PhotoCraft not installing or opening?

PhotoCraft on Windows

The installer flashes and closes

PhotoCraft installer not working? It may simply be finishing without telling you: installers before 0.6.0 had no setup windows at all. They installed in a second or two and closed, which looks exactly like a crash; it was one of the most reported problems on GitHub (issue #2134). To check whether it worked:

1. Open the Start menu and type PhotoCraft. If it is listed, it is installed.
2. Or look for C:\Program Files\PhotoCraft\photocraft.exe.

PhotoCraft 0.6.0 and later have a normal setup wizard with a folder choice, a progress bar and a button to start PhotoCraft at the end, so download the latest version if you still have an older installer.

On a work PC where you cannot type an administrator password, use the portable ZIP instead: unzip it to any folder you own and start photocraft.exe from there. Nothing is installed.

PhotoCraft closes as soon as it starts

The cursor spins for a moment and no window appears. There are two known causes.

The Intel graphics driver (most common). On PCs with Intel UHD or Iris graphics, Intel’s Vulkan driver can crash while PhotoCraft sets up the GPU (issue #2320, still open in 0.6.0). To confirm it, open Event Viewer › Windows Logs › Application and look for an error from photocraft.exe with the faulting module igvk64.dll and exception 0xc0000005. The fix is to start PhotoCraft on DirectX 12 instead of Vulkan: see the commands below. A newer Intel driver is worth installing too.

A very large recovery file. If PhotoCraft crashed while a big document was open, it reloads that document before it shows a window, which can take minutes (issue #2070). Task Manager then lists one or more photocraft.exe processes as Not Responding. End them, rename the folder %APPDATA%\Photocraft\Recovery to Recovery-old, and start PhotoCraft again.

An error about VCRUNTIME140.dll

PhotoCraft uses Microsoft’s Visual C++ runtime, which almost every Windows PC already has. If Windows says VCRUNTIME140.dll is missing or cannot be loaded (issue #1908), install or repair the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for x64 from Microsoft, restart, and open PhotoCraft again. On an ARM PC, use the ARM64 version.

Windows or antivirus blocks it

The PhotoCraft installers and the app are code-signed; the 0.6.0 installer we checked carries a Microsoft-issued signature for Learning Machines Inc, the company behind the ArtCraft apps. If SmartScreen still shows Windows protected your PC, choose More info, check that the publisher is Learning Machines, then Run anyway.

If an antivirus quarantines PhotoCraft, first make sure your file is the real one: compare its SHA-256 with SHA256SUMS.txt in the official release. Our safety check shows the commands. If the hash matches, restore the file and report the false positive to your antivirus vendor.

Windows 7 and 8

PhotoCraft is built for Windows 10 and 11. On Windows 7 it stops with an error (issue #2310), and there is no older build to fall back on.

PhotoCraft on a Mac

Check your macOS version first. PhotoCraft needs macOS 11 Big Sur or later; the app says so in its own settings file, and older systems refuse to start it. On Catalina or earlier, use PhotoCraft online instead.

You should not see an “unidentified developer” warning. The Mac app is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens with a normal double-click. If macOS says the app is damaged or cannot be checked, the download did not finish or did not come from the official release: delete it and download it again from the download page.

Intel Macs: the Dock icon bounces, then disappears. On some Intel Macs, mostly older models with Intel Iris Pro or HD graphics, every Crafting App stops at start because macOS will not give it the graphics device (issue #1859, still open). You can see the error by starting the app from Terminal:

/Applications/PhotoCraft.app/Contents/MacOS/PhotoCraft

If it prints RequestDeviceError … Device(Lost), no setting fixes it yet. The same Macs run PhotoCraft online in Chrome, which one person on that issue confirmed.

PhotoCraft on Linux

• AppImage: make it executable first with chmod +x photocraft-*.AppImage, then start it.
• Flatpak: install the file for your user with flatpak install --user photocraft-*.flatpak.
• Wayland: on some compositors, drag and drop and pen pressure do not work yet (issue #1840). Paste the image instead, or start PhotoCraft under XWayland; since 0.6.0 the drop notice shows the exact command for your install.

Still stuck?

Open an issue on PhotoCraft’s GitHub with your PhotoCraft version, operating system, graphics card and the error text or Event Viewer entry. The people who build it answer there.