Everything you can click in PhotoCraft is also a command. The editor has one registry of more than 500 commands, and the window, the command-line tool, a JSON control channel and an MCP server all call the same ones. So a script or an AI agent can do anything you can do by hand.
Get the command-line tool
- macOS: download
photocraft-cli-<version>-macos-universal.zipfrom the release page. It is signed and notarized; the first run checks the notarization online. - Linux: the AppImage includes it. Run
./photocraft-<version>-linux-x86_64.AppImage --cli --help. A symlink namedphotocraft-clithat points to the AppImage also starts the CLI.
Edit an image without opening the window
Open a file, run commands with parameters, and write the result:
photocraft-cli run wave.psd \
--cmd filter.sharpen.smartSharpen --params '{"amount":80}' \
--cmd layer.newAdjustmentLayer.curves --params '{"points":[[0,0],[64,48],[192,212],[255,255]]}' \
--out wave-final.png
Batch-process a folder
Write your edits once as an action list, then apply it to every image in a folder:
photocraft-cli batch --actions grade.json --in ./raw --out ./graded
Every subcommand explains its own options, for example photocraft-cli batch --help.
Let an AI agent use PhotoCraft (MCP)
Start the MCP server on stdio:
photocraft-cli mcp
Add that command to any MCP client, such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code or another agent, and the agent can call PhotoCraft's commands. It can run headless or be bridged to the PhotoCraft app you already have open. On Linux, the AppImage starts it with --cli mcp.
The control channel
The desktop app also has an authenticated, loopback-only control channel, started with photocraft --control. It lets a program inspect the interface, drive tools with pointer events and take offscreen screenshots. The PhotoCraft team rendered every screenshot in its README this way. The protocol is documented in the project's docs/control-protocol.md.
What you can automate
Because the commands are the same ones the menus use, you can script filters, adjustment layers, layer styles, transforms, type and exports. Typical jobs are color-grading a folder of photos, resizing and exporting web images, converting PSD files to PNG, or asking an agent to "add a soft drop shadow to the title layer". For editing by hand, use the desktop app or PhotoCraft online.