PhotoCraft v0.6.0: new tools, Affinity and SVG import, Camera Raw first

PhotoCraft v0.6.0 came out on 10 October 2026, two days after v0.5.0. The GitHub release lists 587 merged pull requests, and 86 people contributed for the first time. Most of them are small fixes, so this page picks out what changes your work: three new tools, new file types to open, Camera Raw before a raw file opens, Photoshop's default keys for Search and Preferences, and four more interface languages. PhotoCraft is still early alpha, so expect rough edges.

Highlights

• New tools: Pattern Stamp (in the Clone Stamp group, key S) paints the current pattern through the brush (#922). Red Eye (in the Spot Healing group, key J) fixes a red pupil with one click (#1084). Rotate View (in the Hand group, key R) turns the view, not the pixels, and adds nothing to the history (#1611).
• More files open. An SVG opens as editable shape layers, and placing one gives a vector smart object that stays sharp when scaled (#1305). Native Affinity documents (#1778) and layered Paint.NET files (#1998) open too, without those apps installed.
• Raw files open in Camera Raw first, with Open and Cancel, as in Photoshop (#1309). Camera Raw now has a window of its own on the desktop (#1361). Nikon's compressed NEF files (#1310) and uncompressed Fujifilm RAF files (#1872) now decode from the sensor data instead of opening the small preview.
• Photoshop's default keys: Search moved to Ctrl/⌘+F and Preferences to Ctrl/⌘+K (#1900). Edit › Keyboard Shortcuts can import a Photoshop .kys set (#1987), and Tab hides the panels (#1388). See /guides/shortcuts.
• Swatches with .aco and .ase. The Swatches panel is now a saved library with groups, and it imports and exports Photoshop's .aco and .ase files (#886).
• Colour work: black, gray and white point eyedroppers in Curves (#873), the full Color Picker for text with a screen eyedropper that can sample other apps (#1232), dialogs for Image › Apply Image and Calculations (#1596), and Filter › Other › Color to Alpha (#1683).
• Four new interface languages: Polish, Ukrainian, Dutch and Greek.
• Linux and Windows: a display server preference that makes file drops work on Wayland (#1686), pen tablets on Wayland (#1070), and a setup wizard in the Windows MSI (#1864).

New tools and features

• Layers: colour labels for layers and groups, kept in PSD and .pcraft files (#1289); hovering a blend mode previews it on the canvas (#1081); Alt-drag a layer to copy it; drag layer effects onto another layer (Alt copies them); pop-up sliders for Opacity and Fill; Alt-click between two layers makes or releases a clipping mask.
• Painting: each painting tool keeps its own brush, as in Photoshop (#1685); painting symmetry with vertical, horizontal, dual and diagonal axes (#1821); the Clone Stamp shows its source inside the brush cursor; strokes now carry their timing, so airbrush build-up works from the canvas (#2110).
• Crop and transform: the crop overlay menu (thirds, grid, diagonal, triangle, golden ratio and spiral), a Straighten button, rotating the crop frame by dragging outside it, and arrow-key nudges. Free Transform side handles now scale proportionally (#1873).
• Selection and colour: Select › Color Range uses Photoshop's Sampled Colors model (#1239); Quick Selection was reworked to behave like Photoshop's (#1966); the Eyedropper gains Sample Size and a sampling ring; the Gradient tool's swatch opens a Gradient Editor (#1983).
• Workspace: an Appearance Mode that can follow the system's light or dark setting (#1981) and three new themes, Solarized Dark, Adwaita and Adwaita Dark; saved New Document presets (#1516); document tabs that overflow into a menu and can be reordered; Fit Screen and Fill Screen buttons for the Hand tool.
• Speed (figures from the PRs): Motion Blur is 6x to 70x faster (#902), with a further speed-up for long streaks; Mosaic is 45x to 117x faster on a 24 MP image; Surface Blur is 4x to 20x faster on 16- and 32-bit layers; Expand, Contract and Border selections are 7.6x to 10.6x faster. PSD export compresses layers in parallel, about 2x faster on a 120-layer file (#1230). Large saves run in the background with a progress dialog, so the window no longer freezes (#2072), and filter previews are computed off the UI thread.

File formats

• SVG (.svg, .svgz) opens as shape layers and places as a vector smart object.
• Affinity (.af, .afphoto, .afdesign, .afpub) opens with its layers, artboards, vectors, text and images. Import is 8-bit RGB only for now.
• Paint.NET (.pdn) opens with its layers and all 14 Paint.NET blend modes. It is import only: saving makes a .pcraft copy.
• Camera raw: compressed Nikon NEF, uncompressed Fujifilm RAF, and DNG with JPEG XL compression (DNG 1.7, as written by Samsung Expert RAW, #2047).
• Swatches: .aco and .ase import and export. LUTs: the Color Lookup Tables export can write only the selected adjustment layers as a .cube file (#1493).
• PSD: many compatibility fixes. Text edited in Photopea keeps its fill, type layers stored without pixels render on open, optical kerning and Photo Filter adjustments survive a round trip, pattern fill layers keep their pattern in CMYK and Lab, and an adjustment layer that can't be read now gives a warning.

More detail per format: /guides/file-formats.

Languages

New interface languages: Polish (#1192), Ukrainian (#1799), Dutch (#1877) and Greek (#1562). The Japanese and German translations were revised, and on Linux the Flatpak now finds the host's CJK fonts, so Chinese menus no longer show missing-glyph boxes there (#1204). See /guides/language.

Automation (CLI & MCP)

• The MCP bridge no longer resends an edit when its reply is lost, which could apply it twice. It reports that the edit may have gone through (#1527).
• doc_save in bridge mode refuses format, quality, tiffLayers and index instead of quietly ignoring them (#1138), and without a path it writes the document back to its own file (#1704).
• Tool schemas no longer use $ref, $defs or boolean schemas, so strict validators accept them (#1845). A headless Render Video reports progress and can be cancelled (#1668).
• Automation can edit embedded smart object contents (#1882), and the CLI warns when a type layer's font isn't installed (#1299).

See /guides/mcp-cli.

Fixes and stability

• Linux: set Preferences › Performance › Linux display server to X11 and PhotoCraft runs through XWayland, where dropping files works (#1686, carrying #1319). Selecting text on Wayland no longer deletes it (#1421), and file dialogs no longer freeze or crash the app (#1071).
• Pen tablets: the pen works on Wayland, through Xwayland, and pressure is fixed on macOS (#1070).
• Startup: a startup crash when the UI font size isn't Small is fixed (#1467), and a windowing error no longer moves the next launch to another graphics backend, and a failed CPU start no longer forces CPU mode afterwards (#1342). UI scale Auto keeps the system's fractional scale on 4K displays (#1237).
• Logs: the desktop app writes logs/photocraft.log in its settings folder and keeps the previous two runs, so the log of a crash survives the next start (#1143). See /guides/troubleshooting.
• Saving: save dialogs no longer add .psd to other formats (#1178); macOS can save to SMB shares that refuse a full flush (#1639).
• Many hardening fixes for hostile files and out-of-range numbers, which now return an error instead of crashing or allocating huge amounts of memory.

Installers and the web build

• Windows MSI setup wizard. Double-clicking the MSI now shows a wizard with the version, a choice of install folder (Program Files\PhotoCraft by default, remembered for upgrades), progress, and a Launch PhotoCraft box at the end. msiexec /qn still installs silently (#1864).
• macOS: the DMG opens with a designed window and the usual drag-to-Applications layout (#1201).
• Web build: the page asks before you close or reload it with unsaved work (#1424, fixing #1380); imported brushes persist in the browser (#2054); fonts can be served next to the app and loaded on demand (#1875). You can try it at /online.
• Docker: the repository has a Dockerfile that builds the web app and serves it with nginx on port 8080 (#1334). It is community-maintained and not used for the official builds. See /download/web.

Breaking changes or things to know

• Search is Ctrl/⌘+F and Preferences is Ctrl/⌘+K (#1900). In v0.5.0, Ctrl/⌘+K opened Search. You can change either key in Edit › Keyboard Shortcuts.
• Photoshop's shortcuts may be imported on first launch. On a computer with Photoshop installed, if you have not changed any shortcuts yet, v0.6.0 imports Photoshop's current set without asking and shows a notice. Reset All to Defaults in Edit › Keyboard Shortcuts undoes it (#1987). v0.7.0 asks first.
• Raw files open in the Camera Raw dialog. Cancel closes the file. To skip the dialog, turn off Open in camera raw in Edit › Preferences › Raw Defaults. Opens from the CLI and MCP never show it (#1309).
• Transparent PNG, TIFF and WebP files open as "Layer 0", an ordinary layer, instead of an unlocked "Background". Opaque images still open as a locked Background (#1913).
• Free Transform side handles keep the aspect ratio. Hold Shift to stretch one side, as in Photoshop CC 2019 and later (#1873).
• Tab hides the tools, options bar and panels, and Shift+Tab hides the panel dock only (#1388). Press it again to bring them back.
• Linux with a pen tablet on Wayland: PhotoCraft opens through Xwayland when a pen is attached. On GNOME with fractional scaling that window can look blurry. Set PHOTOCRAFT_NATIVE_WAYLAND=1 to stay on native Wayland, without pen input (#1070).
• .cube LUT export now refuses sizes from 130 to 256, matching the 129 limit for import (#1493).

How to update

The current release is newer than v0.6.0 (see v0.7.0); get the latest build from /download (Windows, macOS, Linux, web). The v0.6.0 files remain on its GitHub release page: Windows MSI and portable zip for x64, x86 and ARM64; a universal macOS DMG and a separate macOS command-line zip; Linux AppImage (with .zsync), .deb, .rpm, Flatpak and tarball for x86_64 and aarch64; a FreeBSD x86_64 tarball; the web build zip; and SHA256SUMS.txt. Only download from the official GitHub releases.

Full release notes, with every merged pull request: PhotoCraft v0.6.0 on GitHub.