Someone open-sourced Photoshop in Rust: I installed it on my laptop

Author: Prompt Engineer 48 · Watch on YouTube

Video authored by the channel shown, not by IANIA; all rights belong to the creator. Transcript and summary generated automatically; the original-language content is preserved.

Original language: English

Original video: Someone open-sourced Photoshop in Rust: I installed it on my laptop · Channel: Prompt Engineer 48 · 07:11 · Watch on YouTube

Topics: AI agents, Task and workflow automation, AI content generation, Open source and software ecosystems

Summary

The video introduces Photograft, a free, open-source image editor written in Rust that the presenter describes as a clean-room reimplementation of Photoshop—not an Adobe release. The presenter installs its portable Windows build and demonstrates adjustment layers, editable text with a drop shadow, and PSD export. The video also highlights its command-line and automation capabilities, while emphasizing that it is still an early alpha with important missing features and rough edges. It may be useful to try, but the presenter cautions that it is not yet a replacement for professional workflows that depend on specific tools or plugins.

Key points

Photograft is presented as a community-built, clean-room reimplementation based on public specifications and observed behavior, with no proprietary code.
The project is licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0 and is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, and WebAssembly in a browser.
The presenter downloads a portable Windows zip, checks its SHA256 checksum, and notes that its portable setup keeps preferences and autosaves beside the executable.
The demonstration uses hue/saturation and curves adjustment layers, an editable text layer, and a drop shadow.
The presenter saves a PSD and uses the command-line tool to inspect its four-layer structure.
The editor also offers a headless command-line interface, batch processing, and an automation interface that the presenter says can be driven by an AI agent.
The project is described as an early alpha; cited gaps include AI and generative features, missing tools, depth and typography, professional workflows, and plugin compatibility.
The presenter warns that wired menu commands do not guarantee equivalent behavior and that users should expect rough edges and possible file issues.

Chapters

Start	Chapter	Summary
00:00	Introducing the open-source Photoshop alternative	The presenter introduces Photograft, clarifies that Adobe did not release it, and describes the project and its community growth.
01:01	What Photograft is and how to install it	The video explains the clean-room approach, licensing, platform support, and the steps used to download and run the portable Windows build.
03:04	Testing layers and PSD export	The presenter edits Starry Night with adjustment and text layers, then saves a PSD and checks that its layer structure is preserved.
05:08	Command-line features and current limitations	The video demonstrates command-line and automation workflows before outlining the alpha’s missing features and cautioning against treating it as a professional replacement.

Quotes

Adobe did not release anything. — 01:01

There is no Electron and no WebView. — 02:02

You can see that it is a real type layer with a T icon, so it stays editable. — 04:05

Not a replacement for daily professional work yet. — 06:10

Concepts and entities

Photograft, Rust, Art Craft, Photoshop, PSD, WGPU, MCP, Claude, MIT License, Apache License 2.0

Full transcript (original language)

00:00 Someone just open-sourced Photoshop. Well, not exactly, and I will tell you why, but it is real, it is free, and I have it running right here on this laptop. All right. In this video, we will see an open-source Photoshop that is written entirely in Rust, and you can see that this is running right here on my laptop with layers, adjustment layers, and a real layers panel. There’s no login, no subscription, and no account. Now, mind you that this is an early alpha, and I will be honest about what is missing, but the fact that this

00:30 exists and that you can download it today for free is a really big deal. Let’s go ahead and test this out. Now, before I show you the app, look at this repo page. This project was created on the 30th of September, and it already has about 37,000 stars and more than 5,000 forks. That is 10 days. And mind you, this is not one person. The contributors list is at 166 people. The repo is past 1,100 commits, and there is a new release every couple of days. So, the whole internet is saying that someone just open-sourced Photoshop. I

01:01 need to be careful here because that is the headline, not the fact. Adobe did not release anything. This is a clean room rebuild written from public specs by a community in Rust. But, you can see why people are going crazy. The thing that used to be a monthly subscription is now a zip file that you can download, check, and run on your own machine with the source code open for anyone to read. So, this is Photo graph from the Art Craft team, and it is a clean room re-implementation of Photoshop. Clean room means it is built from public specs and observed behavior only with no

01:32 proprietary code in it. If you look here, the repo has about 37,000 stars, and it is licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0. That means you can use it, you can change it, and you can ship it. Now, the part that matters, if you’re tired of paying every month, the readme says it is offline and open-source, and it runs natively. It uses a GPU compositor on WGPU, so Vulcan, DX12, or Metal. And there is no Electron and no WebView. And it is not just Windows. There is a Mac built, Linux built, FreeBSD, and even a

02:02 version that runs in the browser through web assembly. One more thing, which is that the interface tries to be where your hands expect it. So, the menus, the shortcuts, and the panels follow Photoshop’s layout. Now, for installing this, you go to the releases page, and for Windows x64, there is an MSI installer and a portable zip. I went with a portable zip because it is about 68 megabytes, and it does not touch anything on my system. And since I’m downloading an XE, the first thing I did is check the SHA256 against the SHA256 sums file in the

02:33 release, and you can see that it matches. I unzipped it, and inside there are two programs, photograft.exe, which is the app, and photograftcli.exe, which is the command-line version. There’s also a portable.text file, and what it says is that as long as this file sits next to the EXE, all the preferences and auto save stay in a folder beside it, and nothing is written to app data. So, you can delete the whole folder, and it is gone. I double-clicked photograft.exe, and you can see that the window is open in a few

03:04 seconds using about 390 megabytes of RAM with an image loaded. And mind you that this is a laptop with an RTX 4060 and 8 gigabytes of video memory, nothing special. If you would rather build it yourself, the readme gives you one line, cargo run with release, and the project is on version 0.5, released on the 8th of October. All right, so let’s go ahead and open an image. I have Van Gogh’s Starry Night here, which is public domain, and it is a 3840 by 3041 pixel file.

03:35 What I’m going to do first is add a hue saturation adjustment layer and push the saturation up by 25, and you can see on the right in the layers panel that it shows up as its own layer above the background. The original pixels are not touched, which is exactly how Photoshop does it. Now, on On of that, I’m going to add a curves layer, and if you look at the properties panel, you can see the curve editor with the histogram of the painting behind it. I pull the shadows down a bit and lifted the highlights, so the swirls get more contrast. Next, a type layer. I’m going to write The Starry Night right across the top in a

04:05 pale yellow. You can see that it is a real type layer with a T icon, so it stays editable. And on that layer, I’m adding [clears throat] a drop shadow with a distance of 18 and a size of 22. In the layers panel, it shows effects and under it drop shadow, which is the same structure you see in Photoshop. Now, this is where it gets practical file format. I saved this as a PSD, and it came out at about 70 megabytes. Then I asked the command line tool to describe the file, and it reports four layers. Title as a type layer with

04:37 effects, curves, and hue saturation as adjustment layers, and the background as pixels. So, the structure survives the save, and that is what you need if you’re sending files to someone who still uses Photoshop. And the readme claims something strong here. It says that resaving keeps the render of 307 of the 309 PSD files in the PSD tools test set. That is their claim. I did not run that corpus, but the fact that they published the test numbers is something you rarely see. A few more things I noticed in the readme. There are 52 tools, 16

05:08 adjustment layers, and 27 blend modes. It handles RGB, CMYK, and LAB at 8, 16, and 32 bits, and the filters preview live on the canvas through your selection. So, this part of the workflow, layers, adjustments, type, and styles is already usable today. Now, if clicking around feels boring to you, what you can do is use the command line version. This is a headless Photoshop that you can run from a script. The command here is photocraft CLI run, then the file, then a command for smart

05:39 sharpen with the amount at 80, then a command that adds a curves layer, and then the output file. I ran this on a 1 megabyte image, and it finished in 0.6 seconds and it wrote out a PNG. And if you run the commands list, you get a registry of 817 lines here. So, every action in the app is a command with an ID. That matters because the same registry is exposed over an MCB server, which means an AI agent like Claude can drive the editor. In fact, that is how I recorded this video. I started the app with a control port and

06:10 I sent commands to it from a script and the app responded live. There is also a batch mode where you give it a folder of images and one action list and it runs through the whole folder. Now, let me be clear about where this stands because the readme itself is very direct. It says it is an early alpha and I will quote the idea, “Not a replacement for daily professional work yet.” The gaps it lists are AI and generative features, about 20 missing tools, depth and typography, and pro workflows and plugin compatibility. So, if your job depends

06:41 on generative fill or on a specific Photoshop plugin, you’re not switching today. Also, they say every Photoshop menu item is wired to a command, but that measures wiring, not behavior. So, expect rough edges and file issues with your OS, document size, and layer count. But, look at the trend. The latest release notes list contributions from dozens of people with translations in German, French, Korean, and Chinese and there are new releases every couple of days. So, in this video we have seen how a free offline open-source Photoshop

07:11 alternative installs on a normal Windows laptop from one portable zip and how to do layers, adjustment layers, type with a drop shadow, and PSD export in it. So, that was Photopea. Go ahead and download it. Try it on your own system and let me know how it goes. I’ll see you in another one.