For a very long time people wanted to find an alternative to Photoshop. The reason is simple, that’s quite an expensive product, and it’s also a subscription. As a result, you need to pay for it yearly, which doesn’t make it affordable. Which is why it makes a lot of sense to try out and use free alternatives to Photoshop. Photopea is one of the latest solutions alongside GIMP for example that make it easy for you to customize images and work on them any way you see fit. It’s a very interesting tool and it has a vast range of benefits, as you will notice below.
Photopea is free browser based clone of Photoshop. Perhaps what's most impressive. It's a good clone of Photoshop! We go hands on with this app and look to. Download this app from Microsoft Store for Windows 10. See screenshots, read the latest customer reviews, and compare ratings for PhotoPad Photo Editor Free.
The best thing about Photopea is the fact that it’s online based. You don’t need to install anything here. You just visit Photopea.com and that’s it. The app is ready to use in an instant. You can finally create any image you want or customize it the way you want without any worries. It’s important to note that Photopea also has a set of demos, and it also features multiple templates.
Unlike other tools that are online based, Photopea runs completely on your device. There’s no data upload to the internet, so it’s completely safe and there are no security problems that you need to worry about. Another thing to note is that you can copy files to online storage services such as DropBox. So if you want you can have everything online, including Photopea and the files you are working on.
Photopea is an advanced free online image editor. It can load, edit and save PSD files. Unless you’re rendering 24/7 and overheating your graphics cards, but I think you would have to really go out of your way to do that. If you are, make sure to properly ventilate the area in which you’re using your computer so that it doesn’t.
In addition, this tool also works with raster and vector graphics. You can use it for resizing images, photo processing, illustration creation, you can even design web pages if you want with its help. The app itself is versatile, it works very well and it doesn’t consume a lot of RAM even if it’s in Chrome.
It’s also important to note that they do a very good job at keeping the content as comprehensive as possible. It has layers, layer masks, blend modes, brushes, selections, even procedural adjustments and convolutions. You pretty much have all you need from a good photo editor without having to spend a whole lot of money.
How can you edit images online with Photopea?
It’s crazy to think that this is a single-person job, since the app itself is very complex. Thankfully, the developer made it really easy to use and you get plenty of customization options and features to try out. It’s a very interesting approach and we like how commendable and dependable this solution really is. You want to test it out and give it a go, since it’s super impressive for what it does.
Starting your own project
You can start with a fresh project or you can upload images from your PC. There’s support for just about the most popular image formats out there, be it PNG, JPG, even RAW and so on. If you want to test out the app before you use it, there are 2 demo files. But if not, you can create a file from scratch or work on an existing one.
Making selections
A lot of people will use Photopea to work on a part of an image without actually affecting the other portions of that picture. That’s why you need to have the opportunity to make selections in regards to what you want to work on. Photopea actually brings in multiple selection tools for you to try out. They have a freehand lasso, quick selection brush that will stick to the edges as well as a rectangular marquee tool and the usual magic wand that will help you pick areas that have the same color. We didn’t encounter any issues with these, and everyone is free to choose their own selection tool, which is always nice to have.
Edge refinement
One of the things that a lot of people do is they refine edges. This will create a window where you can see the original on the left and then the new one on the right. If you press Refine Edge, you will see this and then you can brush over the edges with your object. They allow you to change the brush size and you can add colors based on what ideas you have in mind.
Working with layers
Just like Photoshop, Photopea also has its own set of layers. The interesting thing about this is that you will have a vast array of different layers. After you refine the image, you have the selection copied. It appears as a new layer, and then you can really play with the image and customize. You can replace backgrounds, change parts of the image, add colors and so on. If you just want to insert a background, you can do that via File/Open and Place. This will allow you to include a new layer. It’s very seamless and it gets the job done super nicely.
There are adjustment layers too. These will change the brightness and colors for the layer under them. You can add such a layer with the button right at the bottom of the layer palette. Then you choose it from the menu that pops up. You can use vibrance if you want to make the image coloring a little brighter. Then you can adapt and adjust accordingly.
Image sharpening
Sometimes you want to have the image look very nice and sharp, so you can go to Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask and here you can easily sharpen with the use of sliders. We like this system because it encourages you to be as creative as you want without any rush. It certainly helps get the job done and modify the image without that much of a hassle to begin with. That alone is what you really want to pursue in a situation like this, before you start working on brightness or anything similar to that.
Changing the image brightness
Some images won’t have a lot of brightness, certainly not as much as you want. Which is why we recommend you to go to Image/Adjustments and here you can select levels. The levels are good because you will be able to modify the brightness manually via a slider. It works very well, and you can experiment with everything as you see fit. Changes are not final, you can undo them and that will certainly help a lot.
Adding more filters
Filters are great because they help you express yourself as an artist and come up with new ways to modify the image naturally. You can go to the Filter menu and there you can find all kinds of stuff like pixilation, distortion, blurriness and so on. A thing to keep in mind here is that filters will apply to the entire image. The only way it will apply to a single area is if you selected that area beforehand. There are some interesting ideas here like the Last Filter option that will re-apply the last used filter or the Liquify one that allows you to distort and stretch the image without any issues. It’s great, it delivers a wonderful experience and the overall results are unique.
Relying on blend modes
Blending allows you to change the way layers are working with one another. The default option is Normal 100%, however you use Multiply and it will try to merge the colors. As a result, this will darken the colors. If you use the Screen option, the effect will be just the opposite. You can make some pretty interesting results if you blend colors and again, you can undo this at any time. Experimentation is key in Photopea, and this actually works very well.
Exporting your images
Not only can you work as much as you want in Photopea, but you can export images whenever and however you want, with some pretty interesting results. They allow you to export your current layer as SVG or PNG. However, if you want to export the entire image, you can go to File and then select the format you want. A good option is definitely PSD because it’s seamless and the best approach that you can have. On top of that, you can also use PNG, JPG, RAW and other popular formats. They process is fast and convenient, even if you have lots of layers you can save pretty quickly.
Conclusion
We found that Photopea certainly brings in front a very good experience and it’s one of the nicest and easiest to use photo editors. The fact that it’s web based and also free is what really sets it aside when compared to other tools. Yes, working within a browser might take a bit of getting used to, but the tools are great and you really feel like being in Photoshop. While Photopea lacks some of the more advanced Photoshop features, the fact that it’s free and you can use it anywhere without installing anything is what really stands out. The performance is great, you can use it on any computer and it’s a pleasure to work with!
A few days ago I’ve heard about a browser-based Photoshop clone. Of course, I had to test it – not only because I love these crazy projects, but also because of my background as web developer some years ago. So I visited photopea.com and enjoyed what I saw: An in-browser Photoshop clone. A bit simplified but still very impressive.
I quickly tested some of my main tools: the brush, curves, masks, and various healing tools. Apart from the latest, everything was pretty OKish, so I decided to press record on my screen capture software and upload one of my files.
Well – I quickly found out it’s not very clever to upload a RAW file. Second try, after a quick high res JPG conversion with Capture One I was ready to go.
My normal workflow – which I always follow – is Structure first, Shape second and Color third. Translated to tools that means Healing brush, Dodge&Burn and mostly Curves and Color Balance adjustment layers.
Here is what I discovered in my one-hour test. Obviously, Photopea has to face some serious opponent: Photoshop CC2018, which I use on a daily basis.
Look and feel
Starting Photopea is faster than starting Photoshop and it looks – besides the Ads-Bar on the right – very familiar. No need for documentation, no need to guess what is what and where. Excellent.
I quickly created my first document and started with the thing that’s the most important for me: The Brush.
I quickly created my first document and started with the thing that’s the most important for me: The Brush.
Oh god, I really love Photoshops Brush engine and that broke every other Image editing software – at least for me. I have to admit, my Computer is rather on the “enough power” side of things with it’s 8 (real) cores and 128GB of RAM and a GTX1070 as well as a Quadro for serious color work.
How’s the brush engine in Photopea?
Hell yes! That felt EXACTLY like Photoshops brush! Halleluja, that is good. 4% Flow, soft standard brush – Yes. That’s exactly what I expect and exactly what I am used to. At that moment I had no idea how that changed over time…
The menus are very clean – I wish Photoshops menus would look like that. There wasn’t much I was missing, but you know – I am not really using a lot beside my standard tools. Obviously, a lot of functions are simply not there. Not a big deal. I wanna retouch with a high-end approach and see how far I can push it.
All right – the brush works, let’s load that 36 Megapixel JPG I’ve converted earlier. While I thought “that was fast”, I realized I am actually not working online on a server. I am working on my computer, with my resources and therefore the upload was super fast because it was technically no upload.
The zoom isn’t as smooth as Photoshop does it, a lot of artifacts are visible as soon as I hit a number that wasn’t 50% or 25%. I can live with this.
Ok, let’s get some work done.
Is Photopea Safe To Use
The Healing process
Starting with the healing process, I try to give the skin structure a nice even distribution of pores. The healing brush is my favorite tool because I can use it on a blank layer for a non-destructive process as well as I have 100% control over the area where I am sampling from. Photoshops Healing brush does a very good job in putting structures from A to B and fixes luminosity as well as color for me.
In Photopea it’s not that easy… the Healing Brush does something but it wasn’t reliable for me. I ended up with lots of visible edges of my brush. Ok, next tool – the Spot Healing brush.
Damn, this isn’t working the way I expect it either – it left me alone with visible edges or blurry parts – not usable.
The Clone Stamp Tool did work as expected. And did a pretty good job! Ok, there is no magic in the Clone Stamp Tool. Take a portion from A and put it on B. Easy. Unfortunately not very helpful with skin, where small hue, saturation, and luminosity changes are really important for a natural looking image. So I did a dive into the menus and found a solution: the good old Frequency separation with a high pass filter (unfortunately no Apply Image there).
The process is straightforward:
- Duplicate the Background layer and name the lower one LOW, the upper one HIGH and hide the HIGH
- A Gaussian Blur Filter is set to a radius where everything I needed to fix was not visible anymore. That radius was 6px.
- Now the HIGH-frequency layer gets a Highpass Filter with the same 6px radius and it’s Layer Blend Mode is changed to “linear light”.
The difference with and without Frequency Separation is visible, so the filters definitely have some flaws… but we are not doing the September Vogue cover here, so I just pretend to not notice this.
While I keep the LOW completely untouched, the Clone Stamp Tool does a good job on the HIGH layer. For sensor dust, my first help layer – the Solar Curve – comes in handy. Well… it took a while because somehow things are not that fluid anymore and the curves don’t have the input and output numbers. I managed to fix the curve while it’s hidden, so it there was no need to calculate the changes in real-time. Good. nearly no sensor dust so I quickly proceed to my next step: Dodge and Burn.
Fix Luminosity Issues
My Dodge and Burn Workflow require a bit of preparation (I’ve learned this one from Conny Wallstom):
- a help layer that makes all color go away
- a group with a mask
- a curves layer
- a hue/saturation adjustment layer
Easy – everything works just fine… besides the brush. Holy moly that is some serious delay here, so the process is not only time consuming, it’s also exhausting. Brushstroke, wait, stroke, wait, wait, wait… Usually, it’s paintpaintpainthurryhurryflopflopchhhhhhhhhhbrushbrushfixthisandthatDONE.
30 Minutes where gone very quickly, so I decided to move on. Too bad, Dodge & Burn is my favorite part in retouching.
Color Grading
There is a dark grey background, so it should be easy to select it in the channels, create a quick mask and … wait… no channels. Okay, quick selection it is then – nope… Magic Ward Tool. Fair enough, we use this and it has to be good enough. It will be good enough as long as the changes are subtle.
A bit less red and a bit less green, a bit of an RGB compensation and that’s it. Less is more.
Photopea Windows 10
Contouring
As I’ve reviewed my image, I wasn’t that happy. “Not happy” leads to more work or quick tricks. More work in Photopea means more waiting time, so the technique of choice is “contouring” – basically it’s D&B on a zoomed out image with a big, soft brush.
Save the work
One hour of work, so let’s save this one as PSD and review it in Photoshop – just to be safe, a quick export as JPG … you never know. Well, it turned out I did know because the PSD export was also the end of my working session. The Program shut down.
That’s a nice feature – no one should work too long on one image.
Here’s my semi-final image as before/after:
Conclusion
First I have to give Kudos to the Developer Ivan Kutskir for being awesome and doing this. It’s impressive to see what’s possible in today’s browsers and there is a lot of magic behind this! I worked quite a while as Developer for Web-based solutions and I can only barely imagine how much sweat and tears (and probably coffee) went into Photopea.
I am deeply impressed and that happens not too often!
To make it short: I will keep my Adobe subscription for now. While it was super fun working with Photopea, I can’t produce the quality I am used to. On the other hand, I can see tons of good uses!
It’s perfect for “spontaneous help with images on someone else’s computer”, it’s nice to do title cards and easy stuff with it, when Photoshop is not available or messed up an update (if you know what I mean).
It’s perfect for “spontaneous help with images on someone else’s computer”, it’s nice to do title cards and easy stuff with it, when Photoshop is not available or messed up an update (if you know what I mean).
Is Photopea Safe Fireproof
Photopea has a Bookmark in my Browser now.
That says a lot.
That says a lot.