Image editors in 2026
5 commercial products, ranked by how many people read about each, or about its maker, on Wikipedia's mobile site. Of those with an article of their own, Adobe Photoshop has the most readers, about 11k a month. 30 open-source projects, ranked by GitHub stars and how recently each was worked on. PhotoCraft leads with 76k stars, ahead of Graphite. 27 had code pushed in the last three months. Most common licenses: MIT (14), GPL-3.0 (9) and Apache-2.0 (3).
Commercial image editors
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1
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 -
2
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 -
3
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 -
4
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 -
5
Capture One Capture One A/S
Discover Capture One: the ultimate photo editing software designed for photographers who demand precision and control. With advanced editing tools, seamless RAW handling, and powerful tethering capabilities, Capture One elevates your photography to new heights. Experience unparalleled color control,
Complete system Production-ready You are a studio or commercial photographer who shoots tethered and needs precise colour.
258 readers a month Commercial
New open-source projects
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1
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 -
2
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 -
3
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 -
4
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
Open-source image editors
Complete systems you can adopt 9
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1
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 -
2
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 -
3
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 -
4
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 -
5
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 -
6
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 -
7
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 -
8
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 -
9
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
Building blocks for your own system 1
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1
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
Compared head to head
Looking for an alternative to
Open-source licenses
- Permissive: 18. Use it anywhere, including in closed products. You keep the copyright notice; Apache-2.0 also grants patent rights.
- Strong copyleft: 9. If you distribute the program or anything built on it, you must release the whole source under the same license.
- Weak copyleft: 2. Changes to the licensed files must be shared, but you can link them into a closed program.
- Network copyleft: 1. Like GPL, and running a changed version as a web service counts as distributing it, so its users get the source too.
Languages
TypeScript 5, Rust 4, C++ 4, Swift 4, Kotlin 2, C# 2, JavaScript 2, Dart 2, C 1, Vue 1, Visual Basic .NET 1, Python 1 and Java 1.
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