storytold/photocraft

What it is

PhotoCraft is an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop written in pure Rust, delivered as a native app with a CPU reference compositor and a wgpu GPU compositor. It supports layers, masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, type, vectors, a brush engine and layered PSD files. Every action is a command, so the same engine can be driven from the UI, a CLI, a JSON control channel or an MCP server. The project is in early alpha and is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work.

Who it's for

• Photoshop users who want a familiar, open-source, offline image editor
• Developers and AI-agent builders who want to script image editing through a CLI, JSON control channel or MCP server
• Rust developers interested in a document model, command engine and compositor architecture
• Contributors willing to test an early-alpha editor and file issues

Requirements

Setup

1. Build and run from source

   Clone the repository, then run the desktop app (optionally passing a PSD file) or the test suite.

   bashCopy

   git clone https://github.com/storytold/photocraft
   cd photocraft
   cargo run --release -p photocraft -- image.psd   # the desktop app
   cargo test --workspace                           # the test suite

2. Optional: build with Japanese fonts

   craft-fonts is an optional build input; without it PhotoCraft uses your system's CJK fonts.

   bashCopy

   git clone https://github.com/storytold/craft-fonts ../craft-fonts
   CRAFT_FONTS_DIR="$PWD/../craft-fonts" cargo run --release -p photocraft

3. Install the Linux Flatpak bundle

   The bundle needs the freedesktop runtime from Flathub, which flatpak offers to install.

   bashCopy

   flatpak install --user photocraft-<version>-linux-x86_64.flatpak   # or -linux-aarch64
   flatpak run ai.storyteller.photocraft

4. Install on FreeBSD 14 (x86_64)

   Install the runtime libraries, then unpack the release tarball into /usr/local.

   bashCopy

   pkg install libxkbcommon wayland libX11 libXcursor libXrandr libXi libxcb mesa-libs vulkan-loader gtk3 fontconfig freetype2 alsa-lib
   tar -xzf photocraft-<version>-freebsd-x86_64.tar.gz --strip-components 1 -C /usr/local
   photocraft

Examples

photocraft-cli run wave.psd \
  --cmd filter.sharpen.smartSharpen     --params '{"amount":80}' \
  --cmd layer.newAdjustmentLayer.curves --params '{"points":[[0,0],[64,48],[192,212],[255,255]]}' \
  --out wave-final.png

photocraft-cli batch --actions grade.json --in ./raw --out ./graded

photocraft-cli mcp

ditto -x -k photocraft-cli-<version>-macos-universal.zip .
spctl --assess --type install -vv photocraft-cli-<version>-macos-universal/photocraft-cli
# ... accepted, source=Notarized Developer ID

Pros & cons

Images