LightCraft vs Tropy

Comparing two open source alternatives to Adobe Lightroom. Use the comparison below to decide which one fits your needs.

LightCraft

Apache-2.0

Open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Lightroom in Rust — photo library and raw development, local-first.

AGPL-3.0

Desktop app for organising, describing and annotating photographs of archival research material.

	LightCraft	Tropy
License	Apache-2.0	AGPL-3.0
Self-hostable	No	No
GitHub Stars	14,819	1,160
Forks	5,698	68
Open Issues	1,306	223
Last Commit	Oct 27, 2026	Oct 27, 2026
First Released	Sep 30, 2026	Nov 3, 2015
Categories	Image Editing	Research & Archival Tools
Tags	#photo #photo-management #raw-processing	#photo gallery #transcription #annotation #research #archival

Powerful, cross-platform open source raw photo processing program and a strong alternative to Adobe Lightroom.

Open source photography workflow application and raw developer for organizing, editing, and exporting large photo libraries.

Self-hosted, booru-style gallery that tags, searches and deduplicates a local image, video and comic collection.