PhotoCraft, the Free Photoshop Alternative: What Works Now

A free Photoshop alternative arrives every year and most of them are a browser tab with a crop tool. PhotoCraft is different in two ways. It is a native desktop app that opens and saves real PSD files, and it was written in about a month by one developer directing an AI model. Both facts matter, and the second one explains most of what is good and bad about it.

This guide is built from the project's own README, its GitHub release history, the ArtCraft site, and the one detailed hands-on test published so far, by Creative Bloq on 13 October 2026. We have not installed it ourselves, so where a claim is the developer's, the text says so.

What PhotoCraft is

PhotoCraft is the free Photoshop alternative among the seven Craft apps from ArtCraft, a company run by Brandon Thomas, a former CEO of Storyteller.ai. The README calls it "an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop, rebuilt in pure Rust", and the clean-room line is specific: "implemented from public specs and observed behaviour only", with no Adobe code, icons or presets. Thomas told PetaPixel the apps were built with Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 and that he is "not a casual vibe coder", having used Rust for a decade.

The repository was created on 30 September 2026. By 14 October it had 59,645 stars, the most of any app in the suite, and its latest release, version 0.8.2, went out on 12 October. The ArtCraft apps page labels it "Early alpha".

What it can do, per the README

The feature list is long for a two-week-old project. The README counts 67 tools, including selection, healing, brush, type and vector tools; 16 adjustment layers; layers, masks, layer styles and smart objects; 27 Photoshop blend modes plus six borrowed from Paint.NET; filters with live preview; and RGB, Grayscale, CMYK and Lab at 8, 16 and 32 bits per channel with ICC colour management. Over 500 commands sit in one registry and the project reports more than 1,700 tests.

The README also says "every Photoshop menu item is wired to a command", then adds the caveat that matters: this "measures wiring, not behaviour". A menu item that exists is not a feature that works the way Photoshop's does.

File formats

This is where PhotoCraft earns the word "alternative". PSD and PSB open and save, and the README reports that re-saving "keeps the render of 307 of the 309 psd-tools test files". Layered TIFF and OpenRaster read and write; Paint.NET and Krita files read; flat PNG, JPEG, TIFF, WebP, GIF, BMP, OpenEXR and HDR all work. Affinity documents open read-only. HEIC is read-only, AVIF is write-only behind an optional build flag, and the README says AVIF decoding and JPEG XL are unavailable. RAW camera files are not mentioned; that is LightCraft's job.

What the hands-on test found

Creative Bloq's Joe Foley ran PhotoCraft on a Windows PC with an RTX 5070. It had, in his words, no compatibility problems: PSD, TIFF, JPG and PNG opened and saved, though HEIC reportedly did not. The layout was familiar, with adjustment layers, masks, blend modes and filters where a Photoshop user expects them.

The problems were in the details. Automatic selection was less precise than Photoshop's. Content-aware fill and spot healing were "only just usable". Filters would not preview, so amounts had to be guessed. And there is no generative AI at all: no Generative Fill, no text-to-image. His conclusion for the suite as a whole was that it is "not currently stable or complete enough to be able to replace existing software", while being impressive for its size and origin.

What the developer says is missing

The README does not hide the gaps. It states that PhotoCraft "is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work" and names the biggest holes as "AI/generative features, 15 missing tools, depth in typography and pro workflows, and plug-in compatibility". Photoshop plug-ins do not run. On Linux under Wayland, files dropped on the window do not open yet.

For readers whose Photoshop use is generative, which is a growing share, the honest comparison is not with PhotoCraft but with Adobe Firefly, which is where Adobe's generative work lives and which has a free tier of its own.

Price, and the pricing page that confuses people

PhotoCraft costs nothing. It is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0, and the apps page offers installers for macOS, Windows, Linux and a browser build, plus a launcher that installs the whole suite. The confusion comes from ArtCraft's pricing page, which lists Basic at $8 a month billed yearly, Pro at $28 and Max at $48 with a limited-time 20% off. Those plans buy generative credits for ArtCraft's separate AI image and video studio. The page's own footnote says ArtCraft "can be used without paying for a subscription", and nothing on it ties the Craft desktop apps to a plan.

Download it from the right place

Because the project became popular in days, lookalike sites have appeared offering downloads under similar names. The official sources are the GitHub organisation at github.com/storytold and getartcraft.com. Anything else is somebody else's build. Creative Bloq reported that installation through the ArtCraft installer was straightforward and required no account.

How this free Photoshop alternative compares with GIMP and Photopea

GIMP is the long-standing free, open-source editor; it is mature and stable and its interface is not Photoshop's. Photopea runs in a browser, opens PSDs and funds itself with ads. Krita is built for painting. Affinity Photo is a one-time purchase rather than free. PhotoCraft's pitch against all of them is Photoshop's own layout and shortcuts in a 50 MB native app, which is a real advantage for anyone retrained by years of Adobe muscle memory, and a real risk while the behaviour behind those menus is still being filled in. For light edits, our AI photo editing guide covers what the hosted tools do free, and Canva remains the easier route for social graphics.

Who should try it

Anyone curious about a free Photoshop alternative, on a machine where an alpha crashing costs nothing. Linux users who have never had a native Photoshop-layout editor. Developers, because the app exposes every command through a CLI, a JSON channel and an MCP server, so an agent such as Claude can drive it, which is a feature Photoshop does not have. Not yet: anyone with a deadline, a client file, or a workflow that depends on plug-ins or generative fill.

The rest of the suite

The same developer shipped six more apps: VectorCraft for Illustrator, FilmCraft for Premiere Pro, LightCraft for Lightroom, EffectCraft for After Effects, DesignCraft for InDesign and PdfCraft for Acrobat Pro. The model that wrote them is reviewed at Claude, and Anthropic's own account of agent-scale coding is in our report on Scion replacing git.

FAQ

Is PhotoCraft free?

Yes. It is open source under MIT or Apache-2.0 with installers for macOS, Windows and Linux and a browser build. ArtCraft's paid plans, from $8 a month billed yearly, buy generative credits for a separate AI studio and are not needed to run PhotoCraft.

Can PhotoCraft open PSD files?

Yes, including PSB. The README reports its re-save keeps the render of 307 of 309 files in the psd-tools test set, and Creative Bloq's test opened and saved PSD, TIFF, JPG and PNG without compatibility problems.

Does PhotoCraft have generative fill?

No. The README lists AI and generative features as the biggest gap, and Creative Bloq confirmed there are none. For generative editing, Adobe Firefly's free tier or Photoshop itself is still the route.

Is it safe to install?

Install only from github.com/storytold or getartcraft.com; copycat download sites exist. It is alpha software, so expect bugs. Creative Bloq reported a straightforward install with no account required and no crashes during its test.

Who made PhotoCraft?

Brandon Thomas's company ArtCraft, which says the code was written with Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 as a clean-room reimplementation from public documentation. The developer has said he was motivated by Adobe's cancellation fees.