Hi, it's Ivo. PhotoCraft is a free image editor from the ArtCraft team, written from scratch in Rust and modeled on Photoshop. Its developer says he built the suite with Claude Opus 5.5.
I didn't install it for this. Its makers publish their own honest score, edit by edit, and I'd rather show you their numbers than guess. Here they are.
The scorecard: five everyday edits
These are the project's own estimates for an everyday user (the "Essentials user" table in their parity document). 100 would mean "as good as Photoshop for this".
- Crop and straighten: 85 out of 100.
- Brightness, levels and curves: 80.
- Select an object (marquee, lasso, magic wand, object selection): 75.
- Remove a spot or an object (Spot Healing, Remove): 65. The Remove tool is not generative. It works from the pixels around the spot, so big objects are harder.
- Add text: 55. There's an open report of the Type tool freezing on macOS.
Seven more essentials, same table
- Open or create a photo: 90
- Undo and History: 90
- Save, Save As, export JPEG or PNG: 85
- Blur and sharpen: 85
- Layers (add, reorder, hide, opacity): 80
- Move and Free Transform: 70
- Brush and eraser: 70 (lag with big brushes is reported)
After their own discounts for crashes, hard-to-find buttons and files that don't open, they put the whole thing at about 61% for everyday use and about 45% for real professional work.
What it can't do yet
- No Generative Fill or Generative Expand, no Neural Filters, no Sky Replacement. There is no AI model inside the editor at all yet.
- Photoshop sometimes refuses the files it saves. Users have reported it. If you send PSD files to a designer, test that first.
- No Photoshop plug-ins (.8BF).
- Reports of a slow brush, a Type tool freeze, and start-up failures on computers without a usable graphics card.
Who it's for
- Good fit: quick edits on your own photos. Crop a product shot, brighten it, add a line of text for a post, export a JPEG.
- Wait for now: client work, files that go back and forth with Photoshop users, anything that needs Generative Fill.
A safe 10-minute test
- Download it from the official page: https://getartcraft.com/apps/photocraft (or the newest release on GitHub: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft/releases/latest). On a Mac, the app is signed and notarized by Apple.
- Optional: check the file against
SHA256SUMS.txton the release page. - Make a copy of one real photo you use for work. Open the copy, never the original.
- Do the five edits above, in this order: crop, brighten, select, remove, add text. Then export a JPEG.
- Write down which ones you'd trust for a real post. That's your answer.
The honest limit
- It's an early alpha, less than a month old, with a new version almost every day. Things break.
- These numbers are the makers' own estimates (their document was last updated October 22, 2026). They change fast.
- It's an independent project, not made by or connected to Adobe. "Clean-room" is how the project describes its method, not a legal ruling.
- The editor is free. The ArtCraft team makes money from paid access to its own AI image model, which is an option inside its apps.
Sources: the PhotoCraft README and releases (github.com/storytold/photocraft, read October 25, 2026); the parity document docs/target-app-parity.md (last updated October 22, 2026); getartcraft.com/apps/photocraft; Ars Technica, October 7, 2026 (the Claude Opus 5.5 statement).