What is it?

Compositor is a native macOS image editor that started from the gap between Photoshop's subscription price and GIMP's unfamiliar controls. It ships Photoshop's full blend mode set in the same order, layer and clipping masks, adjustment layers, and GPU-rendered layer effects, plus a Camera Raw filter and Content-Aware Fill. It is written in Swift, so the Xcode project can be modified directly, and it installs through a Homebrew cask.

What can it do?

• Photoshop-style layers, folders, and blend modes
• Layer masks, clipping masks, and adjustment layers
• GPU layer effects: stroke, drop shadow, glow
• Camera Raw, curves, levels, and color balance
• Content-Aware Fill and Select Subject
• Text, brush, clone stamp, and healing brush

Who is it for?

macOS users who want photo compositing and retouching without a Photoshop subscription

Pros

• MIT open source
• Native Swift app optimized for macOS
• One-line install via Homebrew cask
• 17,511 stars

Cautions

• macOS only, so it will not run on Linux or Windows
• Published 2026-09-16, a very new project
• CMYK and print workflows are not documented
• Not run because no macOS machine was available

Choosing Compositor

Compositor sits in the Craft category at Medium difficulty. everyday use is simple, but integration and setup expect some prior experience. runs on macOS. This page records 6 features, 4 pros and 4 cautions, so trade-offs can be reviewed in one place before adoption.

Other tools in this category

The Craft category also lists AgentCAD, doop, OpenDesign, Open CoDesign, video-use, OpenPencil, slides-grab, SolidCraft, OpenCut, ArtCraft, PhotoCraft, VectorCraft, FilmCraft, LightCraft, PdfCraft, EffectCraft, DesignCraft, FigCraft, WordCraft, SoundCraft, DeckCraft, CADCraft, GridCraft. AgentCAD has the same difficulty (Medium), so compare features and runtime environments to find where they split. Within a category the deciding factors are difficulty and runtime environment; each item below links to its own detail page.

• AgentCAD — A CAD tool that runs CAD scripts written by coding agents and exports STEP and mesh files (Medium)
• doop — An open-source multiplayer design canvas that replaces Paper.design, edited by people and AI agents together (Medium)
• OpenDesign — An open-source design workspace that takes a brief to a prototype together with coding agents (Medium)
• Open CoDesign — A desktop app that makes prototypes, slides and PDFs locally from prompts, as an open-source Claude Design alternative (Easy)
• video-use — An open-source video editing workflow that handles cuts, subtitles and color from a clip folder and a Claude Code chat (Hard)
• OpenPencil — An open-source design editor that opens Figma files and edits them through AI chat, CLI and MCP (Medium)
• slides-grab — A slide workflow that lets you drag a region on AI-generated HTML slides and ask an agent to edit it (Medium)
• SolidCraft — Open-source parametric 3D CAD in pure Rust — desktop, web, and MCP automation (Medium)
• OpenCut — Open-source video editor aimed at CapCut and Premiere workflows — web, desktop, mobile (Easy)
• ArtCraft — Open-source AI image and video studio for artists — world compositing, 3D blocking and character posing (Medium)
• PhotoCraft — Clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust — layers, masks, adjustment layers and real PSD files (Easy)
• VectorCraft — Adobe Illustrator workflow reimagined in pure Rust — fast vector illustration with live-editable effects (Medium)
• FilmCraft — Adobe Premiere-class editor rebuilt from scratch in pure Rust, down to its own codecs (Medium)
• LightCraft — Adobe Lightroom-class photo library and raw developer in open source — no account, no cloud, no telemetry (Easy)
• PdfCraft — Open-source PDF workbench — read, organize, combine, split and secure without Acrobat subscription (Easy)
• EffectCraft — After Effects-class motion graphics and VFX, rebuilt in pure Rust — 259 effects, expressions and 3D cameras (Medium)
• DesignCraft — InDesign-class page layout rebuilt in pure Rust with a Knuth–Plass paragraph composer (Medium)
• FigCraft — Figma-class interface design and prototyping rebuilt in pure Rust — auto layout, variants, variables and Dev Mode (Medium)
• WordCraft — Microsoft Word-class word processor built in pure Rust, reading and writing .docx (Easy)
• SoundCraft — Pro Tools/Audition-class DAW built in pure Rust — Edit/Mix windows, automation and 9.1.6 surround (Medium)
• DeckCraft — PowerPoint-class presentations rebuilt in pure Rust with .pptx compatibility and slide masters (Easy)
• CADCraft — AutoCAD-class 2D drafting in pure Rust — command line, snaps, layouts and associative dimensioning (Medium)
• GridCraft — Excel-class spreadsheets rebuilt in pure Rust — 500-plus functions, dynamic arrays and PivotTables on .xlsx (Easy)

Tags

Hands-on Testing

Repository, README, and license checked (2026-10-20). 17,511 stars, MIT, Swift, last push 2026-10-15. Not run because no macOS machine was available.