Krita is a painting program with a professional brush engine and animation tools, released under the GNU GPL v3. PhotoCraft is a photo editor whose organising bet is the layered document: PSD in, PSD out, plus a command line and an MCP server. Both are free, both keep layers, and neither is a better general answer — so this page compares the specific job of editing and returning layered files, and names what to test with your own artwork.
Install PhotoCraft All comparisons
Written against the build verified on 2026-10-14.
Reading both projects side by side makes the difference obvious in one sentence: Krita is built around making marks, PhotoCraft is built around the document. Krita's own description leads with a professional free and open source painting program, and its feature list follows that priority — multiple brush types, drawing assistants, stabilisers, animation. PhotoCraft leads on the layer stack itself: adjustment layers, masks, PSD and PSB handling, GPU compositing, and a way to run the whole editor without a GUI. Those are two different tools that both happen to have a layers panel.
| Aspect | PhotoCraft v0.9.0 | Krita 5.3.4.1 | How to verify |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose stated by the project | A photo editor written from scratch in Rust, built around layers and PSD | A professional free and open source painting program | The repository description; krita.org |
| Licence | MIT or Apache-2.0 | GNU GPL v3, and Krita states you may study, modify and distribute it under those terms | LICENSE in the repository; the Krita download page |
| Latest release checked | v0.9.0 | 5.3.4.1, dated 2026-10-07 on Krita's download page | GitHub Releases; Krita download page |
| Install targets | Linux in three architectures, Windows x64 and arm64, macOS universal, FreeBSD, plus a WebAssembly build | Windows installer and portable, macOS installer, Linux AppImage, Flatpak and snap, Android | Release assets; Krita download page |
| Phone and tablet reach | No Android or iOS build in the current release | Android builds are offered; Krita states iPads and iPhones are not supported | Krita download page |
| Layered file handling | PSD and PSB are working formats, with format compatibility tests in the repository | Layers, masks, groups and filters in its native document; interchange with other formats is its own pipeline | Open the same file in both and inspect the tree |
| Brush and paint work | Brushes exist as a layer type, not as the product's centre | Brush engine, stabilisers and drawing assistants are the reason people choose it | Draw one stroke with shake reduction on |
| Animation | Out of scope for an image editor | Animation tooling ships in the application | Krita feature pages |
| Automation | CLI, JSON action files and an MCP server | Scripting exists in the KDE ecosystem; check Krita's own docs for what you can drive unattended | Attempt the same batch in both |
| Stage | Early alpha | A long release line on a 5.x series | Each project's release history |
Painting. If the work is drawing, illustrating, texture work by hand or frame-by-frame animation, Krita is the tool with the brush engine, the stabiliser, the wrapping-mirror workflow and a community of people who produce that work in it. It also ships to Android, which puts it on tablets and phones for sketching, while PhotoCraft has no mobile build to offer. Its release line is long, its documentation is extensive and its licence is the strongest copyleft of the two, which matters to some organisations and to contributors who want improvements returned upstream.
The photo-editing document model and the machine interface. Adjustment layers applied over a stack, masks that hide without deleting, and a PSD that can be saved and reopened with its structure intact is the specific problem this project set out to solve, and its repository keeps compatibility tests for that format rather than treating it as an import. Then there is the part Krita does not aim at: a CLI that runs one operation against one file, a JSON action file that applies a sequence across a directory, and an MCP server that lets an agent drive the editor. If your day is five hundred product shots rather than five hundred sketches, that is the difference that changes your afternoon.
The licence choice is a real difference too, not a moral one. MIT or Apache-2.0 gives a studio permissive options to carry patches forward or embed the editor in an internal tool, while GPL v3 brings reciprocal obligations when you distribute covered modified code. Choose the path that matches the way you ship.
| Scenario | Choose | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Illustration, concept art, texture painting | Krita | The brush engine and drawing assistants are the product |
| Frame-by-frame animation | Krita | Animation tooling ships in the application |
| Retouching a layered PSD delivered by a designer | PhotoCraft | Layered PSD is its working format |
| Batch grading a directory from one definition | PhotoCraft | Action files, a headless CLI and MCP |
| Sketching on an Android tablet | Krita | Android builds exist; PhotoCraft has none |
| Embedding an editor in a proprietary internal tool | PhotoCraft | MIT or Apache-2.0 offers a permissive path, subject to the chosen licence terms |
| Either, if the file must survive a handoff | Test your own files | The round trip is the only honest arbiter |
PhotoCraft, for the reasons in its scope: it is described as a photo editor, its document model is layers with adjustment layers and masks, and it treats PSD as a format it writes as well as reads. Krita is a painting program, and asking it to grade photographs is asking the wrong specialist.
Krita reads layered files through its own document pipeline; what survives a save-and-reopen cycle depends on the effects in your specific file. The only test that matters is yours: open, save, reopen and count the layers against the original.
Yes, in different ways. Both are free software with no licence fee, but Krita is GNU GPL v3 and PhotoCraft is MIT or Apache-2.0, and those licences impose different duties if you distribute a modified build.
Both. Krita publishes Linux AppImage, Flatpak and snap builds; PhotoCraft publishes Linux archives and packages for three architectures and adds Windows, macOS, FreeBSD and a WebAssembly build. Neither depends on a Windows-only compatibility layer.
Learn whichever matches the work you actually do weekly, because the layer model, masks and non-destructive habits transfer between them anyway. If you draw, start in Krita. If you deliver layered files to other people, start in PhotoCraft.
