PhotoCraft has drawn more than 21,000 stars on GitHub since its repository went public, according to the project's README. The developers describe it as "an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust."
The application supports layers, masks, adjustment tools, type and vector editing, and native GPU compositing across Metal, Vulkan, DX12 and WebGPU, the README says. It reads and writes Photoshop's PSD file format, with 307 of 309 test files rendering identically in round-trip tests, according to the project.
The project builds in 34 editing tools and exposes more than 500 commands through its user interface, a command-line interface, a JSON control layer and the Model Context Protocol, aimed at letting AI agents drive the software directly, the README says. It runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and in the browser through WebAssembly.
PhotoCraft is dual-licensed under MIT and Apache 2.0. Its own documentation calls the project "early alpha" and says it "is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work," citing missing AI and generative features, incomplete typography tools and limited plugin compatibility.
A from-scratch Photoshop alternative that is upfront about being early alpha, and that exposes its full command set to agents over MCP from day one, is a bet that the next wave of image editing tools gets built for AI-driven workflows first, not bolted on later.