PhotoCraft v0.16.0: area type, .asl style libraries and an update check

PhotoCraft v0.16.0 came out on 25 October 2026, two days after v0.15.1. Its release notes list 122 merged pull requests from 69 contributors, 24 of them first-time contributors. Two of those entries are integration batches that merged 54 pull requests together (#8663, 44, and #9167, 10); 42 of them also have their own line, and counting both, 134 pull requests went in. The README still counts 67 tools. After two small security releases, this is a feature release again: area type, Photoshop .asl style libraries, a built-in update check, 12-bit JPEG, exact CMYK inks in exported files and a faster start on DirectX 12. Many smaller changes fix tools, actions and PSD files. PhotoCraft is still early alpha, so expect rough edges.

The release notes have no scorecard section. In the project's scorecard (docs/scorecard.md), which had not moved since v0.13.0, Type now has 5 done and 5 partial items, the new partial one being area type. Workspace and UI has 15 done and 2 missing, up from 14 and 3, and 20 of 177 preferences still do nothing, against 21 of 176. Distribution moved one item from missing to partial with the update check. Four new performance scenarios are tracked but not run yet; the 3 within budget and 22 over are unchanged.

Highlights

• Area type. With the Type tool, hover over a closed path or a shape layer and the cursor changes; click and type, and the text wraps inside the shape. Holes and dents are respected as in Photoshop, and overlapping shape parts, such as a speech bubble and its tail, flow as one area. Text that doesn't fit is hidden. It is one undo step, and .pcraft keeps it; PSD export still writes it as ordinary paragraph text over the path's bounds, with a warning (#6230). See /guides/tools.
• An update check. Help › Check for Updates… asks GitHub for the latest stable release and shows the result in a small window with a link to the download page. The desktop app also checks once at each start; Preferences › General › Automatically Check for Updates turns that off. Nothing is downloaded or installed by itself. Flatpak builds don't check, since Flatpak updates them (#5485).
• .asl layer style libraries. The Styles panel's "…" menu has Import Styles…, Export Selected Styles… and Export Styles…, and an .asl file can also be opened with File › Open or dropped on the window. Patterns inside the library join the pattern library, so pattern overlays and textures render. Effects PhotoCraft doesn't model are left out with a warning that names the style. The importer was tested on files PhotoCraft made, not yet on libraries saved by Photoshop (#4049).
• 12-bit and arithmetic-coded JPEG. These JPEG variants, used by some scanners, medical and scientific tools, now open; 12-bit files open as 16-bit documents (#9195).
• Exact CMYK inks in exported files. A layered CMYK document exported as TIFF or JPEG, a CMYK PSD's merged image, and Flatten Image, Merge or Stamp Visible and Copy Merged now mix layers on their ink values. A K-only black (C0 M0 Y0 K100), important for type and line art in print, stays K-only instead of turning into four-colour black. Stacks that need RGB mixing, such as Hue or Color blend modes or pattern effects, still go through RGB, now with a warning on export. The canvas still shows the RGB composite (#3356, merged through #8663).
• Damaged PSDs ask first. When some layers, pixels or masks of a PSD or PSB can't be read, PhotoCraft asks before opening it and warns that saving over the original could throw away the unreadable data; save a copy instead (#6658).
• Faster start on DirectX 12. The GPU compositor builds its shaders in parallel. In the PR's test on Windows 11 with an RX 6900 XT, that step went from 13.2 to 7.3 seconds; Vulkan was already fast (#8118, part of #6419). On an integrated GPU, an opacity or visibility change among 150 full-canvas layers dropped from about 730 ms to 68 ms in the project's benchmark (#8547).
• Adjustments at their last settings. As in Photoshop, adding Alt/⌥ to an adjustment's shortcut, such as Alt+Ctrl+L / ⌥⌘L for Levels or Alt+Ctrl+M / ⌥⌘M for Curves, or holding it while choosing the item from Image › Adjustments, opens the dialog at the settings of its last OK. They are kept across restarts (#8969). See /guides/shortcuts.

New tools and features

• Crop, slices and warps: in the Crop tool's default mode, dragging the image under the box now snaps to the canvas centre, layers, guides and grid, with the magenta lines; Ctrl turns snapping off (#8622). The Slice tool's Style menu offers Fixed Ratio and Fixed Size, as the marquee does (#8638). Puppet Warp pins and Perspective Warp quads go exactly where you drag them instead of snapping (#8217). Perspective Crop's ⇄ button swaps width and height (#7060), and Delete Cropped Pixels keeps type layers and smart objects whole (#7117).
• Selections and sampling: Shift during a drag locks a selection move to 45° steps (#6254); the Magnetic Lasso stays on an edge whose contrast flips (#3415); the Eyedropper's sampling ring is Photoshop's large grey-edged ring, readable over any colour (#7021).
• Colour: the Color panel looks the same in every theme, and its ☰ menu picks Photoshop's modes: Hue Cube, Brightness Cube, Color Wheel, and Grayscale, RGB, HSB, CMYK, Lab and Web Color sliders (#6055). A colour picked in the Color or Swatches panel or the Color Picker recolours the selected shape or type layer when a shape or type tool is in hand (#5842). Colour fields pick on press and follow small drags (#7822).
• Adjustments, styles and guides: the Curves graph grows with the Properties panel, and the Curves dialog can be resized and reopens at that size (#8998). Gradient Overlay has a Method menu: Smooth, Perceptual, Linear and Classic (#7335). New Guide Layout takes lengths with units, such as 2 cm or 10%, in its Width and Height fields (#8719).
• Interface: every theme shows the full options bar; before, only the Pro themes showed the Crop, Marquee, Lasso, Move and Paint Bucket options (#4221). With no layer selected, the Layers panel keeps blend mode, Opacity, Fill and the locks in place, greyed out (#8904), and the eye column takes clicks across its whole width (#8496). Liquify, Content-Aware Fill, Filter Gallery and Adaptive Wide Angle are modal, like Camera Raw, so the macOS menu bar waits for OK or Cancel (#9061).
• Speed: Crystallize is about 4 times and Pointillize 3 times faster on 24 MP layers (#6200). Liquify, text with several colours and Camera Raw's exposure slider got faster too (#8855, #8716, #8465).

File formats

• PSD: eight more Photoshop smart filters open and save editable: Pinch, Polar Coordinates, Ripple, Spherize, Twirl, Wave, ZigZag and Invert (#5249). Placed layers keep Photoshop's Cylinder warp after Replace Contents or Relink (#5769). A pattern with transparency is written where Photoshop expects it, so such files open in Photoshop again, and re-saving an older file repairs it (#8756). Shape fills keep their transparency on a round trip through PhotoCraft (#6868).
• Kept as Photoshop wrote them: Photoshop 2026's Light adjustment layers and Color Lookup tables with a custom input range are kept unchanged, with a warning, instead of being misread (#6815, #8879). Older PSDs' point text lands where Photoshop put it (#6094), and text set in a named instance of a variable font, such as Bahnschrift Light Condensed, keeps that instance (#8909).
• Linked files in PSD: a linked smart object's file is embedded only when it is an image PhotoCraft can open; otherwise the layer is written as pixels with a warning (#9161).
• GIMP XCF: files with linked layers no longer fail with "the file ends early" (#8865). More in /guides/gimp-xcf.
• DPX, Cineon and WebP: saving a 16-bit or 32-bit document as 10- or 12-bit DPX, or as Cineon, now warns that bits are dropped (#8793). WebP export keeps the resolution (#8775).
• Image Assets: File › Generate › Image Assets now needs Preferences › Plug-ins › Generator enabled, off by default as in Photoshop (#5598). An artboard asset keeps the full board size (#8254).

What opens and saves where: /guides/file-formats.

Languages

The official builds include 22 interface languages, as in v0.13.0. Simplified Chinese gets its last untranslated status messages and preview labels, reviewed by a native speaker (#8872), Turkish has 35 rows corrected (#8871), and the names of layer effect rows in the Layers panel are translated (#8754). See /guides/language.

Automation (CLI & MCP)

• photocraft-cli reads its options with clap. Each subcommand has its own --help, and the Linux and FreeBSD packaging adds man pages and shell completions. It is stricter: a repeated single-value option, a bad value or bad JSON is a usage error with exit code 2 instead of 1; version is no longer a subcommand (use --version); --bridge 7878 means 127.0.0.1:7878; and PHOTOCRAFT_CONTROL_PORT sets the control port for serve and mcp (#9167, #9194).
• photocraft-cli run refuses an --out that is the input file unless --in-place is given (#7455); mcp and serve refuse options they would ignore (#8035); a headless TCP server frees its port after 30 minutes without clients (#3914).
• doc_export_layers lists the layers it skipped and why (#8713); type.edit with new text keeps the styles of the text that didn't change (#8766); view.newGuideLayout takes units (#8719); ui.menu.invoke waits while a modal workspace is open (#9061).
• Actions: exported Levels and Curves steps name the composite channel as Photoshop does, so they play there (#8686); a Color Balance or Hue/Saturation step that sets only some values is refused by strict .atn export instead of resetting the rest in Photoshop (#8701); a recorded drag in the Layers panel stores its drop target by name, so it plays in other documents (#8781). Black & White, Selective Color, Apply Image, Save As, transform interpolation and Photoshop's blend mode names also go through .atn more faithfully (#8527, #7681, #8180, #7202, #8698, #8502). More on actions: /guides/actions.

Setup and examples: /guides/mcp-cli.

Web build

The online editor on this site runs the v0.16.0 web build. The release zip is 12,192,545 bytes (11.6 MiB), up from v0.15.1's 12,058,467. As since v0.10.0, a small boot module starts the app, which is one gzipped part, app/photocraft-web-*.part-aa, of 12,092,579 bytes (11.5 MiB); unpacked, the app is 26,454,256 bytes (25.2 MiB), up from 26,160,337 in v0.15.1.

• Area type, .asl libraries and 12-bit JPEG work in the browser too. The update check runs only in the desktop app.
• Chinese, Japanese and Korean text still shows as empty boxes in the web build (#1615, still open). Use the desktop app for CJK text.

Self-hosting notes are on /download/web.

Fixes and stability

• GPU: after an out-of-memory error, PhotoCraft rebuilds the GPU canvas by itself, up to three times per session, instead of drawing on the CPU until you choose Retry GPU (#8774). The CPU canvas is sharp at 100% zoom (#8354), and filter previews show on it, for example in a flipped view (#8978, #8994).
• Colour and blending: 32-bit Curves continue past 0 and 1, as in Photoshop (#8782); Black & White keeps 32-bit values above 1, up to 16 (#8748); Soft Light over dark backdrops follows Photoshop's curve, within 4 levels of its output in the PR's test instead of 20 (#8817); an Outside stroke no longer bleeds into opaque pixels (#5937).
• Windows: Reveal in Explorer selects files whose paths contain spaces (#8518).
• Saving and quitting: a save that can't flush its folder to disk reports it instead of claiming success (#5420); after the window's GPU device is lost, quitting works even when the recovery save keeps failing (#8620).
• Editing: Paste keeps the pasted image on the canvas (#6798); Puppet Warp, Liquify and Free Transform distortions are cancelled when you switch documents instead of leaking into them (#5447); turning on View › Show › Grid while Extras are hidden turns Extras back on, so the grid appears (#8962); a click on the bottom layer's Smart Filters selects them again (#8974); repeated Tab presses stay in the text being edited (#9030).
• Printing: printers whose details CUPS sends in an unusual order show them complete (#8828).
• Security: the hardening from v0.14.0 and v0.15.1 goes on, with limits on brush steps, sparse layers, scripts and batches, Affinity archives, text fields and colour parsing (#8957, #8955, #8954, #9257, #8722, #8657).

More known problems and fixes: /guides/troubleshooting.

Breaking changes or things to know

• The update check is on by default. At each start the desktop app contacts GitHub's API once. Turn it off in Preferences › General › Automatically Check for Updates (#5485).
• Shift switches tools for existing users too. Photoshop's Use Shift Key for Tool Switch has been PhotoCraft's default since v0.8.2, but older settings files kept it off. Now they take it on: pressing a tool's letter again keeps the tool, and Shift plus the letter cycles through its group. Turn it off in Preferences › Tools if you prefer the old way (#5878).
• Image Assets needs Generator. Turn on Preferences › Plug-ins › Generator enabled, or assets are no longer generated on save (#5598).
• Area type and older versions. Earlier PhotoCraft versions can't open a .pcraft file that contains area type, and PSD files get plain paragraph text instead (#6230).
• Stricter photocraft-cli. Scripts that repeat an option, pass bad values, or call photocraft-cli version now fail, with exit code 2 for usage errors (#9167).
• Select and Mask has no workspace yet. Its engine came in v0.15.1; the workspace itself is still to come.
• No FreeBSD aarch64 build (craft-common-actions#39, still open). FreeBSD x86_64 is there.
• Windows 7 and 8: PhotoCraft still needs Windows 10 or later, and the v0.16.0 MSI still has no installer check for older versions.

How to update

Download the v0.16.0 build for your system from /download: Windows, macOS, Linux or the web build. The release has the same 28 files as v0.15.1, with SHA256SUMS.txt to check them against. Builds come only from the official GitHub release; avoid third-party mirrors. If you are coming from v0.14.0 or earlier, also read the v0.15.1 notes. From v0.16.0 on, the desktop app tells you itself when a newer release is out, unless you turn the check off.

Full release notes, with every merged pull request: PhotoCraft v0.16.0 on GitHub.