What GUI frameworks are suitable for building a Krita-like image editor in Rust?
00:22 11 Jun 2026

I'm planning to develop a desktop image editing application similar to Krita using Rust.

Most professional image editors are built in C++ and use mature GUI frameworks such as Qt, which provide advanced features for complex desktop interfaces.

I would like to know:

  1. What GUI frameworks are available for Rust that can support a large desktop application?

  2. Are frameworks such as egui, Iced, Dioxus, Slint, or GTK suitable for an image editor?

  3. Is Rust + Qt (through bindings) a practical approach for production applications?

  4. Are there any examples of large-scale desktop applications built with Rust GUI frameworks?

My main requirements are:

  • High-performance canvas rendering

  • Custom drawing tools

  • Dockable panels/windows

  • Cross-platform support

I'm looking for guidance on which GUI framework would be the most appropriate for this type of project.

user-interface rust desktop-application