Photopea – The Free Photoshop Alternative I Always Come Back To

Photopea – The Free Photoshop Alternative I Always Come Back To.There are so many design and photo-editing tools available now, but one I always find myself coming back to is Photopea.

It’s one of those websites that is just incredibly handy to have bookmarked. You can open it in your browser, upload an image and start editing straight away. There’s no software to install, and for most everyday photo-editing jobs, the free version does exactly what I need.

What is Photopea?

Photopea is an online image editor that works in a very similar way to Photoshop. If you’ve ever used Photoshop before, the layout will feel quite familiar, with layers, selections, brushes, text tools, cropping, adjustments and plenty more.

It also opens a huge range of file types, including PSD files, which is particularly useful if someone sends me a Photoshop file and I just need to make a quick change without opening Photoshop itself.

I Use It for the Small Jobs as Much as the Big Ones

What I like most about Photopea is that I don’t have to be doing a big design project to use it.

Sometimes I just need to resize an image for a website, crop something properly, remove part of a background or make a quick colour adjustment.

Other times, I open Photopea for something as simple as getting the exact colour code from a photograph.

If I’m working on a website or social media graphic and want to match a colour from a logo, product, wall, piece of clothing or anything else in an image, I can open the photo in Photopea, use the colour picker and get the HEX colour code within seconds.

It sounds like a tiny thing, but I use this all the time.

Great for Website Images

For website work, image size and quality really matter.

Uploading huge photographs can slow a website down, while images that are too compressed can look poor. Photopea makes it easy to resize photographs to the dimensions I need and export them in a suitable format before uploading them to a website.

I also use it when I need to crop an image to work better within a particular section of a website, especially when the original photograph has too much empty space or the subject isn't positioned quite right.

Layers Make It Much More Powerful

One of the reasons Photopea feels like much more than a basic online photo editor is its use of layers. You can add text, images, shapes and adjustments on separate layers, which means you can go back and change individual parts of the design without starting again.

For anyone familiar with Photoshop, this makes Photopea very easy to pick up.

It’s Free and Runs in Your Browser

Another obvious advantage is that Photopea is free to use.

There are paid options available, but you can do an impressive amount without paying anything. Because it runs through your browser, you can also use it on different computers without having to install specialist design software.

That makes it particularly useful when you just need to make a quick edit.

Is Photopea as Good as Photoshop?

Photoshop is still far more powerful for professional photo manipulation and advanced creative work, so I wouldn’t say Photopea completely replaces it.

But that isn't really why I use it.

For me, Photopea is about convenience. It does the everyday jobs quickly, and I don't need to open a large piece of software just to crop a photograph, resize an image or check a colour.

That’s why, despite all the other tools I use, I always seem to come back to Photopea.

Even if it's only to grab a colour code from a photograph.