PhotoCraft: What It Is, How to Install It, and the AI Route | CircleAIDance

PhotoCraft is a free, open-source image editor from the ArtCraft team: a clean-room rebuild of a professional, layer-based photo editor, written in Rust and currently in early alpha. CircleAIDance is not affiliated with PhotoCraft or ArtCraft, and this page is not a review of it — it collects what the project's own site and repository state about it, points only at their official download pages, and describes the browser-based AI route we publish for photo edits.

What is PhotoCraft?

PhotoCraft is a desktop-class image editor built around what a layered workflow needs: layers, masks, 16 adjustment layers, layer styles, live type, vectors, and brushes, with real layered PSD and PSB documents that open, edit, and save. It renders on a native GPU canvas — Metal on macOS, Vulkan on Linux, DirectX 12 on Windows, WebGPU in the browser build — with no Electron and no embedded web view. It ships for macOS, Windows, Linux (AppImage, Flatpak, .deb, .rpm, or tarball), FreeBSD, and the browser, under an MIT / Apache-2.0 dual license.

The selection tools run on your machine rather than a server — Magic Wand, Quick Selection, Object Selection, Select Subject, and Select and Mask, with no cloud round-trip — and so does everything else: the document never leaves your computer. The project's own summary is one line: open source, offline, and yours.

One clarification matters if you arrived searching for "PhotoCraft AI": PhotoCraft is an editor, not a generator. There is no prompt box and no generative fill. Its own README lists AI/generative features as the first of its biggest gaps — alongside 15 missing tools, depth in typography and professional workflows, and plug-in compatibility — and states plainly that it "is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work." That honesty is worth taking at face value when you decide where it fits.

Where to download PhotoCraft (official)

There are two official sources, and they are the only ones this page will send you to:

• The PhotoCraft page on getartcraft.com — the project's recommended route. It offers the ArtCraft Launcher (version 0.3.2 at the time of writing), which installs PhotoCraft and the other Craft apps from one place, picks the right build for your computer, and keeps them updated, or a standalone download for PhotoCraft alone (version 0.7.0 at the time of writing).
• The project's GitHub releases — for a specific build or format. Every installer is attached to a release, with checksums in SHA256SUMS.txt.

Standalone builds cover a universal macOS disk image, 64-bit, 32-bit, and ARM64 Windows installers and portables, Linux in AppImage, Flatpak, .deb, .rpm, or tarball form, and a FreeBSD tarball. PhotoCraft is free and open source: if a page you found asks you to pay for it, or bundles it into a paid "download manager", that page is not the project.

Two practical notes from the project's own instructions: on Linux under Wayland, drag-and-drop into the window does not work yet (winit 0.30 has no Wayland drag-and-drop), so use File › Open — or start the app under XWayland if you want the drag. And the build you install is an alpha, so install it as a second editor, not as the only one on a deadline.

PhotoCraft and Photoshop: where it stands

The project describes itself as a clean-room reimplementation of Photoshop — built from public documentation and observed behaviour, never from Adobe's code, icons, or presets. What that buys you, and where the distance still is:

• What carries over. The menus, shortcuts, panels, and tools sit where your hands expect them, from ⌘J to ⇧⌘D. PSD and PSB round trips are a first-class goal — the project publishes its round-trip measurements against public PSD test corpora and rewrites the composite, layer records, and image resources rather than flattening them. Adjustment layers stay live; layer styles apply to type; 8-, 16-, and 32-bit documents work in RGB, CMYK, Lab, and Grayscale with ICC colour management and soft proofing.
• Where it stands today. Early alpha. The gaps the project names itself: AI/generative features, 15 missing tools, typography and pro-workflow depth, and no plug-in compatibility. Its parity checklist measures wiring, not behaviour, by its own description. It is a serious project moving fast — and it is not yet the editor you cancel a subscription for.

So the honest split: if your work is layered editing on your own machine and you want to try a fast native editor with no subscription, PhotoCraft is worth an install. If you need generative AI inside the edit — or you do not want to install anything at all — that is a different tool, and it is the one below.

The AI route: photo edits in the browser

If what you wanted was AI image editing, CircleAIDance publishes it without an install: image-to-image runs in the browser. Bring one to ten reference images — Nano Banana 2.1 accepts up to ten, with output up to 4K — and describe the change you want in plain language: restyle a shot, place a product in a new scene, or rework lighting and background while keeping the subject recognisable.

Two things we state as plainly as the price: there is no free tier — every run bills per image, and the composer shows the exact credit estimate before the run starts — and the rates differ by model, so check the model page before you commit. Costs and the full model line-up: the Nano Banana 2.1 model page and pricing.

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