In order to get a better detection result of crack regions on pictorial stone, a crack detection algorithm based on editing distance is proposed. The pictorial carved stone image is separated into many patches with identical sizes. For separating the crack regions from the background, the editing distances between each patch are calculated and the mask image is generated simultaneously. The blank area on mask image is filled by dilation operation which belongs to morphology. The crack detection is finished by setting a threshold to the mask image. Experimental results show that this algorithm can detect the crack regions on pictorial carved stone accurately.