PhotoCraft 0.17.0

PhotoCraft is a free, open-source photo editor built to look and work like Photoshop, layers, masks and all.

It opens and saves layered PSD files, runs offline, and asks for no account or subscription.

It is also young software in early alpha, so it is well worth a try but not yet something to bet a deadline on.

What PhotoCraft Actually Is

PhotoCraft is a clean-room remake of Photoshop, which means it copies how Photoshop works without using any of Adobe's code. The menus, panels and shortcuts will feel familiar if you have used Adobe's editor.

It comes from the ArtCraft project, written in the Rust programming language and released under the MIT or Apache 2.0 licence. ArtCraft has said that AI agents wrote much of the code, and our news piece AI Copied Photoshop in Days - Finishing It Is the Hard Part explains what that means for quality.

What You Can Do With It

• Layers and masks. Adjustment layers, layer styles and masks let you change part of a picture without touching the original.
• Painting and retouching. Brushes, gradients, selections and retouching tools cover everyday photo fixes.
• Text and shapes. Editable type and vector shapes make it handy for thumbnails, banners and social posts.
• Live filter previews. Filters show their effect on the canvas while you adjust them.

A good first test is a simple thumbnail: open a photo, crop it, add a heading and export a copy. If that goes smoothly, try one of your real layered files next.

Opening Photoshop and Other Editors' Files

PhotoCraft reads and writes PSD and the larger PSB format, plus layered TIFF and OpenRaster. It can also open files from GIMP (XCF), Krita (KRA) and Paint.NET, and it has its own .pcraft project format.

PSD support is strong for an alpha but not perfect, so a complex Photoshop file may not look exactly the same. Keep the original and compare before you share anything.

Everyday formats are covered too: JPEG, PNG, WebP, TIFF and more. HEIC photos open but cannot be saved, and AVIF can be saved but not opened - if Windows itself will not show your iPhone photos, HEIF Image Extensions fixes that separately.

What Is New in PhotoCraft 0.17.0

Version 0.17.0 arrived on 28 October 2026 with work from 19 first-time contributors. The main changes:

• Artboards. A new document can start as an artboard, and Artboard from Layers now takes a custom size.
• Type. Text on a path follows the path when you edit it, and the font menu gains favourites and recent fonts.
• Selections. Optional local models help pick out a subject or an object, all on your own PC.
• Camera Raw. A new Calibration panel, and preview processing now runs on the graphics card.
• Speed. PSD and .pcraft files save faster, and Content-Aware Scale is quicker.
• Fixes and safety. Content-Aware Fill keeps pixels hidden by a non-deleting crop, PSD and TIFF handling improves, and damaged or oversized files are refused rather than crashing the app.
• Updates. PhotoCraft can now prompt you at startup when a new version is out.

The full list is in the PhotoCraft 0.17.0 release notes.

Which File to Download

The project also offers a browser build that runs in any modern web browser, though you have to host it yourself. For most people the desktop download is the easier route.

Who Should Wait Before Switching

PhotoCraft is moving fast, and fast-moving alpha software can crash or save a file differently from one version to the next. Early testers have also reported lag with very large brushes and heavy memory use on big PSD files.

If clients send you Photoshop files and expect them back untouched, keep Photoshop for that work. If you are curious, on a budget or tired of subscriptions, PhotoCraft is worth an afternoon.

Free Alternatives Worth Knowing

• GIMP is the long-standing free editor - less Photoshop-like, but mature and stable.
• Photon Studio is another new free editor with a Photoshop-style layout.
• darktable and RawTherapee are better picks for developing camera RAW photos.

To simply view or batch-convert pictures rather than edit them, XnView and XnConvert are lighter tools for the job.

Just want to wipe a stray object out of a holiday photo? Our guide to removing unwanted objects from photos on Windows 11 for free covers the quick options.

The Rest of the Craft Family

PhotoCraft is one of several free ArtCraft apps hosted here:

• LightCraft for your photo library and RAW development.
• VectorCraft for vector illustration.
• FilmCraft for video editing.
• EffectCraft for motion graphics.
• PdfCraft for reading and organising PDFs.
• SoundCraft for recording, editing and mixing audio.
• WordCraft for writing and editing Word documents.

The background story is in our first look at the AI-built Adobe alternatives.

Quick questions

More editors and viewers are in our Graphics section.

Download PhotoCraft 0.17.0 and try it on a copy of one of your images, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.