# LightCraft ### Your photos. Your pixels. Your machine. **A fast, beautiful, open-source photo library and non-destructive raw developer — written from scratch in pure Rust.**
Native on macOS, Windows and Linux. In the browser via WebAssembly. Drivable end-to-end by AI agents over MCP. [Features](#edit-like-you-mean-it) · [Before & after](#before--after) · [Agents & MCP](#built-for-agents) · [Quick start](#quick-start) · [Roadmap](ROADMAP.md)
LightCraft editing Ansel Adams' The Tetons and the Snake River

LightCraft editing Ansel Adams' The Tetons and the Snake River

_{Ansel Adams, “The Tetons and the Snake River” (1942) — public domain, U.S. National Archives — developed in LightCraft.}

## Edit like you mean it LightCraft is a complete darkroom in a single native app. Every adjustment is **non-destructive** — your originals are never touched — and every slider renders through a **scene-referred, wide-gamut, 32-bit float pipeline** so highlights roll off like film, shadows open up without halos, and colour stays clean from capture to export.

### ☀️ Light **Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks** — with edge-aware local tone mapping (a guided filter on log-luminance), so pulling −100 Highlights recovers a blown sky without the grey halos you'd get from a naive curve. ### 🎨 Color **White balance** by temperature & tint (Kelvin for raw, relative for JPEG) with presets, Auto and a click-to-neutralise **eyedropper**. **Vibrance** that protects skin tones, **Saturation**, an 8-band **Color Mixer** (hue / saturation / luminance) and 3-way **Color Grading** wheels with blending and balance — all computed in OkLCh, a modern perceptual colour space.

### ✨ Effects **Texture** for fine detail, **Clarity** for mid-tone punch, **Dehaze** (dark-channel-prior with guided refinement — push it negative to add atmosphere), post-crop **Vignette** with highlight priority, roundness and feather, and resolution-independent film **Grain** with size and roughness. ### 📈 Tone Curve Parametric region curve with movable splits **plus** point curves for RGB, Red, Green and Blue. Curves are monotone by construction — no accidental tone inversions, ever.

## Color grading, the cinematic way Split-tone shadows, midtones and highlights independently with drag-anywhere colour wheels. Below, Dorothea Lange's *Migrant Mother* gets a warm print-like tone — highlights at 42°, shadows at 28° — in two drags. Color grading wheels

_{Dorothea Lange, “Migrant Mother” (1936) — public domain, Library of Congress.}
## Before & after Hold \\ to peek at the original, press Y for side-by-side, or Shift+Y for a split view. Every image below is a real screenshot of LightCraft, captured automatically by an agent through the [control channel](#built-for-agents).

_{The Tetons and the Snake River — Highlights −45, Shadows +38, Clarity +28, Dehaze +18. Ansel Adams, 1942 (public domain).}	_{Migrant Mother — Shadows +42, Texture +18, split-toned grade, vignette. Dorothea Lange, 1936 (public domain).}
_{Earthrise — Dehaze +22, Highlights −30, warmer white balance, Vibrance +22. NASA / Bill Anders, Apollo 8, 1968 (public domain).}	_{The Blue Marble — Highlights −38, Blacks −20, Dehaze +15, Vibrance +30. NASA, Apollo 17, 1972 (public domain).}

## Masking that goes where you point Paint with a **Brush** (size, feather, flow, density, erase), drop **Linear** and **Radial Gradients** with draggable pins, or select by **Luminance Range**, **Color Range**, **Sky**, **Subject** and **Background**. Combine components with **Add / Subtract / Intersect**, invert any of them, and dial in 15 local adjustments per mask — Temp, Tint, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Texture, Clarity, Dehaze, Hue, Saturation, Sharpness, Noise — plus an overall Amount. Masking with linear and radial gradients

Masking with linear and radial gradients

## Presets, profiles & the Color Mixer Eighteen hand-built presets ship in the box — *Golden Hour, Teal & Orange, Faded Matte, Selenium Tone, Crisp Landscape* and more — each with an **Amount** slider from 0 to 200 %. Save your own from any group of settings, mark favourites, copy/paste or sync edits across a whole selection with exactly the groups you choose. Presets column and Color Mixer

### ✂️ Crop, straighten & geometry Free or locked aspect ratios (1:1, 4:5, 5:7, 2:3, 4:3, 16:9, 16:10, original), drag-to-rotate straightening that always keeps the largest crop inside the image, thirds / grid / golden-ratio overlays, flips and 90° rotations, plus manual Vertical, Horizontal, Rotate, Aspect, Scale and Offset transforms.	### ⚫️ Black & White One click (`V`) to monochrome with an 8-band B&W Mix that lets you darken skies or glow foliage — then tone it with Color Grading for selenium, sepia or split-tone prints.

## Organize everything A library that stays out of your way: **All Photos**, **Recently Added**, **Picks**, **By Date**, **Albums** nested in **Folders**, and **Recently Deleted**. Rate with 0–5, flag with P / X / U, colour-label with 6–9. Search understands fields — `rating:>3 flag:pick iso:>800 camera:x2 date:2026-04 keyword:mountains` — and every view sorts by capture date, import date, edit date, name, rating or size. Justified **Photo Grid** and **Square Grid** views are virtualized, so they stay smooth whether you have forty photos or forty thousand.

## Built for agents Every menu item, slider, brush stroke, crop handle and keystroke in LightCraft is a **command** with a stable id and JSON parameters — the UI, the keyboard, the CLI, a JSON-lines control channel and an **MCP server** all dispatch through the same entry point. An agent can cull a shoot, develop it, mask a sky and export it — and *see* the result. ```sh lightcraft --control 7980 ~/Pictures/trip ``` ```jsonc {"method": "engine.execute", "params": {"command": "photo.flag", "params": {"flag": "pick"}}} {"method": "engine.execute", "params": {"command": "develop.set", "params": {"values": {"light.highlights": -45, "light.shadows": 38}}}} {"method": "engine.execute", "params": {"command": "mask.add", "params": {"kind": "radial", "center": [0.62, 0.4], "rx": 0.2, "ry": 0.14}}} {"method": "ui.clickWidget", "params": {"id": "slider:effects.clarity"}} // drive any widget by name {"method": "ui.pointer", "params": {"events": [{"kind":"down","x":0.2,"y":0.3}, {"kind":"up","x":0.4,"y":0.3}]}} {"method": "ui.screenshot", "params": {"path": "after.png"}} ``` - **91 engine commands** and **48 UI commands** — list them all with `engine.commands`, read every slider's range, default and current value with `develop.controls`. - **MCP server** — `lightcraft-cli mcp` gives Claude (or any MCP client) ~100 tools: import, query, develop, mask, render (returned as an image), export — headless, or attached to the running app with screenshots, clicks and gestures. See [docs/mcp.md](docs/mcp.md). ```sh cargo build --release -p lightcraft-cli claude mcp add lightcraft -- "$PWD/target/release/lightcraft-cli" mcp ~/Pictures/shoot # headless claude mcp add lightcraft-app -- "$PWD/target/release/lightcraft-cli" mcp --connect 127.0.0.1:7980 # live app ``` - **Scriptable CLI** — `lightcraft-cli render in.dng -o out.jpg --set light.exposure=0.7 --preset …`. - **Undo for everything**, including agent actions: a slider drag (or a scripted burst of updates) is one undo step. - **Every widget is addressable** (`ui.widgets`) and clickable by name, so agents can operate the real UI, not a side door. - The screenshots in this README were produced by [`docs/showcase/`](docs/showcase/) scripts, end to end. Protocol reference: [docs/control-protocol.md](docs/control-protocol.md).
## Fast, native, private - **Pure Rust, no C.** Our own RAW decoders (DNG, Canon CR2, Sony ARW, Nikon NEF, Fujifilm RAF incl. X-Trans, Panasonic RW2, Pentax PEF, Olympus ORF), our own colour science, our own pipeline. JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WebP, PSD composites and JPEG XL open today. - **Scene-referred & wide-gamut.** Linear Rec.2020 float internally, Bradford-adapted white balance, gamut mapping instead of clipping, a filmic shoulder for raw and pixel-exact pass-through for JPEGs you haven't touched. - **Resolution-independent edits.** Radii and brush sizes are relative to the image, so a 400 px preview, your 5K display and a 60 MP export look the same. - **GPU-accelerated, CPU-exact.** The whole develop pipeline runs as wgpu compute kernels (Metal / Vulkan / DX12), checked against the CPU pipeline to within 1/255. On a 24 MP raw (Apple M4 Pro): a slider update re-renders in ~4 ms, a cold 2.5 MP loupe in ~30 ms, and a full-size export in ~0.3 s including a parallel JPEG encode. Without a GPU the same pipeline runs on all CPU cores, redoing only the stages a slider affects. - **Instant culling.** Opening a raw shows its embedded camera preview or cached render within ~0.1 s while the full render follows (~0.2–0.5 s for 24 MP); the next and previous photos are prepared in the background, so stepping through a shoot takes ~50 ms per photo. - **Background rendering.** A worker pool renders the loupe, before/after and every visible thumbnail off the UI thread; drafts during drags, full quality on release. - **Local-first.** No account, no cloud, no telemetry, no subscription. Your catalog is an append-only log of human-readable operations you can diff, back up or replay.
## Feature status LightCraft is young and moving fast — see the [roadmap](ROADMAP.md) for estimates. The detailed, row-by-row Lightroom parity tracker — every feature, menu item and shortcut with its status, evidence and the top gaps — is [docs/parity.md](docs/parity.md). | Area | Status | |---|---| | Library: albums, folders, ratings, flags, labels, search, sort, grids, filmstrip | ✅ | | Light, Color, Effects, Tone Curve, Color Mixer, Color Grading, B&W | ✅ | | Masking: brush, linear, radial, luminance/colour range, add/subtract/intersect | ✅ (AI subject/sky use classical heuristics for now) | | Crop, straighten, flip, rotate, aspect ratios, overlays | ✅ | | Profiles (Color, Neutral, Vivid, Landscape, Portrait, Monochrome — our own looks), presets, versions, history, copy/paste/sync settings | ✅ | | Control channel + every widget addressable | ✅ | | RAW: DNG, CR2, ARW, NEF (uncompressed), Fujifilm RAF (Bayer + X-Trans), Panasonic RW2, Pentax PEF, Olympus ORF; embedded previews for every format incl. CR3 | ✅ · compressed NEF/RAF/ORF, CR3 decode 🚧 | | Detail: sharpening, luminance + colour noise reduction | ✅ · AI Denoise, Super Resolution ⬜ | | Remove / Heal / Clone spots (auto source) | ✅ · content-aware fill (PatchMatch), Red Eye 🚧 | | Export: JPEG / PNG / TIFF / WebP / AVIF, sizing, file-size limit, output sharpening, naming, batch, metadata policy, text watermark | ✅ · DNG export, image watermark ⬜ | | Library persistence (crash-safe op log + snapshots), disk thumbnail cache, import with duplicate detection | ✅ | | MCP server (headless or live app, persistent libraries), CLI, control channel | ✅ | | XMP sidecars (read/write, auto-write), reading `crs:` develop settings, preset files (`.lcpreset`, XMP presets) | ✅ | | Optics (distortion, vignetting, auto + manual CA, defringe, DNG-embedded lens corrections), Geometry (transforms, Constrain Crop), Upright (Auto/Level/Vertical/Full/Guided) | ✅ · camera lens profiles (our own) ⬜ | | GPU pipeline (wgpu compute, CPU-exact within 1/255) with CPU fallback | ✅ · WebGPU in the browser 🚧 | | Web build (same UI in the browser via WASM): persistent library in OPFS/IndexedDB, Web Worker rendering, export downloads | ✅ · WebGPU, Safari/Firefox testing 🚧 |
## Quick start ```sh git clone https://github.com/storytold/lightcraft && cd lightcraft cargo run --release -p lightcraft # opens your library (~/Pictures/LightCraft Library; a new one starts with demo photos) cargo run --release -p lightcraft -- ~/Pictures/trip # import your photos (folders are scanned, duplicates skipped) cargo run --release -p lightcraft -- --memory # a throwaway in-memory demo session (writes nothing) cargo run --release -p lightcraft -- --control 7980 # with the automation channel cargo xtask web --serve # the same app in the browser: http://127.0.0.1:8080/ cargo run --release -p lightcraft-cli -- render photo.jpg -o out.jpg --set light.exposure=0.5 cargo xtask ci # fmt, clippy, tests, layering, wasm checks ``` The web build needs the `wasm32-unknown-unknown` target and the matching `wasm-bindgen` CLI (`cargo xtask web` prints the exact install command); see [docs/web.md](docs/web.md). Keyboard: G grid · D detail · E edit · C crop · M masking · Shift+P presets · \\ original · Y before/after · Z zoom · J clipping · ⌘Z undo · ⌘/ all shortcuts. ## How it's built An engine-first Cargo workspace of small, tested crates with enforced layering (`cargo xtask layers`): `geom`, `color`, `raster`, `tiff` → `raw`, `codecs`, `meta`, `develop` → `pipeline` → `catalog` → `engine` → `ui-egui`. The egui frontend is one swappable crate; nothing below it knows a UI exists. `mcp` and the apps (`lightcraft`, `lightcraft-cli`) sit on top of `engine`. ## Contributing Humans and agents follow the same rules — read [AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md) first. The short version: - **Clean-room.** Never read Adobe binaries or GPL raw/photo code (darktable, RawTherapee, LibRaw, rawspeed, dcraw…); work from public specs and black-box observation. - **No Adobe assets, ever** — no icons, screenshots, presets, profiles, LUTs or fonts from Adobe products. Every image, icon and font in the repo is original, public domain, Creative Commons, OFL or permissively licensed, and has an entry in [assets/ATTRIBUTION.md](assets/ATTRIBUTION.md) added in the same commit. - **Pure Rust**, enforced crate layering, everything is a command, and `cargo xtask ci` green before every commit (one task id per commit).
## Crafting Apps Clean-room, pure-Rust creative tools from the same workshop — native on macOS, Windows and Linux, and in the browser.

PhotoCraft
_{Layered raster image editor — a Photoshop-class app with layers, masks, adjustments, brushes and PSD support.}

DrawCraft
_{Vector illustration — an Illustrator-class app with pen tools, live shapes, Pathfinder, type and SVG/PDF.}

FilmCraft
_{Non-linear video editor — a Premiere-class app with its own H.264/ProRes/AAC codecs, timeline and colour.}

LightCraft
_{Photo library and raw developer — a Lightroom-class app with a scene-referred pipeline, masking and presets.}

PrintCraft
_{PDF viewer and editor — an Acrobat-class app for reading, organizing, annotating and editing PDFs.}

## Credits Showcase photographs are public-domain works, used via Wikimedia Commons: Ansel Adams, *The Tetons and the Snake River* (1942, U.S. National Archives); Dorothea Lange, *Migrant Mother* (1936, Library of Congress); Bill Anders / NASA, *Earthrise* (1968); NASA, *The Blue Marble* (1972). The demo library is procedurally generated by LightCraft. UI font: Inter (SIL OFL). All icons are original. See [assets/ATTRIBUTION.md](assets/ATTRIBUTION.md). LightCraft is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Adobe. Licence: MIT OR Apache-2.0. By the artcraft team.