Darkly

Test out the full version online at app.darkly.art

Do you suffer from the oppressive sanity of rulers, guides, and nondestructive workflows? Break free with Darkly, home of happy accidents and beautiful catastrophes. Release your creativity from the bonds of logic. Madness isn't a bug, it's a feature.

Darkly aims to be the best paint app for artists (but does not want to be Photoshop). It has a unique brush engine, and dark arts to help you commune with your imagination.

Darkly pledges to:

- 🛐 Honor human imagination
- ⚛️ Run offline and without a login
- ☯️ Never steal or license your art
- ☮️ Stay free and open source forever

Use of AI

AI has proved useful in the development of Darkly, particularly with compositing and shader language, which require in-depth, low-level knowledge of graphics programming. Even so, hundreds of human hours were spent just within the compositor alone, to make it smooth and buttery.

I learned to code before AI, and care a lot about the cleanliness and efficiency of Darkly's code. Every bugfix and feature must be planned carefully, and go through at least one round of human feedback before being approved. See our CONTRIBUTING.md for how we avoid AI slop.

Note that while we allow AI for coding, we are unlikely to accept any contribution implementing generative AI in Darkly itself. You can read our full AI policy here. We are not sensitive to AI-related questions. If you're curious, please ask!

Beta

Darkly is in beta. If you have bugs or feature requests come see us in Discord!

Links

Website: darkly.art
Discord: discord.gg/kFz2FGhbpu
Online Version: app.darkly.art
Docs: darkly.art/docs
Github: github.com/darkly-art/darkly
Flathub: flathub.org/en/apps/art.darkly.Darkly