PhotoCraft vs Photoshop: what matches and what is missing

PhotoCraft describes itself as "an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop, rebuilt in pure Rust." This page compares the two using only what the PhotoCraft project itself publishes. We haven't run any benchmarks of our own.

At a glance

	PhotoCraft 0.7.0	Adobe Photoshop
License	MIT OR Apache-2.0, open source	Proprietary
Price	Free	Subscription
Platforms	macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, web (WebAssembly)	macOS, Windows (desktop)
Maturity	Early alpha (per the project)	Mature

Where PhotoCraft matches the Photoshop workflow

According to its README, PhotoCraft 0.7.0 includes:

• 65 tools, from the Marquee and Lasso tools through Healing, Clone Stamp, Pen, Type and Shape tools.
• 16 adjustment layers, including Curves, Levels, Black & White, Channel Mixer, Gradient Map, Selective Color and Color Lookup.
• Layer styles: Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Outer and Inner Glow, Bevel & Emboss, Satin, Stroke, and Color, Gradient and Pattern Overlay.
• Layers: groups, clipping masks, pixel and vector masks, smart objects with smart filters, and 27 Photoshop blend modes.
• Color: RGB, Grayscale, CMYK and Lab documents at 8, 16 and 32 bits per channel, with ICC color management and soft proofing.
• Files: PSD and PSB, layered TIFF, and many flat formats (see opening PSD files).
• Familiar shortcuts: Photoshop-style defaults, plus importing Photoshop .kys shortcut sets.

Where PhotoCraft falls short today

The project keeps a public, ranked list of its shortfalls against Photoshop 2026 (27.11.0) in docs/gaps.md. The items it marks as blocking beta are:

1. PSD fidelity and Photoshop acceptance: Photoshop-authored files don't always render as they do in Photoshop (133 of 256 oracle files match), and Photoshop doesn't always accept the PSDs PhotoCraft writes.
2. Interactive performance.
3. A backlog of user-reported bugs.

Other gaps on the list include brush feel, transform handles, some missing tools (for example the Color Sampler and Art History Brush), type depth, Camera Raw depth, AI and generative features, and compatibility with Photoshop plug-ins (.8BF, UXP).

Who should try it

PhotoCraft is worth trying if you want a free, open-source editor that feels like Photoshop, works on Linux or in a browser, or can be scripted (it offers a CLI and an MCP server). If you exchange PSDs with Photoshop users every day, test your own files first. The project itself calls PSD fidelity its top priority before beta.

Want more options? See free open-source Photoshop alternatives.