Keyline

View Illustrator and Photoshop files on a Mac without Adobe, and export to open formats.

What it does

A native macOS viewer for Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop files. It does not edit them. It shows them the way those apps would on screen, then lets you print or export to open formats.

What it opens

Extension	How Keyline reads it
.ai, .ait	PDF stream inside the file (Illustrator’s default “Create PDF Compatible File”) via PDFKit. Artboards become pages.
.eps, .epsf	Embedded PDF if present, otherwise the TIFF preview stored in a binary EPS header.
.psd, .psb	Flattened composite via Image I/O (color-managed, what Photoshop saved as the merged preview) plus a parsed layer tree and per-layer pixels when they are 8/16/32-bit RGB, gray, or CMYK.
.pdf	Opened as a document, useful for files already exported from Illustrator.

Older Illustrator files saved without PDF compatibility are a private PostScript format. macOS no longer includes a PostScript interpreter, so Keyline cannot reconstruct those files. Re-save them from Illustrator with PDF compatibility on.

Photoshop adjustment layers, smart objects, and layer styles still appear in the layer list. Their appearance is in the composite; isolated pixels may be empty, which matches how the PSD format stores those layer types.

Usage example

Drag Samples/Layers.psd onto Keyline to browse layers, then File > Export > OpenRaster to open the layers in Krita or GIMP.

Export and print

• PDF — For Illustrator this is the embedded vector PDF, not a rasterization. For Photoshop it is a one-page PDF of the composite.
• PNG / JPEG / TIFF — Raster export at 1×–4×.
• OpenRaster (.ora) — Open layered raster (Krita, GIMP, MyPaint). Each decoded Photoshop layer becomes a PNG sheet inside a ZIP, with stack.xml preserving names, opacity, visibility, and groups.
• Print… — Standard macOS print panel, including Save as PDF.

PDF is the right open interchange format for Illustrator artwork. OpenRaster is the right open interchange format for layered Photoshop documents.

Requirements

• macOS 14 or later
• Xcode 15 or later (Xcode 26 is fine)
• XcodeGen

Quickstart

brew install xcodegen
git clone https://github.com/nightmoose/Keyline.git
cd Keyline
xcodegen generate
open Keyline.xcodeproj    # Run (Cmd-R), then open an .ai or .psd

Build

xcodegen generate
open Keyline.xcodeproj

Signing: choose your own team in Xcode. The bundle id is com.nightmoose.keyline; change it in project.yml if you sign under a different team.

Or from the command line:

xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -scheme Keyline -configuration Debug -derivedDataPath build

The Debug app lands at build/Build/Products/Debug/Keyline.app.

Tests

xcodebuild -scheme Keyline -configuration Debug -derivedDataPath build test

The suite writes a small layered PSD and a PDF-wrapped .ai in memory, then checks parsing, layer names, and OpenRaster export.

Demo files (a two-artboard .ai and a three-layer .psd) can be generated with:

swift scripts/generate-samples.swift .
open build/Build/Products/Debug/Keyline.app Samples/Layers.psd Samples/Artboards.ai

Project layout

Sources/App          Document types and menus
Sources/Models       Artwork, PSD, and Illustrator models
Sources/Services     PDF extraction, PSD parser, export, ZIP
Sources/Views        Welcome, canvas, layers, inspector
Tests                PackBits, loaders, round-trip fixtures

License

MIT © 2026 NightMoose, Inc.

Keyline is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Adobe. Adobe, Illustrator and Photoshop are trademarks of Adobe Inc.