Alternatives to Capture One in 2026

PhotoCraft storytold

PhotoCraft: An open-source, photo editor written by scratch in pure Rust

Complete system Experimental You want to try a native open-source Photoshop-style editor and can accept missing features.

★ 76k Apache-2.0 Rust Active, pushed today

Graphite GraphiteEditor

Community-built comprehensive 2D content creation appplication for graphic design, digital art, and interactive real-time motion graphics powered by a node-based procedural graphics engine

Complete system Experimental You want to experiment with procedural, non-destructive 2D design in an open-source tool.

★ 28k Apache-2.0 Rust Active, pushed today

ImageToolbox T8RIN

🖼️ Image Toolbox is a powerful app for advanced image manipulation. It offers dozens of features, from basic tools like crop and draw to filters, OCR, and a wide range of image processing options

Complete system Production-ready You want one free Android app for nearly every image manipulation task.

★ 15k Apache-2.0 Kotlin Active, pushed today

Darktable darktable-org

darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer

Complete system Production-ready You shoot raw and want a free Lightroom alternative.

★ 13k GPL-3.0 C Active, pushed today

Krita KDE

Krita is a free and open source cross-platform application that offers an end-to-end solution for creating digital art files from scratch built on the KDE and Qt frameworks.

Complete system Production-ready You want a professional-grade painting app without a subscription.

★ 11k GPL-3.0 C++ Active, pushed today

PixiEditor PixiEditor

PixiEditor is a Universal Editor for all your 2D needs

Complete system Usable Indie game developers or artists want a free editor for sprites and simple animation.

★ 8.1k LGPL-3.0 C# Active, pushed today

RawTherapee RawTherapee

A powerful cross-platform raw photo processing program

Complete system Production-ready You want fine control over raw development and do not need library management.

★ 4.3k GPL-3.0 C++ Active, pushed yesterday

Pinta PintaProject

Simple GTK Paint Program

Complete system Production-ready You want a lightweight Paint.NET-style editor on Linux or macOS.

★ 4.1k MIT C# Active, pushed yesterday

Nomacs nomacs

nomacs is a free image viewer for windows, linux, and mac systems.

Complete system Production-ready You need a free viewer that opens many image formats quickly.

★ 3.3k GPL-3.0 C++ Active, pushed today

Vue-fabric-editor ikuaitu

快图设计-基于fabric.js和Vue的开源图片编辑器，可自定义字体、素材、设计模板。fabric.js and Vue based image editor, can customize fonts, materials, design templates.

Building block Usable You are building a Canva-style design or product customisation feature and want a Vue starting point.

★ 8k MIT Vue Slowing, pushed 3 months ago

Jspaint 1j01

🎨 Classic MS Paint, ＲＥＶＩＶＥＤ + ✨Extras

Complete system Production-ready You want a simple familiar paint program in any browser.

★ 7.9k MIT JavaScript Slowing, pushed 4 months ago

Capcap realskyrin

⌘⌘ - A lightweight, native macOS screenshot tool that lives in your menu bar. Double-tap ⌘ Command to capture any region of your screen — instantly copied to clipboard, or annotate first with pen and mosaic tools.

Complete system Usable You take many annotated screenshots on a Mac and want a free, fast tool.

★ 1k MIT Swift Active, pushed 4 days ago

GimelStudio GimelStudio

Non-destructive 2D graphics editor (POC)

Complete system Experimental Only to study node-based image editing design.

★ 855 GPL-3.0 Dart Active, pushed 4 days ago

FerrumPix Bitpainter75

FerrumPix is a desktop photo management and editing application for Linux, Windows and macOS.

Complete system Experimental You self-host photos on Immich or Nextcloud and want a desktop app to manage and edit them.

★ 745 GPL-3.0 Visual Basic .NET Active, pushed today

ZLImageEditor longitachi

A powerful image editor framework. Supports graffiti, cropping, mosaic, text stickers, image stickers, filters.

Building block Production-ready Your iOS app needs a ready-made photo editing screen.

★ 634 MIT Swift Active, pushed 14 days ago

Photo-editor-luts-swiftui khanhuitse05

🎨 An image editor using SwifUI & muukii/Pixel

Template or starter Experimental You are learning to build a filter-based photo editor in SwiftUI.

★ 525 MIT Swift Active, pushed 5 days ago

ClearPDF Chethan616

Open-source Android PDF and document toolkit with PDF tools, Office viewing, XLSX editing, scanning, and image editing. Built with Kotlin and Jetpack Compose.

Complete system Usable You want an open-source all-in-one document app on Android.

★ 433 MIT Kotlin Active, pushed 3 days ago

PaintFE kylejckson

A lightweight image editor for Windows, MacOS, Linux with a focus on intuitive use and modern UI design. Features layers, filters, brushes, selection tools, color adjustments, animated images support, and a built-in scripting. Single portable executable (or web build), no install required.

Complete system Usable You want a Paint.NET-like editor that runs without installation on any desktop OS.

★ 413 MIT Rust Active, pushed 3 days ago

ProImageEditor hm21

The pro_image_editor is a Flutter widget designed for image editing within your application. It provides a flexible and convenient way to integrate image editing capabilities into your Flutter project.

Building block Production-ready A Flutter app needs a customisable image editor without building one.

★ 397 BSD-3-Clause Dart Active, pushed today

Textual Paint 1j01

:art: MS Paint in your terminal.

Complete system Usable You want to draw ANSI or ASCII art in a terminal for fun.

★ 1.1k MIT Python Slowing, pushed 8 months ago

Klecks bitbof

Web-based painting tool powering Kleki.com

Complete system Production-ready You want a free browser painting tool, or to embed one in a community site.

★ 388 MIT TypeScript Active, pushed 13 days ago

React-native-image-marker JimmyDaddy

React Native image watermarking for iOS, Android, and Web — text, logos, tiled layers, batch Recipes, invisible traces, and an optional interaction editor.

Building block Usable Your mobile app must watermark photos before sharing or uploading.

★ 369 MIT TypeScript Active, pushed yesterday

Redlamp pdcgomes

A native, open-source RAW photo editor for Mac, iPad and iPhone that feels immediately familiar to Lightroom users.

Complete system Experimental You are a photographer on Apple Silicon who wants to follow an open Lightroom alternative early.

★ 367 MPL-2.0 Swift Active, pushed today

BitMappery igorski

Browser based non-destructive image editor with layering, masking, animation timeline, spritesheet editor, customizable brushes and cloud storage integration for all your online editing.

Complete system Usable You want non-destructive layer editing in a browser, especially for sprites.

★ 347 MIT TypeScript Active, pushed yesterday

Pixelitor lbalazscs

A desktop image editor

Complete system Usable You want a cross-platform free image editor with many filters and are fine running Java.

★ 268 GPL-3.0 Java Active, pushed yesterday

AlcedoStudio zidage

Open-source RAW photo processing and digital asset management software.

Complete system Experimental You want an open-source RAW workflow that handles large medium-format files.

★ 264 GPL-3.0 C++ Active, pushed today

React Image Editor unlayer

Image Editor Component for React — crop, resize, filters, draw, text, shapes, stickers, frames, and an AI Assistant

Integration Usable You already use Unlayer or want a polished image editor component and accept a commercial back end.

★ 263 MIT TypeScript Active, pushed 6 days ago

HyCanvas hyscaler

Open-source Canva alternative you can self-host: graphics, slides, video, whiteboards and docs. AGPL-3.0.

Complete system Experimental A marketing team wants Canva-like design work on its own servers and can tolerate an early project.

★ 260 AGPL-3.0 TypeScript Active, pushed 5 days ago

AfterFrame YIWANG3

Local-first photo library for Mac and Windows. Browse, cull and search thousands of photos and RAWs, find people and places on-device, and edit with LUTs, text, stickers, camera frames and collages. Agent-ready over MCP.

Complete system Experimental A photographer wants fast culling and light editing of large exports without a cloud service.

★ 260 MIT JavaScript Active, pushed today

CalibRaw Duecki1

Free, open-source RAW editor for Linux, Android, Windows and macOS. GPU-accelerated, non-destructive, with masks, HDR merge and local AI.

Complete system Experimental You want a free RAW developer that also runs on Android.

★ 258 GPL-3.0 Rust Active, pushed today

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Inc.

Explore quick new ways to create custom scenes, make complex edits, & combine images online or with the free Photoshop mobile app.

Complete system Production-ready You do professional photo retouching or compositing, or need to exchange PSD files with other professionals.

11k readers a month Since 1990 Commercial

Adobe Lightroom Adobe Inc.

Lightroom lets professional photographers and photo enthusiasts make amazing photos from anywhere through photo editing and organizing.

Complete system Production-ready You shoot many photos and want to organise and edit them in one place, often bundled with Photoshop.

3.4k readers a month Since 2007 Commercial

Adobe Illustrator Adobe Inc.

Powered by generative AI, magically transform a text prompt into a fully editable vector graphic with Adobe Illustrator, the industry-leading vector graphics software.

Complete system Production-ready You produce professional vector artwork or need to exchange AI and EPS files with print and brand agencies.

2.8k readers a month Since 1987 Commercial

Pixelmator Pro Apple Inc.

Pixelmator Pro is a powerful, easy-to-use image editor that brings professional tools and powerful AI features to everyone across Mac and iPad.

Complete system Production-ready You edit images on a Mac and want a capable, inexpensive alternative to Photoshop.

314 readers a month Since 2007 Commercial