head to head · open source
photocraft vs imaginary
photocraft has 77,779 GitHub stars, 13,772 forks, 1,208 open issues and last shipped yesterday. imaginary has 6,091 stars, 502 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped 1.0 years ago. photocraft leads on adoption by 1,177% (77,779 vs 6,091 stars). photocraft is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; imaginary is written in Go under MIT. photocraft has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, imaginary 8%. photocraft was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| photocraft | imaginary | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-08 | 2025-11-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 14K | ⑂ 502 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick photocraft if
- You weight community size — 78K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick imaginary if
- You want the imaginary feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and imaginary fits your workflow better
About photocraft
PhotoCraft Image editing; an open source, clean room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop, rebuilt in pure Rust. Layers, masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, type, vectors, brushes and real PSD files, in a native app written entirely in Rust. Open source, offline, and yours. PhotoCraft on getartcraft.com · ArtCraft · All Crafting Apps A caption card with a drop shadow, live type, and Vibrance and Curves adjustment layers, with the Curves editor open. The Great Wave off Kanagawa , Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1831 [!NOTE] ArtCraft is a community of artists from all walks of life. Digital, generative, music, games…
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About imaginary
imaginary Fast HTTP microservice written in Go for high level image processing backed by bimg and libvips. imaginary can be used as private or public HTTP service for massive image processing with first class support for Docker & Fly.io. It's almost dependency free and only uses net/http native package without additional abstractions for better performance. Supports multiple image operations exposed as a simple HTTP API, with additional optional features such as API token authorization , URL signature protection , HTTP traffic throttle strategy and CORS support for web clients. imaginary can read images from…
read the full imaginary overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is photocraft or imaginary more popular?
photocraft has 77,779 GitHub stars and imaginary has 6,091. photocraft has the larger community by that measure.
Are photocraft and imaginary free?
Both are open source. photocraft is licensed under Apache-2.0 and imaginary under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between photocraft and imaginary?
photocraft is written in Rust and imaginary in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, photocraft or imaginary?
Choose photocraft if you want the larger community (77,779 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose imaginary if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.