Free Open Source Rust MIT License

Download PaintFE

Free forever. No subscription. No account. No telemetry. You own your files and your workflow.

Latest release will load automatically from GitHub.

Windows
Native Windows application. Runs on Windows 10 v1903+ and Windows 11. GPU acceleration via DirectX 12 or Vulkan.
Download Portable .exe Download .zip Archive
Windows 10 v1903+ / Windows 11 · x64
Linux
Native Linux binary. GPU acceleration via Vulkan. AppImage available for distribution-independent deployment.
Download .AppImage Download .tar.gz Binary
Ubuntu 20.04+ / Arch / Fedora 36+ · x64
What's included
  • PaintFE application (single binary)
  • 21 brush tips (4 categories)
  • 17 vector shape presets
  • Minimal footprint (~30 MB total)
  • Built-in localization (15 languages)
  • Embedded Rhai scripting engine
  • GPU compute shaders included
  • No installer requires internet
🔒 Completely Local & Portable

PaintFE never connects to the internet. No telemetry, no diagnostics, no license checks, and no auto-updater. Your files stay on your machine. You are responsible for downloading new versions when you want them — that's a feature, not a limitation.

🪟
Windows Security Notice (Early Access)

PaintFE is currently unsigned. Windows SmartScreen may show a “Windows protected your PC” dialog when you first run it. Click More info then Run anyway to proceed. This is expected for new open‑source apps without a signing certificate. Code signing is in progress. See the Help page for step-by-step instructions.

Requirements

System Requirements

Minimum
OSWindows 10 or Linux
CPUx64, 4 cores
RAM4 GB
GPUOpenGL 3.3 / DX11
Storage200 MB
Recommended (4K)
OSWindows 11 or Linux
CPU8+ cores (rayon parallelism)
RAM16 GB
GPUVulkan / DX12 capable
VRAM4 GB

AI Background Removal (optional) requires ~2 GB additional RAM and a local ONNX Runtime installation. See the AI setup guide.

Build from Source

Build it Yourself

PaintFE is a standard Rust/Cargo project. If you want the latest main branch, or want to contribute, building from source takes about 3–5 minutes on modern hardware.

1
Install Rust
Install via rustup.rs (stable channel). The rustup installer handles Windows and Linux automatically.
2
Clone the repository
Clone PaintFE from GitHub:
git clone https://github.com/kylejckson/PaintFE.git
cd paintfe
3
Build a release binary
Compile with optimizations:
cargo build --release
Binary output: target/release/paintfe (Linux) or target/release/paintfe.exe (Windows).
4
Run
./target/release/paintfe
The app opens immediately. Settings are saved to %APPDATA%/PaintFE/ on Windows or ~/.config/paintfe/ on Linux.
Command Line

Headless Batch Processing

PaintFE includes a full-featured CLI for batch processing. Pass --input and PaintFE runs without a GUI window, processing files and exiting with a status code.

paintfe -i "photos/*.jpg" -s sharpen.rhai -f webp -q 85 --output-dir ./out/
--input
--input / -i  required
Input file path or glob pattern (e.g. photos/*.png). Providing this flag activates CLI mode.
-s
--script / -s
Path to a .rhai script to run on each file. Uses the same Scripting API as the GUI editor.
-o
--output / -o   --output-dir
Single output path (-o) or output directory for batch jobs (--output-dir). The directory is created if it does not exist.
-f
--format / -f
Output format: png, jpg, webp, bmp, tiff, gif, pfe. If omitted, format is inferred from the output path.
more
Additional flags
--quality/-q (JPEG/WebP 0–100)  ·  --tiff-compression (none/lzw/deflate)  ·  --flatten (merge layers)  ·  --verbose/-v (per-file log)

Exit code 0 = all files succeeded. Exit code 1 = at least one file failed (processing continues for remaining files). Full CLI reference in the docs.

License & Source

Free. Open. Yours.

PaintFE is released under the MIT License. You can use it commercially, fork it, embed it, and redistribute it. The only condition is preserving the license notice.

View on GitHub Read the License Report an Issue
Security

Code Signing Policy

Free code signing provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation.

Team roles

Kyle Jackson is Author, Reviewer, and Approver (solo project). GitHub org owners page.

Privacy statement

This program will not transfer any information to other networked systems unless specifically requested by the user or the person installing or operating it.