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PhotoCraft v0.2.0: Camera RAW, plug-ins, safer automation

PhotoCraft v0.2.0: camera RAW decoding, a colour-managed canvas, sandboxed plug-ins, .abr brushes, crash fixes and automation limited to granted folders.

v0.2.0Released Oct 5, 2026Official release notes on GitHub

PhotoCraft v0.2.0 is the first release with written upgrade notes. It opens camera RAW files, makes the canvas colour-managed, adds sandboxed plug-ins and Photoshop brush import, and spends a lot of effort on not crashing. It also changes how automation clients may touch your files, so read "Breaking changes or things to know" if you use MCP or the control channel.

Highlights

  • Camera RAW files decode: DNG, Canon CR2, Sony ARW (lossless and compressed), Panasonic RW2 and uncompressed Olympus ORF, through a clean-room pure-Rust decoder with a develop pipeline (#65, #83).
  • Colour-managed canvas: the document profile is converted to your monitor (P3, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto, Gray, CMYK), with linear EXR and embedded CMYK support (#66).
  • Sandboxed WebAssembly plug-ins under Filter › Plug-ins (#67).
  • Photoshop brushes: .abr brush import, .grd gradient import, 36 grouped presets, stylus pressure and tilt, and brush presets that persist between sessions (#74, #82).
  • Image › Adjustments overhaul: full parameters, one editor per adjustment, live-preview dialogs and Curves point deletion (#68).
  • Large images: texture limits per graphics adapter, banded compositing and export, proxy thumbnails and a history memory budget (#71).
  • "Never crash" work across the engine, file formats, GPU compositor, UI and automation, plus a last-resort guard for commands and file import/export.

New tools and features

  • Magic Eraser and Background Eraser tools (#70).
  • Select › Color Range with presets, eyedroppers, Localized Color Clusters and Invert (#80).
  • File › Open Recent (#23) and File › Exit (#10), and a confirmation before discarding unsaved changes (#31).
  • Layer Style › Blending Options › Blend If, with PSD round trip (#26); the Layer Style dialog previews effects live on the canvas (#30).
  • Add Layer Mask uses the active selection; Filter › Other › Minimum / Maximum gain Preserve Roundness.
  • Painting: right-click opens the brush picker (or erases), Smoothing really smooths, and brush and eraser show the real stroke while drawing.
  • Dialogs can be moved by their title bar and no longer cancel on an outside click; Ctrl+'+' zooms the canvas.
  • macOS: open files from Finder, Open With and the Dock (#63).

File formats

  • Camera RAW as listed above. Nikon's compressed NEF and other formats still open their embedded full-size preview for now.
  • PSD round trip for Vibrance, Color Balance, Black & White, Photo Filter and Channel Mixer adjustment layers (#60).

Automation (CLI & MCP)

  • Control channels are authenticated and their transport resources bounded (#61).
  • Automation file access is limited to folders you grant (#72); see below.
  • A panicking command no longer wedges the headless MCP session (#16).

Fixes and stability

  • GPU: falls back to an Rgba16Float texture when Rgba32Float isn't renderable (#22, issue #7), and 16/32-bit documents use an Rgba16Float display texture.
  • The Eraser on a Background layer paints the background colour (#19).
  • Links open in the system browser (#20).
  • Indexed Color no longer panics when forced colours fill the palette.
  • Licensing files were added: MIT OR Apache-2.0, a NOTICE file, ArtCraft brand terms and attribution (#32).

Breaking changes or things to know

  • Automation needs explicit file roots. File access from automation clients (MCP and the control channel) is limited to folders granted with --automation-read-root <dir> and --automation-write-root <dir>, or the PHOTOCRAFT_AUTOMATION_READ_ROOT / PHOTOCRAFT_AUTOMATION_WRITE_ROOT environment variables. Paths must be relative to those roots. Without roots, automation file operations fail closed.
  • The desktop control channel needs a token. It requires the per-launch token printed at startup.
  • Interactive file dialogs and one-shot CLI commands are not affected by either change.
  • The interface is English-only in this release; translations arrived in v0.3.0.

How to update

Newer releases are available; get the latest from /download (Windows, macOS, Linux, web). The v0.2.0 files remain on its GitHub release page for macOS, Windows (x64 and x86) and Linux (x86_64 and aarch64), plus the web build and the macOS CLI. Only download from the official GitHub releases.

Full release notes, with every merged pull request: PhotoCraft v0.2.0 on GitHub.

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