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LightCraft

The free alternative toLightroom

🟢 Beginner⏱️ ~5 min to installYou save €15/mo

LightCraft is an open source rewrite of Lightroom, built from scratch by the ArtCraft team. You find the library (albums, stars, flags, search) and non-destructive development: light, curves, color mixer, color grading wheels, brush, gradient and color range masks, spot healing, HDR and panorama merge, presets. It reads RAW files from most Sony, Fujifilm, Nikon, Panasonic and older Canon cameras, and reads back the Lightroom settings saved in XMP files. MIT or Apache 2.0 license, free on Mac, Windows and Linux, with no account and no cloud. The catch: it is an alpha released at the end of September 2026, which the team rates 49% ready for a professional photographer. Its subject and sky selection does not use AI yet.

Screenshot of LightCraft, the free open source alternative to Lightroom
GitHub stars15,030
View on GitHub ↗

Versus Lightroom: the match

  • Price

    LightCraft

    €0, on every platform

    Lightroom

    €15/month, one year commitment

  • Account and cloud

    LightCraft

    No account, no cloud, your photos stay on your machine

    Lightroom

    Adobe account, 1 TB of cloud included

  • Your Lightroom settings

    LightCraft

    Read back from XMP files

    Lightroom

    Its native catalog

Lightroom ↗

How to install it (even from zero)

The simplest path: download LightCraft from its official page. It installs like any other app and works with no account. The prompt below has Claude pick the right file for your machine and check the download.

  1. 1

    Paste this prompt into Claude (Code or Desktop)

    It detects your system, downloads the right version and checks it has not been tampered with:

    Je veux installer LightCraft (la bibliothèque de photos et le développeur RAW open source qui reprend Lightroom, dépôt GitHub officiel storytold/lightcraft, site getartcraft.com/apps/lightcraft) à la place d’un abonnement Adobe. Guide-moi pas à pas et pose-moi des questions si besoin. Repère d’abord mon système (macOS, Windows ou Linux) et mon processeur (Apple Silicon, Intel, x64 ou ARM). Télécharge ensuite la dernière version publiée dans les releases du dépôt storytold/lightcraft, ou sur la page officielle getartcraft.com/apps/lightcraft, en prenant le fichier qui correspond : l’image disque universelle sur Mac, l’installateur .msi sur Windows (x64, ARM64 ou 32 bits), l’AppImage, le paquet .deb, le paquet .rpm ou le Flatpak sur Linux. Vérifie l’empreinte SHA-256 du fichier avec le fichier SHA256SUMS.txt publié avec la même version, et arrête-toi si elle ne correspond pas. Installe l’appli et vérifie qu’elle démarre. Si macOS bloque l’ouverture, explique-moi comment l’autoriser dans Réglages Système, sans désactiver la sécurité de mon Mac. Rappelle-moi que LightCraft est encore en alpha : je garde une sauvegarde de mes photos d’origine et de mon catalogue Lightroom. Si j’utilise Claude Code, propose-moi aussi d’installer l’outil en ligne de commande lightcraft-cli de la même version et de brancher son serveur MCP (lightcraft-cli mcp), pour que tu puisses travailler à ma place. Pour finir, importe un dossier de quelques photos RAW de mon appareil, et dis-moi ce qui s’affiche bien et ce qui manque, en particulier les couleurs de mon boîtier.

Review the GitHub repository and check whether it is safe to install given my machine and my infrastructure. Ask me as many questions as possible, using widgets, to clarify my request and be as precise as you can.
  2. 2

    Import a real shoot

    The best test: a folder of RAW photos from your camera. Look closely at the colors, still approximate on some cameras.

  3. 3

    Keep Lightroom for AI masks

    Automatic subject and sky selection and AI denoise are not there yet. For culling, developing and exporting, try LightCraft for a week before you renew your subscription.

What you actually do with it

Your photos without a subscription

Light, curves, colors, masks and presets: your everyday photos, without the €15 a month.

Your Lightroom settings follow you

It reads back the Lightroom settings saved in the XMP files next to your RAW files. You do not start from scratch.

Claude culls and develops for you

Every action is a command: through its MCP server, your agent flags your best shots, sets the exposure, masks the sky and exports a whole series.

Project health, at a glance

Before installing an open-source tool, one question matters: is the project alive? These scores are computed from public GitHub data. They are not made up.

77/100

Good

Healthy, followed project: a good everyday choice.

Activity
100

Is the code moving? (commits in the last 30 days)

Maintenance
100

How fresh is the latest update? Fresher is better.

Community
87

Stars and contributors: people around means help and fixes.

Maturity
40

Project age. Old enough to be solid, still alive.

Momentum
57

Current pace versus its usual pace: speeding up or dozing off?

The repo in numbers

GitHub stars
15k
Forks
5.8k
Contributors
198
Commits
4.1k
Project age
0.1 yrs
Last commit
today
Size
54.4 MB
License
Apache-2.0

Built with

  • Rust 98.5%

Scores computed automatically from the GitHub API (last-30-days activity, update freshness, community size, project age). Refreshed daily.

Loucash’s take

6/10

After PhotoCraft and FilmCraft, the same team takes on Lightroom. You find the library, non-destructive development, masks and presets, and your settings saved in XMP are read back. What may bite: it is an alpha, released at the end of September. The team itself rates it 64% ready for personal use, but only 49% for a professional photographer: colors from some cameras are still approximate, and subject selection, sky selection and denoise have no AI yet. For culling and developing your personal photos, it is worth a try. For a wedding to deliver, keep Lightroom for now.

It’s for you if: You cull and develop your travel and family photos or your visuals, you pay for Lightroom mostly for the library, the sliders and the presets, and you want to stop the subscription. If you live on AI masks, denoise or client shoots, keep Lightroom for now.

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