OpenAEC Paint Studio

A small image editor inspired by MS Paint, using the OpenAEC application style. Runs as a browser app or a Tauri 2 desktop application.

Download installers · Watch the demo preview (MP4, 55 seconds)

Screenshots

The editor with an example floor plan, drawing tools, colors and image commands in the Home ribbon.

Inline text editing while retaining editable vector objects.

The Forge dark theme with all objects selected using Ctrl+A.

Editor

• Smooth brush strokes, eraser, flood fill, eyedropper, lines, rectangles, ellipses and inline text editing.
• Brush size, opacity, filled/outlined shapes and a color palette.
• Crop, resize, rotate left/right and flip horizontally/vertically. The Home ribbon brings drawing tools, text/object properties, image operations, view controls and canvas settings together. Focus mode enlarges the drawing workspace.
• Optional Keep vector objects: select, move, resize and restyle drawn shapes/text. Geometry transforms preserve these objects. Export editable SVG.
• Brightness, contrast, saturation, grayscale, invert and sepia. Raster corrections flatten the image; undo restores the original objects.
• Open PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP, TIFF, HEIC/HEIF, AVIF, PSD, SVG, ICO, TGA, JPEG 2000, JPEG XL and supported camera RAW variants, plus IFCX/IFCXB raster documents.
• Native browser decoders handle common images; a bundled ImageMagick WebAssembly worker handles additional formats locally. See format support and limits.
• Export PNG, JPEG, WebP or SVG; save the raster image embedded in IFCX or IFCXB.
• Undo/redo (40 recent document states), Ctrl+wheel zoom, middle-button drag to pan, pixel grid and local draft recovery using IndexedDB.
• Ctrl+A selects all objects together for moving, resizing or deleting; text fields retain normal text selection.
• Dutch and English; light, Forge, OpenAEC, Blueprint and high contrast themes. Fonts are bundled for offline use.

Run

Use Node.js 22+ and pnpm 11.25.0. The desktop app additionally needs Rust stable and the Tauri platform prerequisites.

pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm dev                 # http://127.0.0.1:3020
pnpm tauri dev           # native desktop window
pnpm build               # dist/ + dist-services/
pnpm test                # renderer, formats, vectors, API, MCP and signing tests
pnpm exec playwright install chromium
pnpm test:ui             # browser integration tests
pnpm tauri build --bundles deb,appimage  # Linux

Other native targets: --bundles nsis on Windows, --bundles app,dmg on macOS. Installers are written to src-tauri/target/release/bundle/. The API/MCP are separate Node processes and are not automatically started by the desktop installer.

API and MCP

pnpm api                 # loopback only: http://127.0.0.1:47831
pnpm mcp                 # MCP stdio; normally launched by your MCP host

The API generates a private token at .paint-data/token. Enter this token in Automation → Connect API. Send the current image to the API or load an API document by ID. UI changes are exchanged explicitly: this is not live synchronization. Revision checks prevent one client from silently overwriting another's edits.

After building, the services also run with node dist-services/services/api.js and node dist-services/services/mcp.js (install production dependencies first).

See API, MCP, and builds and signing.

Style provenance

Adapted from OpenAEC-Foundation/OpenAEC-style-book, local revision dfdcd415b26604081b1699560621d3e9ae7ea6bf. Reuses the theme definitions, ribbon components and OpenAEC logo; the Paint shell follows its desktop workspace structure. No BIM/reporting modules from the template are included.

OpenAEC brand assets and template-derived components remain CC BY-SA 4.0. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. New editor and service code is MIT licensed.

Linux user installation

Build a DEB with pnpm tauri build --bundles deb, then run node scripts/install-linux.mjs "path/to/OpenAEC Paint Studio_2026.43.0_amd64.deb". The installer checks system libraries, installs under ~/.local/share/openaec-paint-studio, creates a launcher and menu entry, and associates supported image types; IFCX/IFCXB are offered as supported document types for the current user. Previous MIME defaults are saved under ~/.local/state/openaec-paint-studio. No administrator password is needed. Opening an associated file imports it into the editor; each Linux launch opens its own window.