PhotoCraft
Ranked 10 of 20 image editors by recommenders
Free, fast Photoshop alternative with native PSD support that handles simple edits well. Critics say it is buggy and not yet a full replacement.
16 people recommended PhotoCraft in Hacker News comments, 5 had mixed feelings and 13 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from 33 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 32 of those comments still count.
34 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 16
- mixed feelings
- 5
- warn against or regret it
- 13
The record
Recommended in 1 of 12 months
In 14 different threads.
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 16 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 1 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
- Recommended in 14 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- The biggest thread supplies 19% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 32 of the 37 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Opens and runs very fast
“when I tried Photocraft it opened in like a second”
Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “Attack of the Vibe Coded Photoshop Clones” “absurdly fast compared to the molasses originals”
Comment from 6 Oct 2026 in “Photopea creator weighs in on Photosuite project” “its faster and does everything I need it to do”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “What Adobe v ArtCraft teaches us” Photoshop-like features for free
“90% of Photoshop for free with native PSD and lower system requirements is a win”
Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “I no longer care to work on any Ruby gems so I've archived all my repositories” “Photocraft looks much more complete in terms of typical Photoshop features”
Comment from 6 Oct 2026 in “Adobe Creative Suite Cleanroom Port to Rust” “Photocraft is near parity for day to day use.”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Microsoft Word in pure Rust” Handles simple edits well
“But for the simple edits I need to do, it is more than adequate.”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “What Adobe v ArtCraft teaches us” “It works relatively well in native mode as a standalone app”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Where is all the new, good software?” “my super basic usecases in photocraft mostly worked”
Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Microsoft Word in pure Rust” Simple, focused, no sign-up
“No sign-up, dialog boxes, licensing agreement.”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “ArtCraft Apps – open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust” “things work the way I expect them to work”
Comment from 8 Oct 2026 in “Someone Rebuilt Free, OSS Versions of Photoshop, Premiere, and Lightroom with AI”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Not a full Photoshop replacement
“It's not an ideal replacement as of yet, but the writing is in the wall”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “What Adobe v ArtCraft teaches us” “an LLM based vibe-code app is no adobe alternative”
Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “Someone has decompiled the Adobe suite, rebuilt in Rust and released it as OSS” “it was garbage, not even close to a replacement”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “What Adobe v ArtCraft teaches us” Buggy and crashes often
“really everything is buggy, a lot of options and buttons make the whole thing crash”
Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Microsoft Word in pure Rust” “It’s completely broken and was dead on arrival.”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “What Adobe v ArtCraft teaches us” “And literally nothing works.”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “ArtCraft Apps – open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust” Missing RAW and clipboard paste
“Photocraft doesn't even offer RAW processing, it just dumps the raster straight in.”
Comment from 6 Oct 2026 in “Adobe Creative Suite Cleanroom Port to Rust” “I've just tried PhotoCraft and couldn't paste an image from the clipboard.”
Comment from 6 Oct 2026 in “Adobe Creative Suite Cleanroom Port to Rust” Clean-room claim and AI code doubted
“this one particular didn't even look at the code they claim it to be clean room implementation”
Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “Photocraft: An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop” “Oh it's even hallucinating a non-existing FreeBSD version. Perfect slop.”
Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “Clean room implementation of Adobe products”
Other image editors people recommend
The four most recommended other image editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GIMP | 100 | 62 | 190 | 34% | 11 | 20 yrs15 people | — |
| Photopea | 73 | 9 | 12 | 86% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Adobe Photoshop | 69 | 65 | 167 | 29% | 12 | 25 yrs22 people | — |
| Affinity Photo | 54 | 22 | 36 | 60% | 10 | — | — |
| PhotoCraftThis page | 16 | 5 | 13 | 55% | 1 | — | — |
Also compared with Adobe Lightroom, Paint.NET and Pixelmator Pro.
What people said
32 of the 37 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's not an ideal replacement as of yet, but the writing is in the wall”
“But for the simple edits I need to do, it is more than adequate.”
“It’s completely broken and was dead on arrival.”
“it was garbage, not even close to a replacement”
“its faster and does everything I need it to do”
“Photocraft is less usable now than it was on release”
“90% of Photoshop for free with native PSD and lower system requirements is a win”
“be praised for the high standards of the source code”
“It works relatively well in native mode as a standalone app”
“is way too slow in WASM to be usable”
“Photocraft is near parity for day to day use.”
“significantly better than any other open source image editor I tried”
“when I tried Photocraft it opened in like a second”
“my super basic usecases in photocraft mostly worked”
“really everything is buggy, a lot of options and buttons make the whole thing crash”
“PhotoCraft is really cool, and the pace of stabilizing progress is incredible!”
“Check the overall layered architecture. That's nowhere AI.”
“I only looked at PhotoCraft and it has some huge issues.”
“didn't work. It completely (and silently) ignored the values I entered.”
“After 3 quick tries over 5 minutes, it did it.”
“things work the way I expect them to work”
“this one particular didn't even look at the code they claim it to be clean room implementation”
“an LLM based vibe-code app is no adobe alternative”
“Oh it's even hallucinating a non-existing FreeBSD version. Perfect slop.”
“I've just tried PhotoCraft and couldn't paste an image from the clipboard.”
“Photocraft doesn't even offer RAW processing, it just dumps the raster straight in.”
“Photocraft looks much more complete in terms of typical Photoshop features”
“absurdly fast compared to the molasses originals”
“No sign-up, dialog boxes, licensing agreement.”
“And literally nothing works.”
“Wow those are some nice applications!”
“Check out my 100% adobe clean room reimplementations”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.