Is there an open source Photoshop? Yes, and the most ambitious attempt right now is PhotoCraft: an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop, rebuilt from scratch in pure Rust. It opens real PSD files with layers, masks, and adjustments intact, ships 67 familiar tools, runs natively on macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and the web, and it is completely free and offline.
The project comes from ArtCraft, an open source community of artists, and lives at github.com/storytold/photocraft. In under three weeks since its creation on September 30, 2026, it collected more than 67,000 stars and 11,800 forks, with code pushed as recently as yesterday. Watch the 28-second repo signal for the quick version.
Key Takeaways
PhotoCraft (github.com/storytold/photocraft) is an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop written entirely in Rust.
It loads real PSD files (307 of 309 test files re-save with identical renders), with layers, masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, type, vectors, and brushes.
Native GPU-accelerated app for macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and web. No Electron, fully offline.
Dual-licensed MIT/Apache-2.0. Made by the ArtCraft open source artist community.
Status: early alpha. The team is honest that it is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work.
67,385 stars and 11,854 forks as of October 19, 2026, less than three weeks after creation.
What Is PhotoCraft?
PhotoCraft is the flagship app of ArtCraft, a community of digital, generative, music, and game artists building open source creative tools. The project's own description is refreshingly direct: "Image editing; an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop, rebuilt in pure Rust."
"Clean-room" is doing important work in that sentence. It means the app was implemented from public specifications and observed behavior only, with no proprietary Adobe code, shaders, or assets. Layers, masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, type, vectors, brushes, and real PSD files, in a native app written entirely in Rust. Open source, offline, and yours.
If you know Photoshop, the learning curve is deliberately near zero: the menus, shortcuts, panels, and tools are where your hands expect them, from ⌘J to ⇧⌘D.
The Adobe-Shaped Hole It Fills
Every few years, Adobe's subscription pricing pushes a wave of creators to look for an exit. The established open source answers, GIMP and Krita, are powerful but carry decades-old interfaces and workflows that never quite matched Photoshop muscle memory. PhotoCraft attacks the gap differently: instead of building another image editor with its own philosophy, it rebuilds the Photoshop experience itself, minus the subscription and the cloud.
That framing explains the star velocity. More than 67,000 stars in under three weeks puts PhotoCraft among the fastest-growing open source creative tools in recent memory, and the repository was still being pushed daily as of October 18, 2026.
Standout Features
67 tools, familiar by design. Move, marquee, lasso, Object Selection, Quick Selection, Magic Wand, Crop, Eyedropper, Healing Brush, Patch, Clone Stamp, Brush, Mixer Brush, Eraser, Gradient, Blur, Sharpen, Smudge, Dodge, Burn, Pen and Curvature Pen tools, Horizontal and Vertical Type, shape tools, Hand, Rotate View, Zoom, and more.
Real PSD files, without compromise. PhotoCraft's PSD support is a standalone crate written from Adobe's public specification and tested against real-world files. Opening and re-saving a document renders identically for 307 of the 309 files in the psd-tools test set. Anything the app does not model yet is carried over instead of being dropped, so round-tripping through PhotoCraft does not silently destroy your work.
A real brush engine. Shape Dynamics, Scattering, Texture, Dual Brush, Color Dynamics, Transfer, Brush Pose, Wet Edges, Build-up and Smoothing, driven by pen pressure, tilt, rotation, and direction. Brush presets, Define Brush from Selection, and deterministic, replayable strokes.
Layers done properly. Groups, clipping masks, pixel and vector masks, fill layers, adjustment layers, live smart objects with smart filters, 27 Photoshop blend modes plus six Paint.NET variants, alpha channels, Quick Mask, and full history with a History Brush.
Serious color. RGB, Grayscale, CMYK, and Lab documents at 8, 16, and 32 bits per channel, with real ICC color management written in pure Rust: embedded profiles, soft proofing, and Gamut Warning on the GPU.
A format polyglot. Beyond PSD and PSB: layered TIFF, Paint.NET PDN3, OpenRaster (for Krita, MyPaint, and GIMP), Krita .kra files, SVG as shape layers, flat PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, OpenEXR, and Affinity documents opened read-only, plus the native `.pcraft` format.
Under the Hood: Pure Rust Engineering
PhotoCraft is a 100% Rust codebase organized as 24 crates, and the engineering choices read like a wishlist:
Two compositors: a CPU compositor serves as the reference oracle, and a wgpu compositor (Metal, Vulkan, DX12, WebGPU) puts the canvas on the GPU. They are tested against each other.
Copy-on-write tiles: 256² sparse tiles make undo cheap and huge canvases light.
Runs in the browser: the whole engine and UI compile to WebAssembly.
Multithreaded filters: a radius-180 Gaussian blur on a 3.6 MP image takes under a second.
Tested: more than 1,700 tests, including PSD round trips and compositor oracles.
Built for Agents
Here is the twist that makes PhotoCraft a 2026 project rather than a 2006 one: every menu item, tool, and dialog runs a command from one registry of 500+ commands. The UI, the CLI, the JSON control channel, and the MCP server all call the same commands, so anything you can click, a script or an AI agent can do too. Headless batch editing, scripted workflows, and agent-driven retouching are first-class citizens, not plugins.
Honest Caveats
The team deserves credit for candor. PhotoCraft is in early alpha, and the README states plainly that it is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work. The biggest gaps: AI and generative features, 15 missing tools, depth in typography and pro workflows, and plug-in compatibility. Every Photoshop menu item is wired to a command, but the team notes that measures wiring, not behavior. Expect rough edges.
How It Compares
– | PhotoCraft | Photoshop | GIMP | Krita |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Price | Free, open source | Subscription | Free, open source | Free, open source |
License | MIT / Apache-2.0 | Proprietary | GPL | GPL |
PSD support | 307/309 test files round-trip identically | Native | Partial (via plugin) | Good |
Offline | Fully | Requires sign-in | Fully | Fully |
Photoshop UI familiarity | Deliberate clone | N/A | Different paradigm | Different paradigm |
Maturity | Early alpha | Industry standard | 25+ years | 20+ years |
Getting Started
Installers for macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and the web are attached to each GitHub release. On Linux you can pick an AppImage, `.deb`, `.rpm`, tarball, or Flatpak. Or build from source:
```sh git clone https://github.com/storytold/photocraft cd photocraft cargo run --release -p photocraft -- image.psd ```
New contributors, including AI agents, are pointed at `AGENTS.md` first. The community hangs out on Discord.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is PhotoCraft really open source?
Yes. It is dual-licensed MIT/Apache-2.0, the repository is public at github.com/storytold/photocraft, and it was implemented clean-room from public specifications with no proprietary Adobe code.
Can PhotoCraft replace Photoshop today?
Not yet for daily professional work, by the team's own assessment. It is in early alpha: much of Photoshop's feature surface exists, but AI/generative features, 15 tools, typography depth, and plug-in compatibility are still missing. It is already usable for many editing tasks and improving fast.
Does it open real PSD files?
Yes. It opens, edits, and saves layered Photoshop documents, and re-saving keeps the render identical for 307 of 309 files in the psd-tools test corpus. Data it does not model yet is carried over rather than dropped.
What does "clean-room" mean here?
The app was written from Adobe's public file-format specification and observed behavior only, without copying proprietary code, shaders, or assets. That is what makes an open source Photoshop reimplementation legally viable.
Who makes PhotoCraft?
ArtCraft, an open source community of artists (digital, generative, music, games) building creative tools. The code lives under the storytold GitHub organization.
Is it actually free, or is there a catch?
No catch on the software: it is free, offline, and yours under MIT/Apache-2.0. There is no account, no cloud, and no subscription.
Conclusion
PhotoCraft is the most credible answer yet to the perennial question "is there an open source Photoshop?" It does not try to out-Photoshop Photoshop on philosophy; it rebuilds the familiar experience in pure Rust, opens real PSDs, runs everywhere including the browser, and lets AI agents drive it. Early alpha means you should not cancel your subscription today, but with 67,000 stars in three weeks and daily development, this is the Adobe open source alternative to watch. See it in action in the 28-second repo signal.