LightCraft is an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Lightroom in pure Rust, offering a photo library and non-destructive raw developer.

Is LightCraft open source?

Yes. LightCraft is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at storytold/lightcraft and is written mainly in Rust.

Yes. LightCraft is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host LightCraft?

Yes. LightCraft can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.

What is LightCraft an alternative to?

LightCraft is an open-source alternative to Adobe Lightroom. Other open-source alternatives to Adobe Lightroom include Darktable, RawTherapee and GIMP.

Is LightCraft actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to LightCraft was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.7.1, published on 12 October 2026. The project has 12k stars on GitHub.

LightCraft: open-source alternative to Adobe Lightroom

About LightCraft

LightCraft is a photo library and non-destructive raw developer written from scratch in pure Rust. It is designed to be fast and respects user privacy with no account, cloud, telemetry, or subscription.

The software features a scene-referred, wide-gamut, 32-bit float pipeline that never touches originals. It includes controls for light, color, effects, tone curve, an 8-band color mixer, 3-way color grading wheels, and 18 built-in presets, along with precise masking tools like brush, linear and radial gradients, luminance and color ranges, and sky, subject, and background masks.

Key features

Non-destructive scene-referred, wide-gamut, 32-bit float pipeline
Controls for light, color, effects, tone curve, 8-band color mixer, 3-way color grading wheels, and 18 built-in presets
Precise masking with brush, linear and radial gradients, luminance and color ranges, and sky, subject, and background masks
Native raw decoding for DNG, CR2, ARW, NEF, RAF (including X-Trans), RW2, PEF, and ORF
Library with albums, ratings, flags, field search, and virtualized grids for big catalogs
GPU develop pipeline updates a 24 MP raw in about 4 ms per slider move

Built with: Rust tools
Tags: photo library; raw developer; rust; non-destructive; open source; privacy

LightCraft: questions and answers

What is LightCraft?: LightCraft is an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Lightroom in pure Rust, offering a photo library and non-destructive raw developer.
Is LightCraft open source?: Yes. LightCraft is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at storytold/lightcraft and is written mainly in Rust.
Is LightCraft free?: Yes. LightCraft is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host LightCraft?: Yes. LightCraft can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
What is LightCraft an alternative to?: LightCraft is an open-source alternative to Adobe Lightroom. Other open-source alternatives to Adobe Lightroom include Darktable, RawTherapee and GIMP.
Is LightCraft actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to LightCraft was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.7.1, published on 12 October 2026. The project has 12k stars on GitHub.