Photoshop MCP — guide skill for images & thumbnails

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Unofficial MIT MCP server: Claude, Cursor or its own chat drive your running Adobe Photoshop with 128 tools.

What it does

Photoshop MCP by Ali Sait Teke (alisaitteke) is a community MCP server under MIT that connects Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop or its own browser chat window to Adobe Photoshop running on your Windows or macOS machine. It sends ExtendScript through AppleScript or Windows COM, so an agent can read the document state and use 128 tools (111 single operations and 17 recipes) for layers, selections, adjustments, type, batch jobs and exports, with recipes such as background removal, portrait retouch, carousel splits, web and social export and bulk watermarks landing as one undo step each. Generative Fill, Remove and Expand run through Photoshop's own Firefly on your Adobe account. It is not made or endorsed by Adobe.

How to use Photoshop MCP, step by step

  1. Open Photoshop (Windows or macOS) and install Node.js 18 or newer.
  2. Claude Code: claude mcp add photoshop -- npx -y @alisaitteke/photoshop-mcp. Cursor, Claude Desktop and other clients: add {"mcpServers":{"photoshop":{"command":"npx","args":["-y","@alisaitteke/photoshop-mcp"]}}} to the MCP config, or use the Install in Cursor or VS Code button in the README.
  3. Check the link: ask the agent to ping Photoshop and report its capabilities (photoshop_ping, photoshop_get_capabilities). The answer names the Photoshop version and which generative features this install has.
  4. On macOS, if it reports automation_permission_denied (-1743), allow the app that runs the server (your terminal, Claude or Cursor) to control Adobe Photoshop in System Settings › Privacy & Security › Automation.
  5. Ask for an outcome, for example "Remove the background from this portrait and keep it editable with a mask" or "Split this wide banner into a 5-slide Instagram carousel". Each recipe is one undo step.
  6. No agent app? npx -p @alisaitteke/photoshop-mcp ui opens a local chat window in your browser; sign in with a provider API key or reuse a Claude Code or Gemini CLI login.
  7. Photoshop in a non-default folder: set PHOTOSHOP_PATH in the server's env (the .app bundle on macOS, Photoshop.exe on Windows) and restart the server.

How it reaches Photoshop

Photoshop has no stable HTTP API for outside automation, so the server runs ExtendScript: through AppleScript on macOS and cscript with COM DoJavaScript on Windows. Everything stays on your machine. An optional UXP bridge panel inside Photoshop polls the server on 127.0.0.1:38452, but it only carries Neural Filters; every other tool uses the scripting path.

Tools and recipes

There are 128 tools: 111 single operations (documents, layers, selections, adjustments, filters, type and fonts, export, photoshop_execute_script for raw ExtendScript) and 17 recipes that each finish a job in one undo step, such as background removal with an editable mask, portrait enhancement, dodge and burn and frequency separation setups, web and social export variants, carousel splits, batch watermarks, passport photos, CSV-driven cards and mockups. Errors come back as structured JSON with a code and a suggested next tool, so the agent can recover on its own. The full list is docs/available-tools.md.

Generative tools

Generative Fill (needs a selection), Generative Remove and Generative Expand need Photoshop 24 or newer; Generative Upscale needs 27. Nothing is generated by the server: Photoshop sends the request to Adobe Firefly on your signed-in account and spends your generative credits. Ask for photoshop_get_capabilities before the first generative call.

Timeouts

Each script gets 30 seconds by default. Pass timeout_ms (up to 600000) to photoshop_execute_script or set PHOTOSHOP_SCRIPT_TIMEOUT; batch recipes already get 600 s and generative tools 120 s. A timeout does not stop a script already running in Photoshop, so ping until it answers before sending more. When even cheap reads time out, the scripting path itself is blocked, and on a nearly full system drive the same timeout means the scratch disk is full.

The built-in chat window

npx -p @alisaitteke/photoshop-mcp ui runs a local web chat with the same tools. Its Action Plan mode (beta) plans the whole edit in one model call, runs the tool calls in order without a model round-trip between steps, and repairs a failed step in a bounded loop. With TYPESAFE_API_KEY set it can route simple commands (undo, opacity, blend mode, remove background and others) straight to Photoshop without an LLM call; that routing is opt-in and sends prompts to api.typesafe.ai.

Privacy

Anonymous, aggregated usage analytics are on by default. Set ANALYTICS_DISABLED=1 in the server env (or turn them off in the UI's Settings › Privacy), and PSMCP_FEEDBACK=0 to stop the feedback question.

Use when

Not for

Install

Example output

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alisaitteke/photoshop-mcp/master/images/readme-hero-v2.png — README hero: plain-language requests turned into Photoshop actions (credit: Ali Sait Teke (README), https://github.com/alisaitteke/photoshop-mcp)

Photoshop MCP: questions and answers

"Failed to connect to Photoshop" on a Mac with Photoshop 2026.

Older versions addressed Photoshop by its app name, which fails for 2026 on some Macs. Since 1.7.38 the server targets the detected .app path; update, or set PHOTOSHOP_PATH to the full .app path (#72). Photoshop must already be running: ping never launches it.

Every tool call ends in extendscript_timeout, though the MCP Bridge panel is polling.

The panel only handles Neural Filters, so its status says nothing about the scripting path. On Windows with two Photoshop versions installed, COM may try to start the other one: run the version COM points to, usually the newest (#57).

Windows: "The request to the Photoshop object was denied" with Photoshop 2026.

The Windows script wrapper broke on Photoshop 2026; it was fixed in June 2026 and tested on 27.7. Update the package (#8).

Generative Fill fails with "<unknown> command is not currently available".

The tool sent wrong event names. The fix was merged on 2026-11-11, after 1.7.38, so it arrives with the next npm release (#108).

Photoshop Beta 28 on Windows fails with 0x80080005 CO_E_SERVER_EXEC_FAILURE.

That beta does not register its COM server, so it fails outside the MCP too; use a release build (#80).

Is this an official Adobe product?

No. It is an unofficial community project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Adobe.

Alternatives to Photoshop MCP

Guide written by varg from the Ali Sait Teke source, checked 2026-11-13.

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