PhotoCraft v0.19.0: a full Color Picker for every swatch, vector smart objects in VectorCraft and huge TIFFs

PhotoCraft v0.19.0 came out on 1 November 2026, a day and a half after v0.18.0. Its release notes list 32 merged pull requests from 21 contributors, 9 of them first-time contributors. One entry, the integration batch #10145, took in 18 pull requests, and 17 of them also have their own line. The eighteenth, a rework of the zoom field (#6647), went in only through the batch; its pull request is still open on GitHub, but its code is in the release. The list overstates the release a little. The multi-layer transform handles of #8623 were dropped from the batch because v0.18.0's #6590 already does the same; only a few small fixes to that feature came with it. #7621's .atn document switching already shipped in v0.13.0, and Finnish and Norwegian Bokmål arrived in v0.18.0, so #5666 and #8072 only add the rows written since then. #8371 changes only tests, and #10420 only docs. Nothing listed was reverted before the tag. The README counts 68 tools, as in v0.18.0.

Most of the new work is about colour and vectors. The shape Fill and Stroke swatches get Photoshop's popover, every colour swatch opens the full Color Picker, the text and gradient-stop pickers preview on the canvas before OK, and Edit Contents can send an embedded SVG, AI, PDF or EPS smart object to VectorCraft or another editor and save it back in its own format. Very large TIFFs open, a huge layer no longer stalls the Move tool, the app starts on the Move tool, and artboards are drawn as artboards in the Layers panel. The web build in this release still doesn't start; see Web build below. PhotoCraft is still early alpha, so expect rough edges.

The release notes have no scorecard section. In docs/scorecard.md, settings that do nothing go from 12 of 182 to 11 of 183. That isn't a new working setting: Graphics Adapter always took effect, and startup now reads it in a way the audit can see (#9618). The TIFF row now describes the banded import of very large flat pages; everything else is unchanged.

Highlights

• Fill/Stroke popover and the full Color Picker. The shape Fill and Stroke swatches, in the options bar and in Properties, open a popover laid out like Photoshop's: No Color, Solid Color, Gradient and Pattern along the top, the Color Picker button at the top right, then Recently Used Colors and the swatch library's folders. Gradient applies a gradient preset to the shape; Pattern is shown greyed out, because shapes can't draw pattern paint yet. The Color Picker button opens the full Color Picker dialog (HSB, RGB, Lab, CMYK, hex, eyedropper and Pick Screen Color), titled Color Picker (Fill Color) or (Stroke Color), with the canvas previewing the colour and OK as one undo step. Every other colour swatch now opens that dialog too instead of a small generic picker: Photo Filter, Black & White's tint, Gradient Map stops, the Content-Aware Fill overlay, Filter Gallery glows and the Save for Web colour table, with a live preview where the old picker had one. Recently Used Colors keeps the last 15 (#8725).
• Live preview in the text and gradient-stop Color Pickers. While the Type tool's Color Picker (Text Color) or a gradient fill layer's Color Picker (Stop Color) is open, the canvas shows the picked colour before OK, as in Photoshop. Cancel leaves no history step, and OK commits exactly what was previewed in one step. The Gradient Editor's own bar and swatch still update only after OK (#9757).
• Edit vector smart objects in VectorCraft. Layer › Smart Objects › Edit Contents on an embedded SVG, PDF-compatible AI, PDF or EPS smart object, including one inside a PSD, now asks which application to use: VectorCraft, Adobe Illustrator (Windows and macOS), another application you choose, or, for SVG only, PhotoCraft's own editor. PhotoCraft opens a private working copy in the original format, and each save there updates the smart object as one undo step, for every instance that shares it. AI, PDF and EPS keep their own bytes; PhotoCraft also keeps an SVG preview of them in .pcraft and PSD files. VectorCraft is a separate app from the same ArtCraft team and isn't bundled; AI, PDF and EPS previews need its vectorcraft-cli next to it, even when another editor is chosen. Upstream says the Windows and macOS launch paths have only been tested with synthetic bundles, and that an exact round trip with Adobe's apps is unverified, so try it on a copy first. The web build doesn't launch other programs (#8571, docs/embedded-vector-editing.md).
• Edit a set of colour channels. Shift-click several colour channels in the Channels panel, Red and Blue for example, and painting, gradients, fills, Levels and Curves (with an RB entry), the other adjustments and the supported filters change only those channels, in RGB, CMYK and Lab at 8, 16 and 32 bits. Moving and transforming pixels needs all channels, and Camera Raw needs the composite or a single channel (#9274).
• Very large TIFFs and very large layers. Flat TIFF pages up to 300,000 px a side open, decoded a group of rows at a time into the layer; in the project's test, a 117,504 × 22,464 px banner opened in 3.3 seconds with 11.45 GB at peak. When the computer doesn't have the memory, PhotoCraft says so instead of crashing. Layered TIFFs are still decoded whole (#8536). With the Move tool, layers holding more than 512 MiB of pixels are no longer copied on every pointer move: the outline follows the pointer and the layers move once when you release, instead of stalling or running out of memory (#6985).
• Artboards like Photoshop's. In the Layers panel, an artboard row has no thumbnail, a bold name, a shorter row and a faint band, so it no longer looks like a group (#10519). A layer dragged in the Layers panel from one artboard to another keeps its place on the board instead of being clipped away; dragging between boards on the canvas with the Move tool is unchanged (#10489).

New tools and features

• Tools and selections: PhotoCraft now starts on the Move tool, as Photoshop does, and the arrow keys don't nudge the layer while you edit text (#5403). Ctrl+Shift+Enter / ⌘⇧↩ adds a path to the selection and Ctrl+Alt+Enter / ⌘⌥↩ subtracts it, taking the Pen path being drawn, the path selected in the Paths panel or the work path, as Ctrl+Enter does (#8015). Free Transform of several layers with a marquee active drops the selection, as in Photoshop, and the shared box no longer snaps to the edges of the layers it carries (#8623). See /guides/shortcuts.
• Layers: the Layers panel's "Create new fill or adjustment layer" menu has Pattern…, and an empty, unlocked pixel layer that is selected becomes the Pattern Fill layer instead of getting one above it (#7716).
• Type: a paragraph box that can't hold its text shows a red + in its enlarged lower-right handle, as Photoshop marks overflow; hovering it explains what to do. Clicking it doesn't thread a linked box (#8311).
• Print: on Windows, Scale to Fit Media fills the printable area the printer driver reports, so borderless paper prints edge to edge and the area turns with Portrait or Landscape. CUPS, IPP and PDF printing are unchanged (#7795).
• Brush and gradient files: opening an .abr or .grd whose name matches a group that holds your own presets used to replace that group silently, and Undo couldn't bring it back. Now PhotoCraft asks: Import as New Group (the default, named "Kit (2)" and so on), Replace or Cancel (#10658). See /guides/brushes.
• Zoom field: the zoom field in the status bar and Navigator applies a typed value on Enter instead of on every keystroke, Esc drops the edit, ratios such as 1/2 work, it takes the system's decimal separator, and the view glides to the new zoom (#6647).
• Updates: Help › Check for Updates shows its result in the same card as the update prompt, with a spinner, the up-to-date message, or the error with a link to the releases and Check Again. A manual check offers a release you dismissed earlier again (#10421).

More on the tools: /guides/tools.

File formats

• PSD memory limits: before decoding a PSD, PhotoCraft now adds up the memory its layers, masks, merged image and patterns will need and refuses the file if that is over 2 GiB (1 GiB in the web build), naming both numbers. The estimate is cautious, so some files that would have fitted are refused too. Masks are decoded a row of tiles at a time, and multichannel files are converted the same way (#10503, #10532, #10541).
• PSD type: editing the text of an imported PSD keeps the file's own font records, duplicates and order included, instead of rebuilding them with default values (#6169).
• TIFF: very large flat pages open; see Highlights (#8536).
• Vector smart objects: an edited AI, PDF or EPS smart object keeps its original bytes in .pcraft and PSD files, plus an SVG preview in a private PSD block that other programs ignore, using the layer's stored pixels instead (#8571).

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

Languages

The official builds still include 27 interface languages. The Finnish and Norwegian Bokmål catalogs, added in v0.18.0 through #10021, gain the rows written since then, from their original authors (#5666, #8072). Setting the language: /guides/language.

Automation (CLI & MCP)

• Brush and gradient imports no longer replace by default. brush.presets.importAbr and gradient.presets.importGrd take replace: false by default; a taken group name imports as <group> (2) and so on, and the result names the group used. Pass "replace": true for the old behaviour. The new prompt is an ordinary dialog: ui.dialog.confirm imports as a new group, ui.dialog.set {"choice":"replace"} and then ui.dialog.confirm replaces (#10658).
• path.addToSelection and path.subtractFromSelection name paths in the document (#8015). file.print and file.printOneCopy take an optional printable area, the shape file.print.page reports (#7795). edit.transform with layers clears the selection in the same edit (#8623), and the ui.inspect snapshot has typeBoxOverflow (#8311).
• Agents can export and replace an SVG smart object's contents in memory (layer.smartObjects.exportSvg, updateSvg), but automation never launches an outside editor (#8571).
• Actions: a recorded switch to the previous or next document counts documents in the order they were opened, not in tab order, so dragging a tab no longer changes which document an action switches to (#7621). More on actions: /guides/actions.

Setup and examples: /guides/mcp-cli.

Web build

The v0.19.0 web build doesn't start either. The zip has the same layout as v0.17.0's and v0.18.0's: app/photocraft-web.js loads a small script from app/snippets/…, but snippets/ sits only at the zip's top level, so the browser gets a 404 and the page stays at "Loading PhotoCraft…". #10092, #10487, #10491 and #10590 are all still open, and the fix, #10248, isn't merged. The issue authors report that copying snippets/ into app/ makes it start.

The online editor on this site therefore stays on the v0.16.0 web build.

For reference, the v0.19.0 zip is 13,433,636 bytes (12.8 MiB), up from v0.18.0's 13,331,007. The app is one gzipped part, app/photocraft-web-*.part-aa, of 13,328,607 bytes (12.7 MiB); unpacked, it is 29,891,631 bytes (28.5 MiB), up from 29,647,620. Self-hosting notes are on /download/web.

Fixes and stability

• Brushes: picking a brush preset whose stored tip is missing or damaged leaves the current brush, preset and foreground colour as they were, instead of changing some of them (#10288).
• Canvas: marching ants are drawn over guides and the grid, as in Photoshop, so a guide on a selection edge no longer hides it at some zoom levels (#10681).
• Save for Web: the dialog no longer grows, and its zoom no longer creeps, while the pointer moves over the preview (#10685).
• Panels: the Swatches, Gradients and Patterns footers use the Layers footer's icons and size (#10672).
• Smart filters: double-clicking a smart filter of a smart object that isn't the active layer selects that layer first; before, OK on the reopened filter failed and Liquify strokes were lost (#10145).

More known problems and fixes: /guides/troubleshooting.

Breaking changes or things to know

• PhotoCraft starts on the Move tool, not the Brush (#5403).
• Large PSDs can be refused. A PSD whose layers, masks and patterns need more than 2 GiB of pixel memory by PhotoCraft's cautious estimate doesn't open, and the message gives the estimate (#10503).
• Re-importing brushes or gradients adds a group. Scripts and MCP agents that relied on re-importing to replace a group must pass "replace": true (#10658).
• Vector editing needs VectorCraft. It is a separate download, AI, PDF and EPS previews also need vectorcraft-cli, and saving can change features VectorCraft doesn't support. Keep a copy of the PSD (#8571).
• No new Flatpak install route yet. A new helper turns the Flatpak into an OCI image for GitHub's container registry, and the release run pushed one, but the image isn't publicly readable and upstream documents no way to install from it. Keep using the .flatpak bundle from /download/linux (#10567).
• The web build doesn't start, and this site's online editor stays on v0.16.0; see Web build above.
• Update and Restart on Windows MSI installs. The report that it restarts without installing (#10477) is still open. If it happens, download the v0.19.0 MSI from /download/windows and run it once.
• Windows 7 and 8: PhotoCraft still needs Windows 10 or later.

How to update

Download the v0.19.0 build for your system from /download: Windows, macOS, Linux or the web build, which doesn't start for now. The release has the same 32 files as v0.18.0, with SHA256SUMS.txt to check them against. Builds come only from the official GitHub release; avoid third-party mirrors. If you already run v0.18.0, its update prompt can install v0.19.0 for you. If you are coming from v0.17.0 or earlier, also read the v0.18.0 notes. The next release, v0.20.1, maps many more Photoshop action steps and adds arrowheads to the Line tool.

Full release notes, with every merged pull request: PhotoCraft v0.19.0 on GitHub.