels PhotoCraft as early alpha and is direct about what that means. Much of Photoshop's feature surface exists in some form, but the project is not yet a replacement for daily professional work. The stated gaps include AI and generative features, roughly twenty missing tools, depth in typography and professional workflows, and plug-in compatibility.
Every Photoshop menu item is wired to a command, but that measures wiring rather than behaviour. If you are evaluating PhotoCraft for real work, read that honestly: it is promising for exploration and for people who want to follow and shape an open-source editor, and it is not yet the tool you would drop into a paid production pipeline without checking its behaviour yourself.
Editorial note and independence
This website is an independent guide to PhotoCraft. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by the PhotoCraft project or the ArtCraft team, and it does not speak on their behalf. All product names, logos and trademarks, including Adobe and Photoshop, belong to their respective owners.
We describe how the editor works and where it stands, but we are not the people building it. For anything authoritative, from release notes to license text, go straight to the official repository and the project's own site.
The product screenshots and the application icon on this site are taken from the official repository and reused under the project's MIT or Apache-2.0 license. The ArtCraft name, wordmark and the PhotoCraft brand stay with the ArtCraft team.
How this guide is written
Facts on this site are checked against the official repository and the ArtCraft website before they are published, and they are dated so you can see how current they are. Where something is unverifiable, or still changing, we say so in plain language rather than guess. If you spot an error, a stale number or a broken command, tell us and we will correct it.
Corrections and questions go to hello@photocraft.space
Put the guide to work
Follow the walkthrough to build the editor and save your first layered document, or browse what it can do first.