PhotoCraft v0.1.0: the first public release

PhotoCraft v0.1.0 is the first public release of the open-source, Rust-based image editor. Its GitHub release has no written notes, so this page describes what the project's README at the v0.1.0 tag says the editor included. The README labelled it early alpha: the core editing workflow was there, with rough edges expected.

Highlights

A Photoshop-style layered editor: layers, groups, clipping masks, pixel and vector masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, type, vector shapes and a brush engine, with menus and shortcuts laid out the way Photoshop users expect.
Native and GPU-accelerated: a wgpu compositor (Metal, Vulkan, DX12, WebGPU), copy-on-write tiles and multithreaded filters, with no Electron or web view.
Real PSD files: open, edit and save layered Photoshop documents. The README reported 134 of 135 files in its test corpus round-tripping byte for byte.
Agent-ready: every action is a command, so the UI, the CLI, a JSON control channel and an MCP server all drive the same engine.
Builds for macOS, Windows, Linux and the web, attached to the GitHub release.

New tools and features

As described in the README at this tag:

34 tools, including marquees, lassos, Magic Wand, Quick Selection, Object Selection, Crop, Brush, Pencil, Mixer Brush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, healing tools, Gradient, Pen, Type and five Shape tools.
16 adjustment layers that also apply directly to pixels, including Curves, Levels with a live histogram, Black & White, Channel Mixer, Gradient Map, Photo Filter, 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, live on any layer including type.
Selections: Select Subject, Select and Mask and the usual modify commands, with smart selection running locally (no cloud, no account).
Filters with live on-canvas preview, including the Blur Gallery, sharpening, Reduce Noise, distortions, Stylize and Render filters, and smart filters on smart objects.
Colour: RGB, Grayscale, CMYK and Lab documents at 8, 16 and 32 bits per channel, ICC colour management, soft proofing and Gamut Warning.
Everyday tools: Free Transform, full history with the History Brush, Export As with a file-size estimate, Quick Export to PNG, actions record and replay, a command palette, and Pro, Studio and Classic themes.

File formats

PSD and PSB, plus PNG, JPEG, TIFF, WebP, GIF, BMP, TGA, ICO, QOI, PNM, OpenEXR, Radiance HDR and AVIF, read and written at 8, 16 and 32 bits, and the native .pcraft format.

Automation (CLI & MCP)

photocraft-cli run opens a file, runs commands and saves the result headless.
photocraft-cli batch applies an action list to a folder of images.
photocraft-cli mcp lets an AI agent drive the engine over MCP, headless or bridged to the running app.
The desktop app listens on a local control channel (photocraft --control) for UI inspection, pointer events and offscreen screenshots.

The README described a registry of 500+ commands behind all of these.

Breaking changes or things to know

Early alpha. The README asked users to expect rough edges and to file issues.
Windows GPU crashes on some Intel graphics. Issue #4 (open as of 9 October 2026) reports crashes in the Intel Vulkan driver on Windows with v0.1.1-rc.4, which was built from the same commit as v0.1.0. The reporter found that setting WGPU_BACKEND=dx12 let the editor open. Later releases added GPU fallbacks (v0.3.0, and a CPU rendering mode in v0.5.0).

How to update

Much newer releases are available; get the latest from /download (Windows, macOS, Linux, web). Only download from the official GitHub releases.

The GitHub release for this version: PhotoCraft v0.1.0 on GitHub.