Pixelwright
A native, open-source image editor with layers, masks, adjustment layers, live type, brushes and real PSD files, on a GPU compositor. This is the actual program compiled to WebAssembly, so what you try below is what runs on the desktop.
Runs entirely in this tab. It downloads about 22 MB the first time. Needs a browser with WebGPU or WebGL2.
Pick a sample and launch it, or drop your own image or PSD onto the editor. Files are read in your browser and never uploaded. If it does not start, your browser may lack WebGPU and WebGL2.
What it is
Pixelwright is a fork of PhotoCraft, an early-alpha image editor that was written from scratch in Rust. It keeps that project's engine: a pure-data document model, one registry of more than 500 commands that the menus, the command line, a JSON control channel and an MCP server for AI agents all share, a CPU reference compositor and a wgpu one that are tested against each other.
The same repository builds three programs: the desktop editor, a headless command-line tool for batch work and scripting, and this browser build.
What works today
- Layers with groups, clipping, pixel and vector masks, fill and adjustment layers, live smart objects and 27 blend modes
- Layer styles: drop shadow, glows, bevel, satin, strokes and overlays, on type too
- Live type with character and paragraph controls, 16 adjustment layers and 70-plus filters that preview through your selection
- PSD and PSB open, edit and save; PNG, JPEG, WebP, TIFF, OpenEXR and more; the native lossless .pxwr format
- RGB, Grayscale, CMYK and Lab documents at 8, 16 and 32 bits, with ICC colour management
- A brush engine with pressure and tilt, selections including Magnetic Lasso, healing and clone tools, Liquify and Camera Raw
What I changed
This is a fork of PhotoCraft, an early-alpha project. I kept its engine and fixed or finished things first, then added a few features of my own.
- Rebranded and re-iconed, with the original authors credited and the licenses kept intact
- New commands: Frequency Separation, Dodge and Burn layer, Orton Glow, Pixel Art, and Straighten Horizon, which measures a photo's tilt from its edges and levels it
- A real swatch library with palette-from-image and ACO and ASE import and export
- Tritanopia and achromatopsia colour-blindness proofing next to the existing two
- File dialogs remember their folder, the command palette lists recent commands, and the CLI gained palette and diff
- This web build opens straight into a sample image and can load one by a link
Honest limits
- It is early alpha. The upstream roadmap puts real Photoshop parity well below 50 percent, and I have not changed that
- No generative or AI features, about twenty tools are still missing, and type on a path is not there yet
- The web build has no crash recovery or file-system access, so saving downloads a file
- Complex layout documents can feel slow, and a few performance budgets are still missed on the upstream baseline machine
Credits and license
Pixelwright is a modified fork of PhotoCraft (storytold/photocraft), created by the ArtCraft team and the PhotoCraft contributors, who keep their copyright. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and carries none of their branding. The code is MIT OR Apache-2.0; see the repository for NOTICE and attribution.