PhotoTux is a desktop image editor built with Rust and Qt 6 QML, compositing entirely on the GPU through wgpu and Vulkan. It is designed for Linux, and specifically for a Wayland session on KDE Plasma 6, though it runs on other desktops and on X11.

These pages are for people using PhotoTux. If you want to work on it instead, the engineering handbook in the repository describes how it is built.

PhotoTux is pre-release software. Version 0.1.0 has never been tagged as a release. The editor opens, paints, composites, saves and reopens documents, and it is used daily by its author — but it has not been through a public beta, and the .ptx format still moves between versions. Keep backups of anything you care about.

Where to start

If you have not installed it yet, start with Installing PhotoTux. It builds from source; there are no distribution packages yet.

Once it runs, a tour of the workspace explains what each part of the window is for, and your first edit walks through opening a photograph, adjusting it non-destructively and exporting the result.

After that the guides go deeper — layers, selections and masks, adjustments and filters — and the reference section has the flat lists: every tool, every keyboard shortcut, every blend mode and every file format.

If you are coming from Photoshop

Most of what you know transfers. Panels, tools and menu entries are where Adobe puts them, on purpose: the tool shelf runs down the left, the options bar sits under the menu bar, and Layers, Properties and History are docked on the right. Ctrl+J duplicates a layer, Ctrl+E merges down, Ctrl+Shift+E merges visible, Ctrl+0 fits the document on screen.

Two differences worth knowing before you start:

  • Export is Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W, matching Photoshop’s Export As rather than its older Save For Web chord. Ctrl+Shift+E is Merge Visible here, as it is in Photoshop.
  • Documents are tabs, not windows. Multiple windows are out of scope; a session holds however many documents you open, each as a tab under the options bar.

If you are coming from GIMP or Krita

The vocabulary is Photoshop’s rather than GIMP’s — layer mask not layer mask channel, Levels not Curves, Canvas Size for extending the page and Image Size for resampling it. Selections are pixel selections with feather, expand, contract, smooth and border under Select ▸ Modify.

The .ptx format is PhotoTux’s own layered document. PSD import and export work for a useful subset, and PhotoTux tells you what it could not carry.

What PhotoTux will not do

Some things are deliberately out of scope, and knowing them now saves you looking:

  • No cloud storage, accounts, sign-in or telemetry. Nothing leaves your machine.
  • No AI or generative features.
  • No multiple windows — documents are tabs.
  • No command-line or terminal interface. PhotoTux is a GUI application.
  • No Windows or macOS build for version 1.

Getting help