Photopea Review: Is This Free Photo Editor a Photoshop Killer?

At a time when photo editors seem to cost more than ever, with expensive monthly subscription fees or extortionate lifetime licenses, Photopea offers something different.

It’s a free, Photoshop-style editor with a lot of features, and it runs entirely in your web browser.

Having heard about this so-called “Photoshop killer” from fellow photographers, I was intrigued. So I decided to test it out for myself.

Read on through my detailed Photopea review for my full thoughts, including some specific feature reviews, a look at Photopea’s pricing, and more.

What Does Photopea Offer?

First, let’s cover the basics.

Photopea is a web-based photo editing app. It’s free with no restrictions, but also offers a premium plan with some bonus features (I’ll get into that in more detail in the “Pricing” section later on).

Clearly modeled on Adobe Photoshop, Photopea bears a lot of similarities to Adobe’s flagship photo editor.

So much so, in fact, that it almost feels like a “Lite” or web-based version of Photoshop when you’re working with it, as it has a near-identical interface, similar icons, and a closely-matching set of features.

That doesn’t mean it’s a pure Photoshop clone, however. There are some differences between the two, with Photopea offering most of the core functions of Photoshop, while skipping some of the more advanced ones.

With that said, there’s still an enormous amount you can do with this editor.

It offers fluid, intuitive editing, raw file support, and all the standard editing options you’d expect, like lighting and color adjustment, the Magic Wand and Lasso tools, Quick Selection, Refine Edge, layers, brushes, blending, text tools, and more.

It even incorporates generative AI, though this is reserved for premium users only. This lets you create new images with various AI models or even replace individual elements in your photos with new, AI-generated ones, courtesy of the Magic Replace feature.

Fully compatible with OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox, Photopea also makes it easy to upload images from anywhere, on any device. It even offers its own cloud storage service – PeaDrive – for storing and sharing your creations.

On top of all this, while you need an internet connection to access Photopea, you can actually use it offline. This is because it cleverly stores all files locally, rather than uploading your data to a server.

This makes it ideal for those who care about the privacy of their pictures and other data.

Having attracted a lot of fans and users over the years since its initial release back in 2013, Photopea is one of the most popular and highly-regarded free web-based editors on the market.

Feature Review

As touched on above, Photopea comes with a vast array of features, including many of the core functions you’d expect to find in the latest versions of Photoshop.

Listing all of this app’s features could take quite a while, so I’ll instead focus on a few of my favorites and what I feel are the most important things it brings to the table.

Photoshop-Style Interface

When people think about image editors, Photoshop is the name that always stands out. It’s been the go-to editor app for so many people over so many years, and entire generations of photographers and creators have been raised on Photoshop.

For those people, Photopea will feel remarkably familiar.

The interface, the buttons, the icons, the layout… everything about this app simply screams “Photoshop.”

And it’s not just aesthetic; Photopea also brings a lot of the features from Photoshop, too, like its helpful selection tools, the “Magic Wand,” and Photoshop’s famous layer-based editing.

On top of that, it even uses the same file formats. You can open Photoshop PSD files in Photopea without losing any of your layers or configurations.

It’s also simple enough to open Photopea files in Photoshop, if you ever need to.

Lassos and Selection Tools

One of the features that has made Photoshop so popular is its rich range of selection tools, like the Lasso, the Magic Wand, and the Quick Selection tool, which can all be used to select individual elements in your pictures for further editing.

Photopea has all of those features. You can draw the lasso around items to edit them, use the Magic Wand to select sections of your image, or use Quick Selection to pinpoint precise items and subjects to copy, resize, or modify in other ways.

Local Storage

As touched on earlier, one of the interesting elements of Photopea is that even though it’s a web-based editor, it doesn’t actually store your photos and projects on a web server halfway around the world.

Instead, it stores everything locally. That means you only technically need to be online the first time you connect to the tool. Once you’re working with it, since everything is on your machine, you can carry on working, even if you go offline.

This is also a big privacy boost, too, as many online editors store your files on their servers, which aren’t always secure and could put your pictures at risk of being leaked, breached, or accessed by other people.

Cropping, Slicing, and Other Core Editing Functions

Any photo editing software worth its salt has to be able to do the basics effectively. Because you don’t always need to get in-depth with your editing or make highly precise, detailed changes to specific elements; sometimes, you simply need to crop an image, adjust its brightness, or blur out something, for example.

Fortunately, Photopea has all of these important features, and they all work smoothly and efficiently.

In fact, when it comes to cropping, slicing, color correction, and similar functions, these tools all tend to run quickly, so you won’t have to wait around to get results.

Text Tools

Let’s say you’re mocking up some posters, pamphlets, or social media images that need a little text on top to explain or add context to your image. Well, you can do that, too, in Photopea, courtesy of the text tools.

Again, this is very similar to how Photoshop and other editors handle this sort of thing; you can select either the standard Type Tool or Vertical Type Tool, click on your image to create a text box, and then type in whatever you want.

Photopea offers an array of font types and adjustable sizes, colors, thicknesses, etc. to get the exact style you’re looking for, and each piece of text is its own layer, so they’re easy to move around and modify as you go.

Magic Replace

One of my favorite features in Photopea is called Magic Replace, but before I go on to explain what it is, a quick caveat: since this is one of Photopea’s AI features, it’s not available on the free plan. You have to pay for a Premium subscription to use it.

If you do go ahead and become a Premium user, here’s what you’ll be able to do.

Magic Replace lives up to its name by letting you magically replace any element in your photos with something else. You can simply select an element, with the aid of the helpful selection tools mentioned earlier, then select the Magic Replace tool.

From there, you’re able to generate a new element to replace whatever you selected. In my landscape photo of a field with cows, for example, I could select a cow and then use Magic Replace to put a horse or a pig where it was instead.

As with all generative AI features, results may vary, and you might have to play around with different AI models and prompts to get the exact image you want.

However, in general, I enjoyed using this tool and found it a really fun addition for experimental and creative editing tasks.

Pricing

For a photo editor as comprehensive and feature-rich as Photopea is, I’d expect to pay either a hefty one-off license fee or a recurring monthly subscription.

However, the most impressive aspect of Photopea is that you don’t need to pay a penny to use it. It has a free plan that’s accessible to everyone.

The best part? This isn’t some sort of ultra-limited free plan with heavy restrictions and dozens of features locked behind a paywall.

Free users get access to every single one of Photopea’s non-AI features, allowing them to enjoy the full Photoshop-style experience without paying a premium for the privilege.

There is just one caveat: ads. If you choose to use Photopea for free, you will have to see multiple video ads along the side of your screen.

Personally, this doesn’t bother me. When I use Photopea, I’m able to focus on my editing window and carry out tasks while the ads play off to the side.

I understand that some people, however, may be bothered by the colors and moving images in their eyeline while they’re trying to edit.

It’s worth noting, too, that if you try to use an ad blocker or ad-blocking browser, it can cause compatibility issues with Photopea. I personally encountered some error messages when trying to edit images while my ad blocker extension was active.

If you don’t like the ads, there is another option: Photopea offers a Premium account, starting at just $5 a month.

That’s quite a fair price when you see what you get: no ads, all features, 5GB of PeaDrive cloud storage (compared to just 0.5GB for free users), 3,000 AI credits a month, and two additional steps in history.

These features more than justify the price tag, especially if you would like to use Photopea’s generative AI.

Who Is Photopea For?

Photopea is for anyone looking for a powerful web-based photo editor with a lot of features. That includes photographers of varying ages and skillsets, content creators, social media users, and small brands, too.

Given its strong similarities to Photoshop, it’s arguably best-suited to those who are already familiar with that tool, or at least that type of interface.

At the same time, it’s not too difficult to learn this tool over time, so even if you’re not a seasoned Photoshop user, Photopea is still worth a look.

It has a few downsides, which may prevent it from truly competing with the very best premium photo editors. That includes the fact that it’s missing some of the more advanced tools seen in other editors, plus the fact that some processes run a little slow, since this is a browser-based app.

Because of that, it might not be quite right for those looking for a truly high-end editor, with the latest and greatest functionality. But if you’re only into basic to intermediate features, or a starting-off point into the expansive world of editing, Photopea could be the ideal option for you.

It’s also a good pick for users who might find themselves often on the move, switching from device to device. Since it’s web-based, you can log into your account and continue working on your projects on any platform, without having to worry about installing or downloading anything to one or more systems.

I also have to reiterate the fact that this is free, which is arguably its biggest and best selling point: it’s the perfect pick for people on a budget, or those who just can’t justify spending $20-plus per month on a Photoshop subscription plan.

Final Verdict

Is Photopea as good as Photoshop? No. But it doesn’t need to be. It offers a large part of Photoshop’s core features, absolutely free, and that will be more than good enough for a large number of users, especially beginners or those interested in more basic, fundamental editing tasks.

If, like me, you’re used to working with more high-end software, Photopea may feel a little lackluster in certain departments. But it’s still a super tool to bookmark in your browser and turn to when you need to simply complete a quick editing task without having to load up a desktop app to do so.

Overall, I’m really impressed by this tool. The sheer quantity and variety of features and functions are extraordinary for a piece of free software, and the addition of generative AI for Premium subscribers brings a new dimension to your editing options.

If you need the very best photo editing app, with the fastest speeds and the biggest range of features, you’ll want to stick with Photoshop or one of its alternatives. But if you’re willing to make a couple of compromises here and there, Photopea might be the only editor you ever need.