head to head
Adobe Photoshop vs photocraft
photocraft is the open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop — raster graphics editor. Here is the honest comparison.
Yes — photocraft is a viable free replacement for Adobe Photoshop. photocraft is open source under Apache-2.0, written in Rust, with 46,731 GitHub stars, 7,428 forks and 1,208 open issues; it was last pushed 49 minutes ago. Adobe Photoshop costs from $22, while self-hosting photocraft carries no licence fee — the trade is your operational time instead of a subscription. 2 other open source Adobe Photoshop alternatives are tracked here, led by Krita at 10,528 stars. photocraft ranks #1 of 3 tracked open source Adobe Photoshop alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: Krita (10,528 stars), GIMP (6,506 stars). Replacement criteria on this page: 4 reasons to move to photocraft and 3 reasons to stay on Adobe Photoshop.
choose photocraft if
- Your Adobe Photoshop bill is growing with seats or usage
- You need your data in a format and server you control
- Your compliance posture requires auditing the code that touches sensitive data
- You have (or can rent) a server and basic Docker comfort
stick with Adobe Photoshop if
- You need the polished onboarding and support SLAs of a commercial vendor
- Your team has zero capacity to operate software, even self-hosted-simple
- You depend on a Adobe Photoshop integration ecosystem that the OSS alternatives have not replicated
Side by side
| photocraft (open source) | Adobe Photoshop | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (self-hosted) | $22.99/month |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary |
| Source code | Public, auditable | Closed |
| Self-hosting | Yes — storytold/photocraft | Cloud only |
| Data ownership | Your server, your format | Vendor's cloud |
| Community | ★ 47K · ⑂ 7.4K | — |
| Built with | Rust | — |
Why people look for a Adobe Photoshop alternative
About photocraft
PhotoCraft is an open source, clean room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop, written in pure Rust, for image editors who want a native offline app they can own rather than a subscription.
read the full photocraft overview →
Other open source alternatives to Adobe Photoshop
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
Is photocraft a good replacement for Adobe Photoshop?
photocraft is an open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop (Raster graphics editor). It is written in Rust and licensed under Apache-2.0, with 46,731 GitHub stars.
Is photocraft free compared to Adobe Photoshop?
Yes. photocraft is open source — there is no licence fee, and you can self-host it. Adobe Photoshop is typically a paid subscription, so the trade-off is licence cost against the operational work of running it yourself.
How do I migrate from Adobe Photoshop to photocraft?
Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check photocraft's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.